I am grateful for the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.

While we were in Bill Committee on Tuesday, the Education Committee was meeting—there are many people with a lot of interest in the Bill, and rightly so—to hear from three panels of witnesses. I draw the Committee’s attention to the second panel. On the panel was Sam Freedman, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government who worked at the Department for Education from 2010 to 2013 as a senior policy adviser; she is also a senior adviser to Ark schools, although was appearing in a personal capacity. Also on the panel were Daniel Kebede, who is a former teacher and the general secretary of the National Education Union, and John Barneby, who is the chief executive of Oasis Community Learning.

The witnesses did not agree on everything, but all three commented on the benefits of these provisions. John Barneby said that Oasis follows

“local authority admissions at the moment, because we believe in equity of offer, and we want to work in partnership. That is not the case everywhere…My hope is that, out of this policy, we will get to a place where there is a fair distribution of children with special educational needs and disadvantaged children across all schools, so that all schools are truly inclusive and have the capacity to meet the needs of all children.”

He thinks the Bill will go some way to doing that. He also said that there has been a risk raised around the allocation of students, particularly with falling student numbers, but he thinks that

“on the whole, local authorities act responsibly around this.”

Daniel Kebede did not give his own opinion but that of the Sutton Trust, which found that

“155 secondary comprehensives in England are now more socially selective than the average grammar school.”

This clause will ensure that admissions are spread across everybody, and allow for academies and local authority schools to work together.

Finally, the witnesses were asked whether they thought the Bill’s provisions on admissions would lead to difficulty or an improvement. Sam Freedman was originally opposed to them, but she said:

“I think that is much less of a challenge now that 80% of secondaries are academies, as are 40% of primaries. I am comfortable that allowing appeals to the schools adjudicator means that if it was still an issue, there is a mechanism for the academy to appeal and deal with it.”

In fact, she would like the Bill to go further and say that local authorities should set all admissions policies.