My Lords, may I start by saying how grand it is to be back in the Grand Committee Room after pretty close to two years? I always enjoy debates in this particular Room.
I should declare an interest of sorts, in that I have a son, aged 10, and we have just made an application for his senior school through the admissions policy applying in our London borough. I have no reason to believe that we will not be successful, but it has sharpened my preparations for this debate.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for tabling this take-note Motion allowing noble Lords to debate these regulations and the wider issues around school admissions that he outlined, with which I would agree. I found the Explanatory Memorandum to the school information regulations very helpful in providing clarity on links with the new admissions code.
I shall not say much today about the removal of the year 7 catch-up premium grant. I challenged the Minister’s predecessor on this on more than one occasion last year, principally concerning fears that the overall amount allocated from the national funding formula would not meet the level of support provided by the year 7 grant. However, I noted that, in July this year, the Government announced that the amount allocated through the secondary low prior attainment factor for the 2020-21 academic year would increase from £924 million to £973 million, so it is only fair that we give the benefit of the doubt and reassess that position in a year’s time.
I think it is fair to say that there have long been concerns about the fairness of in-year admissions. The DfE’s own Review of Children in Need, published in June 2019, found that such children
“were more likely to seek a school place outside the normal admissions round and that delays in securing a school place in-year could lead to children missing education.”
Children in care are among the most vulnerable in society, of course. Surely it is of paramount importance that a school place that is in the child’s best interests is found as quickly as possible. We therefore welcome the DfE’s decision to reform the admissions code to give priority to children in care, or those who have previously been in care, in its oversubscription criteria. It is hoped that this will improve the clarity, timeliness and transparency of the in-year admissions process to ensure that all vulnerable children can access a school place without delay.
We also welcome the additions to the fair access protocol outlined in chapter 3 of the code. There are, it is fair to say, more serious deficiencies in the admissions code, which raise questions about social inequality. That is why Labour believes that local authorities should have responsibility for school places, with oversight and control of all admissions within their boundaries. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Storey, support that change. Surely it is nonsense that, at present, councils have legal responsibility for finding a school place for any child arriving in their area, yet they cannot force an academy to accept a child even if the academy is not at capacity. Surely that is not an efficient way to operate school admissions.
All too often, the current system results in school segregation by family income, which has implications for social mobility—or social justice, as I prefer to call it. The point here is the extent to which a child’s family background determines their success. If a child’s chance of attending a high-performing school is effectively
determined by their family income, that will clearly act as a major brake on social improvement. There is also a further issue around the social and political implications of young people from different socioeconomic backgrounds being educated separately. That hardly seems likely to assist in building a fair and cohesive society—something that, it might be assumed, is a key component of the Government’s much-vaunted levelling-up agenda.
The Minister will know that many education specialists, commentators and school leaders have called on the department to make further changes to the admission code to close the disadvantage gap, which has spiralled due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The leaked presentation on the needs of schools and pupils following the pandemic from the Government’s sadly short-lived recovery tsar, Sir Kevan Collins, revealed:
“Children from poorer households, who have often struggled most to learn from home, have lost most learning with the attainment gap expected to widen by 10-24%”.
Labour has committed to an education recovery premium, which would support every child to reach their potential by investing in the children who faced the greatest disruption during the pandemic, from early years to further education. We also advocate doubling the pupil premium for children in key transition years, delivering additional support for the children who need it most.
The former Chief Schools Adjudicator, Sir Philip Hunter, has warned that, although the admissions code requires schools
“to adopt, publish and administer admission criteria which are objective and reasonable”,
the very criteria that allow schools to
“give priority to children who live closest to the school, live in a defined catchment area, have siblings already at the school or, in the case of aided schools, are members of a particular church or religion … will, if unregulated over time, result in priority being given to children from privileged backgrounds”
at the expense of their disadvantaged counterparts,
“so the criteria will need to be even more rigorously applied”
as this will lead to schools becoming “yet more selective” and “more elitist”.
On disadvantage, the Minister may have had drawn to her attention by her officials what I regard as a worrying report, published three months ago by Humanists UK. Entitled Careless or Uncaring? How Faith Schools Turn Away Children Who Are or Were in Care, the report found that, in their admissions policies,
“41% of all state secondary schools of a religious character discriminate against children who are or were in care not of their faith … In Kensington and Chelsea, 50% of all state secondaries (religious or otherwise) discriminate against children who are or were in care not of their faith.”
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As others have highlighted, the school a child attends makes a difference to their academic success. Estimates vary, but about 10% to 20% of the difference in pupils’ academic outcomes is down to the school they went to. As academic achievement, in turn, strongly influences life chances, particularly earnings, the effectiveness of the school a student attends potentially has life-long implications, so it would be unwise to assume that the current system is fair.
There are many excellent schools in disadvantaged areas, but the economics of property ownership mean that disadvantaged families lack the ability to afford homes in areas near popular schools that are rated as good or outstanding. In Great Education for Every Child – The ASCL Blueprint for a Fairer Education System, published last month, the Association of School and College Leaders demonstrated that this injustice is entrenched and reinforces an unhealthy division between affluent and disadvantaged areas and their children.
In some areas, high-performing schools are located close to schools that have been struggling to produce good results for years. Sometimes, an underperforming school can take action to improve results and thereby attract more pupils, but many cannot overcome the disadvantage of reputation or of serving areas where families have low expectations for their children. This can also impact on school funding, with fewer pupils remaining in school or being put on a pathway to higher education. What consideration have the Government given to contextualising school admissions, perhaps by increasing the number of pupils prioritised for school places based on their home circumstances or extending priority rights to children eligible for the pupil premium to all those living in persistent poverty?
In conclusion, on their own, the changes to the admissions code in these regulations are minor, and we are perfectly happy with them, although they are not unimportant, but for reasons including those that I have enunciated, the code itself is in need of a wider overhaul. Although I am an optimist, that is not a development I expect to see from a Conservative Government.