Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Geddes

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I rise to oppose the Motion that Clause 36 stand part of the Bill and to speak to the Motion on whether Schedule 11 should be agreed. These amendments go to the heart of the difficulties that we have with this Bill. In seeking to restructure education provision in this country, far from decentralising power to parents and local authorities, as we have just debated, the Secretary of State is taking decision-making away from them. Flexibility and parental choice are being restricted rather than embraced and welcomed.

Clause 36 and Schedule 11 illustrate this point perfectly. In future, there will be a presumption that any new school will be an academy. The power of local authorities to consult widely, to plan for a spread of school choices and to take account of parental demand is massively curtailed. Under this clause, when a new school is needed, local authorities will have a duty to seek proposals to set up an academy and identify a possible site. They must obtain the Secretary of State’s consent—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, with great respect to the noble Baroness, yet another Division has been called. If she could curtail her remarks, the Grand Committee will be adjourned until 12.56 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, it is now 12.57 pm. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was interrupted in full flow.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I could bore everyone by starting again, but I am not going to do that. I was talking about how under this legislation the power of local authorities to consult and to plan for a spread of school choices is massively curtailed.

Under this clause, when a new school is needed local authorities will have a duty to seek proposals to set up an academy and to identify a possible site. They must obtain the Secretary of State’s consent before publishing proposals for a competition to set up a new school, and the Secretary of State can intervene at any point to stop a competition early. Meanwhile, competitive academy proposals will no longer need to be submitted to local authorities for approval and can instead go directly to the Secretary of State. I do not think local authorities are left in any doubt about what will happen to their proposals if they put forward anything other than an academy to the Secretary of State. They might well wonder what happened to their strong strategic role supposedly defending the interests of parents and children, as envisaged in the schools White Paper.

I am intrigued to know how the Minister can explain how this central directive that new schools can be only one type squares with the concept of parental choice. Moreover, how would the Secretary of State know what represents the best type of school for a particular locality? If, as it appears, the Government think that academies are always the right solution, does that also mean that maintained schools, even the best performing ones, are in some sense second-class schools? It might be thought that as these provisions apply to new schools only, they will have relatively little impact on the overall architecture of school provision, but the proposals cannot be seen in isolation from other clauses in the Bill that allow the Secretary of State to close down schools more readily and to hasten the conversion of maintained schools into academies. From all these measures, it appears that the Government’s grand plan is that all schools should be academies. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that.

I am sure that the Minister will remind us at this point that the academies programme was brought in under the previous Government, and indeed it was, but it had a different purpose. Academies were seen as a way of targeting resources and focusing on struggling schools when other interventions had failed. As more and more schools convert to academies, they will lose the kudos, focus and additional resources that helped them succeed.