Member

Amendment 199, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seeks to limit the circumstances in which the adjudicator can set a lower published admission number, or PAN, following an upheld objection. As always, we heard wise words on this from my noble friend Lady Morris, and experienced and wise words from my noble friend Lady Bousted. There are particular challenges in ensuring that we maintain high-quality schools, and parents’ choice of those schools, particularly given the declining number of pupils at primary schools in recent years, which is set to feed into the secondary phase. Given those circumstances, is vital that schools and local authorities work together on school place planning. Clause 57 will help to ensure that the system is able to meet this challenge. I had understood that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, shared our view on this challenge and the way we were going about it, but clearly other things have intervened in the meantime.