Member

The Bill allows a local authority to object to the current admission numbers of any school anywhere in the country; that became apparent in Committee. There will therefore be border disputes with local authorities trying to push down numbers in neighbouring authorities. I suspect that faith and selective schools will be particularly in the crosshairs of some of the more ideological left-wing authorities. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent the schools adjudicator from setting a published admission number to zero, to shut a school or to stop one from opening. We tried to amend the Bill to require school performance to be taken into account when decisions are made on pupil numbers, but amazingly, the Government voted even that down.