Education Bill

My Lords, after our discussions about admissions on Monday, I move to a number of government amendments which achieve two important things. The first introduces an important new clause that makes it possible for anyone to object to a school’s admission arrangements by referring an objection to the office of the schools adjudicator. His duty to consider all concerns that are raised to him in this way remains. This new clause builds on Clause 62, which extends the adjudicator’s remit to include all academies and free schools so that admissions to all state-funded schools will be covered by the same organisation. Our other amendments relate to the issue we discussed on Monday about national oversight of and accountability for the admissions system. Our Clause 34 would have removed a duty on local authorities to send their annual report on admissions in their area to the adjudicator. This is because in the statutory code we are placing that duty on local authorities to report locally to local people. However, during Committee I listened with care to noble Lords’ concerns about the adjudicator not getting these reports to help flesh out his and the Secretary of State’s national picture on admissions. Noble Lords were worried that, without these reports, the adjudicator would see admissions only where things have gone wrong or might have gone wrong whereas these reports also set out the areas where things are going right, which is the vast majority. Noble Lords were concerned that this would remove a thread of accountability running from schools through local authorities through the adjudicator to the Secretary of State, which was not our intention. So we are addressing that concern with Amendments 64 to 67. They place a duty on local authorities to send their reports to the adjudicator in addition to being published locally. This will ensure his national oversight and he will continue to be able to take these reports into account when deciding whether to investigate a school’s admission arrangements. I hope that noble Lords will agree that our moves on admissions are aimed at achieving and promoting fair access and that these amendments will help achieve that end. I beg to move.