Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)

My Lords, this is only the second intervention I have made in this very important Bill. I draw the attention of the Minister, the department and, indeed, the House to the plight and funding of rural schools. One of the first actions that the incoming Government undertook was to end the rural services delivery grant, which had greatly benefited rural areas and allowed many outlying villages and farms to access the schools for their children. This has had an immense impact on counties such as the very rural and isolated North Yorkshire. When I was in the other place, a group of about 100 MPs felt that they represented deprived areas of local education funding, for the simple reasons that we lost what was initially an element of the funding for rural and sparsely populated areas and that the grants seem to change every single year. In addition to the loss of the rural services delivery grant, the Government took away the grant that was dedicated to rural schools’ transport funding, so there was a sort of double whammy, a double effect, from this first action from the Government. In the year up to the end of the financial year 2023-24, I understand that the rural services grant totalled over £100 million, and the Government saw fit to redirect that money from what are called “more deprived areas”. On my Amendment 455, I want to point out the lack of understanding of how changes to this funding really impact individual rural schools—which face the risk of closure—and the parents and their children, who are trying to access what I believe are very good schools. I understand that the thinking of the Government is to transfer resources from rural to urban areas, so in this amendment I ask them to review within six months of the passing of the Bill their rural school admissions policies, to include an assessment of whether admissions policies in those areas have been affected by the availability of home-to-school transport.