Education and Inspections Bill

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The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairmen: Frank Cook, † Mr. Christopher Chope

† Blackman-Woods, Dr. Roberta (City of Durham) (Lab)

† Brooke, Annette (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD)

† Cawsey, Mr. Ian (Brigg and Goole) (Lab)

† Chaytor, Mr. David (Bury, North) (Lab)

Clappison, Mr. James (Hertsmere) (Con)

† Creagh, Mary (Wakefield) (Lab)

† Dorries, Mrs. Nadine (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con)

† Evennett, Mr. David (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)

† Gibb, Mr. Nick (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)

† Gwynne, Andrew (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)

† Hayes, Mr. John (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)

† Hillier, Meg (Hackney, South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)

† Hope, Phil (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills)

† Leigh, Mr. Edward (Gainsborough) (Con)

† Moffatt, Laura (Crawley) (Lab)

Morden, Jessica (Newport, East) (Lab)

† Mulholland, Greg (Leeds, North-West) (LD)

† Shaw, Jonathan (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)

† Smith, Ms Angela C. (Sheffield, Hillsborough) (Lab)

† Smith, Jacqui (Minister for Schools)

† Snelgrove, Anne (South Swindon) (Lab)

† Teather, Sarah (Brent, East) (LD)

† Wilson, Mr. Rob (Reading, East) (Con)

Alan Sandall, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

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Standing Committee E

Thursday 27 April 2006

(Morning)

[Mr. Christopher Chope in the Chair]

Education and Inspections Bill

Clause 18

Publication of proposals for alteration of school

9 am

Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): I beg to move amendment No. 340, in clause 18, page 13, line 2, leave out ‘maintained' and insert ‘community'.

The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 384, in clause 18, page 13, line 10, after ‘authority', insert

‘or it is a proposal that all the maintained schools administered by that local education authority should become foundation schools,'.

No. 341, in clause 18, page 13, line 11, leave out subsection (b).

Mr. Leigh: Good morning, Mr. Chope. I hope that you are rested after the exciting events of yesterday and that we can now get back to work on this important Bill.

The clause deals with the publication of proposals to make the alterations to schools provided for under clause 17, which we debated on Tuesday. Clause 18 requires a local education authority to publish its proposals in a prescribed manner, but permits it to do so for any maintained school. It allows the LEA to make alterations not only for community schools, which is fair enough—after all, community schools are run by LEAs—but for voluntary or foundation schools. With the amendment, I seek to find out what might happen.

I believe that a local education authority should be able to publish proposals only for community schools, and not for voluntary or foundation schools. I hope that the Minister will reassure me that she does not envisage LEAs muscling in to make alterations to voluntary or foundation schools. I cannot believe that that is her intention, but it would be useful to hear her views on the matter. For instance, if the governing body of a voluntary or foundation school requires or does not require the enlargement of its premises, or if the governing body wants to add 16 to 18-year-olds to the school’s admissions, or if the school already has a sixth form and does want to lose it, the decisions on all such changes and similarly vital matters should rest with the governing body of the school. Because an overwhelming proportion of schools—as much as63 per cent., as my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) has

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said—are community schools I see no merit in LEAs, which have quite enough work to do with their own schools, trying to make alterations to others.

The amendments would limit LEAs’ scope to order a change to community schools only. According to my reading of the clause—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—unless the amendments are accepted the LEA could cut off the sixth form of a voluntary school, order a voluntary school to stop providing for children with special needs, or order such a school to start making such provision. I cannot believe that that is the Minister’s intention. There is no point in voluntary or foundation schools having governing bodies if, in practice, such vital decisions are taken out of their hands.

I shall speak briefly to amendment No. 384, which deals with an important point. We support the concept of foundation schools: we hope they are successful and that we have more of them. I wish the Minister well in that endeavour. Unfortunately, the concept is nothing like the policy that the Prime Minister declared in the White Paper. His policy, which bears repetition because we share it, that all maintained schools should be “independent state schools”. That is my vision also. I believe that there are still far too many apron strings tying foundation schools to local authority diktats. Even more apron strings tie them to diktats from the Department for Education and Skills. None the less, foundation schools are a step in the right direction—one on which we can build when we take power.

It follows that if a local authority, perhaps a rather progressive one, can see the benefit to children’s education of having all the maintained schools in its area given the independence offered by foundation status, it should be free to make a proposal under clause 9 that all its schools should become foundation schools. I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), who reminded me that Kent, for example, ensured that all its schools were grant maintained—

Jonathan Shaw (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab): That is wrong.

Mr. Leigh: Well, if it is wrong, I bow to local knowledge, but certainly a very large number of schools in Kent were grant maintained.

Jonathan Shaw indicated dissent.

Mr. Leigh: The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. I can only repeat the information that was given to me only last night by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury. It is probably very likely that that authority had success in persuading schools to become grant maintained. What the hon. Gentleman says does not defeat the point that I was making. I was only trying to adduce an example to show that a local authority may well want all its schools to become foundation schools. The Bill should provide for that to happen, which is why I tabled amendment No. 384.

Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): My hon. Friend made very worthwhile points in moving his amendment—

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Jonathan Shaw: And a wrong one.

The Chairman: Order. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to take a speaking part, he must rise to his feet.

Mr. Gibb: Thank you, Mr. Chope. My hon. Friend’s amendments reflect the Government vision originally set out in the White Paper. Paragraph 2.5 of the White Paper states:

“We will encourage all primary and secondary schools to be self-governing and to acquire a Trust.”

The amendments therefore reflect the Government’s intention.

I shall talk about the clause more generally, if I may, and make a short stand part contribution to the debate. The document entitled “A Short Guide to the Education and Inspections Bill 2006” states on page 4:

“Local authorities will also have extended powers (under clause 18) to propose the enlargement of the premises, the addition or discontinuance of SEN provision or the addition of a sixth form to any foundation, foundation special or voluntary school.”

That is set out in clause 18(2)(b). It would be helpful if the Minister explained why she believes that it is necessary to give those extra powers to local authorities in relation to foundation schools and voluntary schools. The powers are benign, but apart from the power to propose discontinuing SEN provision—we dealt with that issue through an amendment to an earlier clause—the powers relate to expansion and creation. I note that there are no powers to force foundation or voluntary schools to take extra pupils, only powers to expand premises. However, it would be helpful to know why the Minister believes that the powers are needed.

Subsection (2) is about alterations to schools that local authorities can propose. As one would expect, they have more powers in relation to community schools than in relation to foundation schools. The details of the powers are set out in the draft regulations circulated by the Minister. Regulation 5(3) of the draft School Organisation (Prescribed Alterations to Maintained Schools) (England) Regulations 2006 states:

“In the case of voluntary, foundation or foundation special schools, a local education authority may only propose one or more of the alterations set out in section 18(2)(b)(i)-(iii).”

However, it then states in square brackets and in italics:

“We intend eventually to set those out in more detail in a new part of schedule 4”.

My concern is not that the regulations circulated for guidance purposes only are not complete. That is perfectly understandable. My concern is whether the Government intend to insert into schedule 4 to the regulations details that give local authorities more power—for example, to expand premises—than they have over community schools, which are already dealt with in part 1 of schedule 4. Can the Minister provide reassurance that there is no such intention?

While we are talking about the regulations relating to clause 18, will the Minister explain why the governing body of a foundation or community school or a community special school does not have the power to expand its premises under part 3 of schedule 2 tothe regulations? Similarly, under schedule 4, a local

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education authority appears not to be able to publish proposals to enlarge the premises of community special schools, although it can propose an expansion in the number of pupils at such schools. That seems to be rather an odd difference.

Finally, paragraph 11 of schedule 2 to the regulations lists a series of changes of category that a foundation or voluntary school can propose, including changing from a community school to a voluntary school. That does not make sense, because the provision does not relate to community schools; it relates to foundation schools. How can a foundation school move from being a community school to a voluntary school? Is that simply a drafting error or is it an issue on which we need to expand further?

Annette Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): I want to make a few brief comments. Not surprisingly, I do not agree with the general thrust of the amendments. We consider the local authority to be the body with the strategic view and, as such, it should be the one to publish proposals. We might not agree with those proposals, but if the Government’s vision is truly that the local education authority should have a strengthened commissioning role, it is essential that the publication of proposals be in the local authority’s hands.

On clause 18(4), and following logically from the arguments that we made on clause 17, we want the possibility of a return to community school status, as well.

Clause 18(2) merits discussion and explanation. I have difficulty with the idea that the local authority is always bad. It might not always be good, but it is not always bad. A really good local authority, in playing its strategic role, is there to help out even grant-maintained schools—as happened in my local area when things went pear-shaped—because it operates on behalf of the whole community. Problems occur in all types of school, and when the chips are down it is usually the local authority that has the expertise to help.

The Minister is aware that I have a tricky case in my constituency, in which replacement buildings have not been provided following a fire that happened more than six years ago. The school has now become a foundation school. Will she say whether there is or should be a process to deal with the rare circumstances of an out-and-out conflict between a school and a local authority? Unlike the Conservatives, I do not envisage such circumstances arising frequently, but I think that they can occur rarely. Perhaps we should tease out whether we need a regulation to cover exceptional circumstances.

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Prepared 28 April 2006