I have just spent the last few hours trawling through the transcipt of the debates in the House of Lords last week on the Education and Inspections Bill and have been left thinking: what is the point? During 12 hours of debate over three separate sessions, only one amendment put forward by someone other than children's minister Lord Adonis was actually debated and agreed to. Four other amendments were lost at the vote after debate, and 12 others were withdrawn after debate - often reluctantly and more because time was running out than because their fears had been allayed.
The remaining amendments, with the exception of those laid by Adonis (a former No.10 adviser, we mustn't forget), were not even moved.
Maybe it's just because the bill is at the final stages of its journey through Parliament that few changes were made, but the whole process had the air of an elaborate rubber-stamping exercise. Carefully crafted amendments laid often on behalf of charities and pressure groups failed to even see the light of day.
The Lords will discuss the bill again tomorrow. Campaigners from across the children's sector are hoping that amendments challenging sections of the bill aimed at penalising parents who fail to supervise children excluded from school have more success than last week's amendments.
Failure to amend this part of the bill will mean that, in future, parents will be guilty of a criminal offence if their child is seen in a public place during school hours during the first five days of any exclusion.