Mr.
Gibb: Amendment No. 224, to which the hon. Member for
Bury, North spoke in the briefest contribution that I have heard him
make to this Committee, would change the role of the parent council
from one of giving advice to one of assisting. Depending on how those
words are interpreted, that would either make it a non-voting group on
a school’s board of governors or it would do nothing. I hate to
sound like the Minister, but I believe the amendment to be unnecessary.
Regulation 6 of the draft School Governance (Parent Council) (England)
Regulations 2006, which the Minister kindly circulated on 19 April,
states: “The
governing body shall consult the parent council on such matters and in
such manner as they consider appropriate in relation to the governing
body’s conduct of the school, and...the governing body
shall have regard to any advice given or views expressed to them by the
parent council”. That is
the correct role, and it is important. There are already positions
available to parents as parent governors. To go further by
incorporating the parent council in the governing board of a school
would make the board unwieldy, large and unworkable. It may be that the
Government have got the balance right in the
Bill. 3.45
pm Amendment No.
225 would ensure that regulations include provision for secretarial
support for parent councils. The hon. Gentleman’s wish has come
true, because regulation 7(2)
states: “The
governing body shall provide the parent council with such support and
assistance as they may reasonably
require.” Paragraph 7.22
of the regulatory impact assessment, on page 97, states that that will
mean two hours of the school secretary’s time to organise
meetings, at a cost of £20; and the use of facilities, including
heating,
lighting, caretaking and opportunity costs for the room, calculated at
approximately
£80. The
regulatory impact assessment goes still further, saying that the
sanction for non-compliance will be a direction from the Secretary of
State, to be enforced by court order if necessary. Ofsted will
inspect “how schools take
into account the views of parents and other
stakeholders.” Incidentally,
it is interesting to see the extent to which this guidance is to be
enforced by provisions and guidance to Ofsted, whereas the homework
guidance has no related enforcement procedures. Sometimes the
prescription that the Government inflict on the education world is
focused on minor issues, and no attention other than the publication of
guidance is paid to the big issues such as how much homework children
are set. The hon.
Gentleman has got what he is asking for, and it will be interesting to
hear the Minister’s
response.
Sarah
Teather: The hon. Member for Bury, North seeks to
strengthen the role of parent councils. It would not matter if parent
councils were merely an advisory body, had not parents’ voice on
governing bodies been diminished by earlier clauses of the Bill. I have
placed on record my desire not to see a reduction in the number of
elected parents on governing bodies. I sympathise greatly with the hon.
Gentleman’s desire to strengthen the role of parent councils,
given the reduction in the number of parent governors, but avoiding the
latter would have been more
desirable.
Jacqui
Smith: The effect of the amendments would be to place
additional requirements on governing bodies of trust schools which have
a majority of trust-appointed governors, and on parents who are members
of statutory parent councils. I understand the intention of my hon.
Friend the Member for Bury, North, which is to probe the relationship
between the parent council and the governing body. He wishes to
establish how the parent council fits into our other provisions
intended to ensure the delivery of our objective: that is, parents not
only engaged meaningfully in their child’s education but able to
influence what happens in their child’s
school. Amendment No.
224 would place an enormous burden on the governing body of a trust
school. I recognise that that was not necessarily the intention behind
my hon. Friend’s amendment. Parent councils can potentially make
a very important contribution in all kinds of schools, and the clause
makes it clear that where a trust appoints the majority of governors,
the school should be required to have a parent council. I can see that
the parent council might be able to make a broader contribution, but a
governing body, the strategic leader of a school, is rightly
responsible and accountable in law for its school’s conduct.
With the head teacher and the leadership team, it is responsible for
taking all major decisions about the school and its future. Nothing in
the Bill—neither the establishment of parent councils nor the
relationship with a trust—will change that fundamental role.
Governing bodies will continue to be made up of representatives of the
various stakeholders with an interest in the school, including
parents.
The hon. Member for Brent, East
corrected herself, but she made the mistake of saying what I have heard
plenty of others say: that the parent voice will be diminished by the
new governance arrangements for trust schools. That is not the case. As
with other categories of school, there will still be a requirement for
a third of the governing body to be parents. I accept that the hon.
Lady corrected herself regarding how parents would be elected, or not,
to the governing body, but the fact remains that parents will have a
strong voice as a third of the governing body, and will rightly take
their role as a key stakeholder.
As an elected representative, I
believe in the power of democracy, but I do not think that being
elected is the be-all and end-all of one’s ability to represent
a particular viewpoint on a governing body, for
example.
Sarah
Teather: My concern is that although a majority of the
governing body are appointed by the trust, the parents also appointed
by the trust will not be in the same way directly accountable to other
parents at the school.
Jacqui
Smith: There are two contentious elements to that. Of
course, in the strictest sense, elected parent governors are
accountable to the extent that they have been elected by parents. Many
of them do a good job in feeding back to those parents, but that does
not always happen when parents are elected.
Secondly, the important element
is that they are parents. If the hon. Lady suggests—I am not
sure that she went that far—that a parent might put the
interests of the trust before the interests of the school that their
children attend, I must say that I have yet to meet a parent who would
do that.
Jacqui
Smith: The important element here is that the voice of
parents is protected not only on the governing body but in a range of
other ways that I will go on to develop once I have let the hon. Lady
have another
say.
Sarah
Teather: I thank the Minister for giving way. Of course,
that is not what I am suggesting. She said that people do not always
feed back when they are elected. That is often the case for
councillors, and even MPs, but they tend to get voted out when they do
not perform those duties adequately. That is my point about
democracy.
Jacqui
Smith: I do not disagree, but I was simply emphasising
that the hon. Lady was wrong to say that the parent voice on the
governing body is being diminished. It is
not. Meg
Hillier (Hackney, South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op): Has
my right hon. Friend or her team at the Department given any thought to
the development of mutual schools—co-operative
set-ups—that would give parents a share and a voice in the
running of those schools?
Jacqui
Smith: My hon. Friend raised this issue the other day. It
is an extremely interesting idea. I know that my colleague the
Under-Secretary has a strong interest in such things, being a Labour
and Co-operative MP, and that the Co-operative group in Parliament has
considered the opportunities that the Bill and the trust model in
particular might provide for that sort of co-operative approach. I am
extremely willing to consider such ideas. There are good opportunities
within the legislation for that to happen, and I am keen to consider
how we might give more support to such ideas. That might be a good way
in which parents can be represented and properly
involved.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Phil
Hope): As the Labour and Co-operative MP for Corby in east
Northamptonshire, I am one of 30 Labour and Co-operative Members of
this House who work together co-operatively to promote the interests of
co-operation across the board. Those values can be well applied in the
education arena to raise standards and promote those values to our
young
people.
Jacqui
Smith: It is hard to imagine a finer group of men and
women than the Co-operative group of Labour MPs. I have every
confidence that with their vision and effort we will be able to make
the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and
Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) a reality.
Of course, we agree that it is
vital that the governing body listens to the views of
parents.
Annette
Brooke: I want to put a particular scenario to the
Minister, just for consideration. It concerns a governing body that
decided, with no consultation with parents, to impose a certain school
uniform. There was absolute uproar, but the point was that elected
parent-governors would be responsible for that. If a parent-governor
who was appointed by the trust agreed with that implementation of the
uniform—in other words, that was the minority view of
parents—that person would not have the same accountability to
the parent body. There are other matters, aside from the school
standards to which the right hon. Lady referred, that can be
contentious.
Jacqui
Smith: I was not referring only to school standards. I
agree with the hon. Lady that issues such as school uniform,
discipline, school food and the way in which the school is organised
are not only important for parents, but can be contentious. My argument
is that we need a broad range of ways in which we can engage parents in
discussing those issues.
We will, I hope, impose a
requirement under the Bill to have regard to the views of parents. I do
not know the details of the scenario that the hon. Lady was outlining,
but a governing body when making that sort of decision would be
required to have regard to parents’ views. It could not simply
ignore them. That new duty is part of our strategy to involve parents
more actively in the running of schools. All schools currently have to
demonstrate to Ofsted that they listen to and take on board the views
of parents as part of school inspection.
My hon. Friend the Member for
Bury, North made a point about the annual general meeting. However and
whenever it was introduced, many of us who have had experience of AGMs
as governors or as parents would accept that whatever their good
intentions, they did not fulfil those intentions in respect of parental
engagement. We have removed the requirement foran AGM. As I
have outlined, we are making new requirements for parental involvement
under the Bill and have already begun work to ensure that schools
produce a school’s profile for parents. The profile will be an
easily digestible set of information about the school’s
priorities, what it has been up to and how successful it has been. I
suspect that that will be more successful than the AGM at both
communicating information and enabling parents to think how they can be
involved. Parent
councils are designed to ensure that parents are represented and to
provide a forum for them to be heard. Our aim is to make sure that
parents of children attending a trust school where there is a majority
of governors from the trust and thus the number of elected parents is
reduced, will have the opportunity to be involved and to influence the
running of the schools.
The regulations that we have
made available tothe Committee place light-touch requirements
on governing bodies of trust schools in relation to parent councils. It
is right that they should do so. Engaging with parents is not a new
requirement on schools and it will be for the governing body and the
parent council to determine how they will work together most
effectively. It would not be right to impose particular arrangements on
governing bodies and parent councils. We want to allow maximum
flexibility so that parents and governing bodies can establish
arrangements that are right for their
school. I hope that my
hon. Friend will withdraw the amendment, not least because, as the hon.
Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said, he will be reassured by
the illustrative regulations that we have issued. I am referring to
regulation 6, in particular, which makes clear how we envisage that
relationship between the parent council and the governing
body. 4
pm Amendment No.
225 would enable the regulations to be made under subsection (4) of
proposed new section 23A to the Education Act 2002 to make provision as
to the administrative, secretarial and related services to be provided
to the parent council. The power in subsection (5) to confer functions
on the governing body in relation to the parent council already allows
regulations to make such provision.
The hon. Member for Bognor
Regis and Littlehampton stole all my best lines, pointing out that
regulation 7 of the illustrative parent council regulations makes clear
the requirement for support and assistance to the governing body to be
made available. He went even further and quoted the regulatory impact
assessment, giving an example of how we might expect to see that
delivered. We believe
that parent councils can make an important contribution. They can
provide a forum to allow parents to make a real contribution to their
children’s education, which will help improve the school system.
They will provide a more accessible way of involving parents in
decisions about the school. Because they are more informal, and because
they are less of a commitment than being an elected parent governor,
they can involve more parents than the governing body. In addition, it
is likely that serving on a parent council will give parents the sort
of training that will enable them to be more effective and confident
parent governors. We
will issue guidance and good practice examples to assist parents in
setting up and running their council. It will refer to what already
works well in schools and, more important, it will include arrangements
to make it easier for disadvantaged parents and those who have English
as a additional language to become involved.
Parent councils have the
potential to make an important contribution. The regulations and
guidance allow the right balance between the roles of the parent
council and the governing body, and they ensure the support that is
necessary for them to function effectively. I hope that my hon. Friend
is reassured.
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