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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-03-08.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to limiting the proportion of places that schools can allocate using religious admissions criteria, in line with the cap that currently exists for free schools.

Lord Nash

The Government greatly values the contribution that existing church and faith schools play in our education system, including those of free schools, and we have no plans to change their admission arrangements since they are providing places for the communities they serve.

Not all faith schools choose to allocate places by faith. It is for the admission authority of the school to decide whether or not to include faith-based priorities within their oversubscription criteria.

When constructing faith-based oversubscription criteria, including deciding how membership or practice of the faith will be determined, admission authorities must have regard to the guidance of their relevant religious authority and their arrangements must comply with the statutory School Admissions Code.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-03-08.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they ensure that schools comply with their admission policies, and what action they take when a school is found to be admitting pupils in contravention of their admission policy.

Lord Nash

All state funded schools are required to comply with the statutory School Admissions Code when setting and applying their admission arrangements. Once admission arrangements have been determined, anyone who believes they are unfair or unlawful may make an objection to the Schools Adjudicator.

When allocating places, admission authorities must ensure they do so strictly in accordance with their published admissions criteria.

Any parent who is refused a place at a school for which they have applied has the right to appeal to an independent appeal panel. If the panel finds that the school’s admission arrangements were unlawful and had not been applied properly in the individual’s case, the appeal must be upheld and the admission authority must admit the child.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-03-08.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimates they have made of the likely benefits of providing the quadrivalent HPV vaccine to all adolescents in the UK on a gender-neutral basis.

Lord Prior of Brampton

In 2008 when forming its recommendation for vaccination against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) in the United Kingdom, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) did not recommend vaccination of boys because the evidence indicated vaccinating boys was unlikely to be cost-effective.

The JCVI keeps the eligibility criteria of all vaccination programmes under review. In October 2013 the JCVI recommended a HPV sub-committee be formed to consider a number of issues including the potential extension of the programme to include adolescent boys, because of new and emerging evidence on the association of HPV vaccine types with non-cervical cancers.

The JCVI subsequently requested that modelling be undertaken by Public Health England (PHE) to re-examine the impact and cost-effectiveness of extending the HPV vaccination programme to adolescent boys. It is anticipated that PHE will submit this work to the JCVI by early 2017 which will include an assessment of the likely benefits of providing the quadrivalent HPV vaccine to all adolescents.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-03-08.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whose responsibility it is to collect data on the number of home-educated pupils.

Lord Nash

Some local authorities maintain voluntary registers of children educated at home but as they have no statutory basis, they cannot be regarded as an authoritative source of data.