Clause
29Transitional
provisions Amendments
made: No. 104, in clause 29, page 20, line 34, leave out from
‘29' to ‘to' and
insert ‘31 and 35 of, and Schedules
6 and
8'. No.
105, in clause 29, page 20, line 35, leave out ‘or
discontinuance' and
insert ‘discontinuance or change of
category'.—[Jacqui
Smith.] Clause
29, as amended, ordered to stand part of the
Bill. Clause 30
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
31Requirements
as to
foundations
Mrs.
Dorries: I beg to move amendment No. 359, in clause 31,
page 21, line 41, leave out subsection (3) and
insert— ‘(3) Local
authorities or persons appointed by local authorities may not be
members of a foundation and may not be foundation
governors.'.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment No. 256, in clause 31, page 21, line 43, leave out
‘20' and insert
‘10'.
Mrs.
Dorries: The idea of foundation schools is to create
schools maintained by the state, but to exercise within that system the
freedom to manage and teach. Regrettably, the Secretary of State
sometimes falls
short of that objective in the Bill. She is still attempting to
micromanage all schools, even foundation
schools. Subsection
(3) permits local authorities, or persons appointed by them, to be part
of a foundation, even though subsection (2) says that the foundation
must be a body corporate and a charity. The amendment would delete
subsection (3) and replace it with the instruction that local
authorities cannot be on foundations for foundation schools. If they
were, it would make a nonsense of the
scheme. It is no
secret that I and, I suppose, my hon. Friend the Member for
Gainsborough, are outriders. We are opposed to all LEAs. The other day,
the Minister laughed at me when I cited the example of Essex LEA, but I
meant Essex. It does not matter to me what political colour a local
education authority is. I do not approve of local education authorities
being involved, especially as the essence of the Bill is the freedom of
new schools, be they trust schools, foundation schools,
grant-maintained schools or whatever one wishes to call them. LEAs
restrict freedom and good management, and we do not want them to have
any part in the running of a foundation, a trust or a grant-maintained
school.
Mr.
Hayes: Our amendment No. 256 suggests changing from 20 to
10 the percentage of voting rights on a foundation allowed to persons
appointed by local authorities. The reason is plain: for a local
authority to have 20 per cent. of the voting rights on a foundation is
likely to give it undue influence. It is a matter of judgment. Some
will argue that it is right and proper that the local authority should
have a powerful voice on the foundation, but I repeat that not all
local authorities will embrace the changes with the enthusiasm present
in the Committee. I therefore feel that we need to be cautious about
the structural role that we give local
authorities.
2.30
pm The Prime
Minister’s intention was to embrace the idea of genuinely
independent non-fee-paying state schools. It was not only the right
hon. Gentleman who embraced it; we embraced it too. He wanted his
party, the House and the whole country to embrace the idea. Why, then,
should 20 per cent. of the representatives be appointed by the local
authority? Why not a smaller number?
The amendment is essentially
probing, and designed to discover the Government’s thinking.
That is not to say, in my view and that of the shadow Schools Minister,
that people working for a local authority should not be able to become
members of a foundation. I make no bones about the fact that some in
the Committee will express other views, but I take the view that local
government is important and that those who work for it perform a great
public service.
I do not have a prejudiced view
about local government. I was a local councillor for many years and I
enjoyed that time. I hope that I made a useful contribution to the
locality that I represented. I got to know many councillors of all
political parties and persuasions, and many local government officers,
who greatly benefited the people whom they served. It would be quite
wrong to prohibit members of local
authorities from being part of the process. They should be able to
participate in the local community. Indeed, some may have educational
experience and an understanding that could be highly beneficial to a
foundation. Why would one want to prohibit their involvement and
possibly lose the opportunity of bringing that experience and knowledge
to bear? The
structural role of local authorities in the process is qualitatively
different from the involvement in foundations of those who happen to
work in a local authority. I urge the Committee to accept amendment No.
256. Ms
Angela C. Smith (Sheffield, Hillsborough) (Lab): I oppose
the amendment on the ground that many local authorities follow the
established principle of allowing 20 per cent. of places on charity
boards or trust boards that are partly funded by the public sector, or
whose purposes are funded by the public sector, to be taken by local
authority nominees. Sports trusts and the arts are two examples, and
housing increasingly involves arm’s-length management, which
requires 20 per cent. representation by local authority
nominees. If we
accept the amendment, we will set an unhelpful precedent that would
call into question arrangements for local authority representation on
charities and trusts that are already in place throughout the
country. Annette
Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): I concur with
the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith). Amendment No.
359 would take us back to grant-maintained schools. The schools in
question would become separate, and a collaborative model of education
would be almost impossible. That is why it is so important to have an
input by local authority governors.
I do not believe in the local
authority having a majority. That side of the argument seems far more
extreme than mine. I believe simply that the local authority must have
an input. My local authority moved on so much further when working with
our small number of secondary schools when grant-maintained status was
abolished. When foundation status came in, we had healthy links with,
not prescription from, the local authority. Every school buys into the
LEA governors training scheme, which advertises for governors. The
route by which the governors enter does not matter. It is a well
respected service. Surprisingly, lots of services provided by local
authorities are well respected and will be purchased at a reasonable
price. The training by a local authority governors scheme, when it is
good, is a great advantage. However, there is a bias in this matter,
because even those of us who support local authorities do not support a
majority of local authority
governors. Mr.
David Chaytor (Bury, North) (Lab): I endorse the remarks
of the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) and
my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough, because the
amendment takes us back not just to the time of grant-maintained
schools, but to the period before the Education Act 1870. It gives us
the clearest insight into what a large section of the Tory party would
want to do.
It is important that the
Committee puts down a strong marker against this irrational,
ill-informed prejudice against the functioning of local authorities.
Clause 31 suggests the possibility of having 20 per cent.
representation on a foundation, which is an extremely creative model
for how certain schools may operate in future; it adds to the diversity
of different models of governance. It is, therefore, strange that the
Conservatives have argued throughout the debate that they want to
extend diversity, but when we are given the opportunity, as we are
here, of increasing diversity by another form of governance, their
outriders oppose
it. The opposition to
this measure is in complete contradiction to the spirit of the
legislation following the “Every Child Matters” White
Paper, which focuses on the need to bring about greater integration
between education, health and social care. Therefore, if there is going
to be a serious attempt to remove such provision, those who are
promoting that attempt need also to make clear their view on the
Children Acts and the question of bringing about greater integration in
the delivery of childrens’
services. The
amendment is irrational; it is based not on any evidence, but on
archaic, atavistic prejudices deep in the bowels of the Tory party, and
I hope that the Committee rejects
it.
Jacqui
Smith: The amendments relate to the local authority
membership of trusts. Amendment No. 359 deals with the arrangements for
the appointment of governors to trust
schools. Amendment No.
359 would prevent local authorities and their nominees from being
members of trusts and prevent trusts from appointing local authorities
as foundation governors. It is not clear whether that is intended to
refer to elected members or officials. The hon. Member for
Mid-Bedfordshire did not make that clear when she moved the amendment.
I will address that matter in relation to the legal effect of the
amendment. Amendment
No. 256 would place excessive restrictions on the ability of local
authorities to be members of
trusts. The amendments
refer to clause 31, which makes various provisions covering
requirements relating to foundations and inserts two new sections into
the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, with respect to the
requirements relating to foundations. I do not want to rehearse in
detail the provisions of the clause, as they are not all relevant to
the amendment. However, in responding to the amendments, it is
worthwhile outlining again some of the overarching policy intentions on
trusts and their formation as they relate to the
clause. As we have
made clear, from the White Paper onwards, in this stage of reform the
aim underpinning our trust schools policy is to bring in the
experience, energy and expertise of new partners as a lever to raise
standards in schools and to improve the outcome for every child. We
want to strengthen the leadership and ethos of schools by enabling them
to form long-term, sustainable partnerships with charitable trusts
which will, where governing bodies so choose, be able to appoint a
majority of governing bodies. Those
partnerships might be entirely new or they might take existing
collaborations a step further. However, as we have argued
today and throughout the process, the policy is enabling, as is the
Bill. No school will be forced to acquire a trust. Indeed, it will be
for schools’ governing bodies to decide whether to acquire a
trust and how it should be composed. There is no single model for the
composition of a trust—it could encompass one partner or many.
Decisions about the relationship that a school has with a particular
trust should be taken locally, in accordance with its needs, and the
school should have maximum flexibility to decide what will best serve
the needs of its pupils.
Similarly, there are no set
criteria as to who should be involved in a particular trust. That is a
matter for the governing body and for local stakeholders to comment on
as part of the consultation on published proposals to acquire a trust.
There will, of course, be safeguards, as we have made clear not only in
the guidance on the process for the acquisition of trusts but also by
requiring trusts to have certain charitable objects and disqualifying
certain categories of individual from being trustees.
In addition, clause 31 contains
some requirements as to the composition of trusts. That is where
amendment No. 256 comes in. The clause allows local authorities to be
minority partners on trusts, with local authority trust members or
local authority-appointed trust members accounting for no more than 20
per cent. of the total voting rights of the trust. That provision is
included as part of the strategic shift in the role of local
authorities. Local authorities are already represented on the governing
bodies of all maintained schools, and they will continue to be
represented on the governing bodies of trust schools. Against that
background, we do not think that it would be appropriate for them to
have a dominant interest in trusts; indeed, nobody is arguing that they
should. However, local authorities may play a valuable role in
brokering relationships and supporting the formation of trusts. The
clause gives them the flexibility to do that.
Amendment No. 359 would remove
that flexibility, so we do not agree with its presumption; my hon.
Friends have been very clear about that. However, my hon. Friend the
Member for Bury, North was right in saying that it gives us an
opportunity to put down a marker to say that we do not agree that local
authorities can never make a useful contribution to a trust or to the
leadership and ethos that a trust can bring to a school. Given their
wider strategic role, there could be circumstances in which a school
would want local authority representatives to be part of its trust as
well as of its governing body.
My hon. Friend the Member for
Bury, North made an important link to the “Every Child
Matters” work that we are expecting local authorities to lead.
It is reasonable and easy to envisage circumstances in which a local
authority has a strategic role in a trust, supporting schools to manage
a collective responsibility for delivering the five outcomes of
“Every Child Matters” at a local level. For example, it
could work alongside the local authority children’s trust or
form a trust with other local partners and businesses to work with
schools across the local
community, perhaps as part of a regeneration scheme, linking
regeneration to improved opportunities for children in the area. We
should not shut off such possibilities. We must leave such important
opportunities as choices for each school, subject, as we have shown in
relation to the clause, to some limitations on the local
authority’s ability to be a member of a
trust. 2.45
pm Amendment No.
256 acknowledges that there can be a role for local authorities as
trust members, if that is what the school and the trust wish, but it
takes a more restrictive view of the role of local authorities than we
think is necessary. The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings
said that the amendment, which would reduce the maximum voting rights
of local authorities or their appointees to 10 per cent. from than 20
per cent. as we propose, is probing. In the spirit of his probing, so
to speak, and in strong agreement with the point made by my hon. Friend
the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough, let me say that the 20 per
cent. figure that we have chosen is wholly consistent with provisions
in local government legislation on other forms of local authority
involvement in companies and trusts. It therefore provides certainty
and consistency for local authorities, and it represents, as my hon.
Friend said, the same limit that relates to other trusts, such as
housing trusts or leisure trusts, in which councils may be involved.
The limit gives those trusts the maximum flexibility of operation,
while still allowing local authority involvement. It is appropriate to
take a similar approach to local authority representation on school
trusts. It would be perfectly possible, of course, for any school to
choose not to have local authority representation on its trust, but we
think that we have got the balance about right by creating the
opportunity for representation on school trusts at 20 per cent.,
consistent with other approaches to representation of local authorities
on trusts. The second
aspect of amendment No. 359 is the bar on local authorities from being
appointed as foundation governors, though it is unclear whether the
amendment refers to local authority members or officials. In my view,
the provisions proposed in the amendment are unnecessary and, quite
simply, wrong. The role of trusts is to appoint governors to the school
or schools for which they act as a foundation. We need to have
confidence that trusts will make the right decisions about who will
bring the necessary drive and expertise to the governing body. If,
having appointed a governor, the trust considers that they are not
fulfilling that requirement, the trust can remove and replace that
governor, but we should not and need not set excessive restrictions
that could be
unworkable. For
example, the trust will need to appoint a number of parents as
foundation governors. Is it the intention of the amendment that a
parent who happens to work for a local council, but who has a child at
the school, should be excluded from being a foundation governor? That
would be more restrictive than current requirements, because there are
no such restrictions to prevent existing foundation governors from
being local authority staff or members, and the governing bodies
of all existing schools are also required to have certain maximum and
minimum proportions of local authority
governors. We see no
need to change those arrangements, either for existing VA or VC
schools, or for new trust schools. We think that our policy of allowing
local authorities, or their appointees, to be members of trusts,
subject to the 20 per cent. limit, is a balanced, proportional and
workable one. It strikes a balance between allowing local authorities
to be involved in trusts in a strategic but not controlling capacity,
and that also gives greater flexibility to the school to decide on the
most appropriate level of local authority membership of the trust. The
choice will remain with the school as to whether to take up that
relationship. I hope
that the amendments will not be pressed.
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