Contribution
My Lords, as we have heard, this group and the next one cover a range of issues in relation to admissions. My sense is that most of the amendments in this group are not really needed in practice, but the Minister will no doubt clarify.
In relation to Amendment 449 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas, as my noble friend made clear, each individual school publishes its admissions policy on its website. I accept his point that local authorities no longer publish as many comprehensive booklets as perhaps they once did. It is reasonable to expect that parents should be able to look at different websites and the admissions policies of the schools that they are interested in sending their children to.
Turning to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, my understanding is that under the fair access protocol, children in need of a school place will be found one. While I absolutely respect the noble Baroness’s concerns about the groups of children she described, I am not sure it is helpful that we should place a priority on one group of children over another, but rather that we see the right to education as fundamental for every child.
My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering’s Amendment 455 relates to admissions policies for children living in rural areas. My noble friend raised some valid points about the financial pressures that rural schools, and in particular very small rural schools, face, but I am just not sure that it would be appropriate for an analysis of those policies to be done in the department.
I turn to Amendment 456 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. The noble Lord raises a valid point. There is a change in policy happening around the future ability of maintained free schools—although they will not be free schools in the sense that many of us understand—to be available, and that is different from what exists today for academies. So it is entirely fair of the noble Lord to probe the Government’s thinking on this.
As we heard, Amendment 457 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on school admissions policies, including an analysis of the proportion of places allocated based on faith-related criteria. Of course, as I said earlier, schools already publish their admissions policy, but I do not think they publish the outcomes in relation to faith-related criteria. Again, I am slightly puzzled about the value of doing this nationally as, obviously, parents typically look at schools in a pretty narrow geographic area close to where they live.
Finally, in relation to Amendment 475, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that off-rolling is not acceptable. In 2019, Ofsted defined off-rolling as
“the practice of removing a pupil from the school roll without using a permanent exclusion, when the removal is primarily in the best interests of the school, rather than the best interests of the pupil. This includes pressuring a parent to remove their child from the school roll”.
That aspect is clearly in the sights of the inspectorate, so I do not think that the noble Lord’s amendment is needed. The noble Lord also raised much wider issues around attendance, which go far beyond that definition of off-rolling, and I think that the new inspection framework from Ofsted, with its emphasis on inclusion, might serve to reassure the noble Lord that that continues to be in the sights of those who are responsible for holding our schools to account.