Secondary Education (Skelmersdale)

David Laws Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mrs Main. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) on securing this important debate.

I fully accept that the proposed closure of a school can cause great concern among the pupils who attend the school, their parents and the surrounding community, so I fully understand why the hon. Lady has raised this issue today. She set out her concerns extremely clearly. I will make some broad opening comments about the issues that she raised, then I will explain the process that we have to go through and the opportunities that there are to challenge the closure. I will finish by commenting on the situation at Glenburn and responding to some of the hon. Lady’s points.

Through statutory guidance and law, the Department has set out the long-established process that a local authority must follow when it proposes a school closure. That guidance and legislation clearly state that all decisions must be taken locally to allow those directly affected by the proposals to feed in their comments, and to ensure that they are properly considered during the decision-making process. The Government’s role is to agree and set national policy. We then allow local communities to decide how best to implement that policy. That approach allows local communities the freedom to develop the school system to best meet local needs. I can confirm that the Department for Education has so far received no representations from the local authority in Lancashire about this closure.

During this Parliament, we have invested more than £5 billion to help to create much-needed school places. As a result, last year there were more than 250,000 more places than there were at the 2010 general election. Ensuring that every child is able to attend a good or outstanding school in their local area is at the heart of the Government’s comprehensive programme of reform of the school system. In Lancashire, that has meant that the allocation for basic need funding, which was £23.4 million between 2007 and 2011, increased to £65.4 million in the current Parliament, and a further £17.4 million has been allocated for 2015 to 2017.

The School Organisation (Establishment and Discontinuance of Schools) (England) Regulations 2013 set out the process local authorities must follow when proposing to close a school. To be clear, the Department for Education has no direct role in the proposals to close a maintained school. It is a local process to allow local areas to make the right decisions in the light of all the relevant facts.

In January, the Department for Education published new guidance for maintained schools and academies that seek to make changes to their size and characteristics. Following national consultation, the Department set out in the guidance a new fast-track process for schools seeking to make certain changes—for example, expanding their premises or altering their age range by up to two years—without following the full statutory process. The one area that the revised guidance did not speed up was the proposed closure of a school. Ministers were clear that that is always such an important decision that no fast-track approach should be available. It is vitally important that all the elements of that type of proposal are carefully considered and analysed. Effective engagement with all the bodies that would be affected by the proposals should not be rushed through.

There are five stages to the statutory process for a proposed school closure, which I will set out so that the hon. Lady is clear about what the local authority will have to do. The first stage is consultation. The local authority or governing body must carry out preliminary, informal consultations with interested parties to consider a range of options, including closure.

The second stage is the publication of the statutory proposals. The school or local authority must publish the full copy of the proposal on its website, and a notification must be posted in a local newspaper and at all the entrances to the school. A statutory proposal must contain sufficient information for interested parties to make a decision on whether to support or challenge the closure—departmental guidance sets out the minimum that should be included. The proposal should be accessible to the whole community, so it should be set out in plain English.

The third stage is representation. Once the proposals have been published, a four-week statutory consultation or representation period follows, during which comments on the proposals can be made. Anyone can submit comments, which can be objections as well as expressions of support. The consultation period is a formal opportunity for individuals and organisations to express their views about the proposals and ensure that they will be taken into account by the decision makers. The consultation period must not be altered—for example, it cannot be shortened or extended to fit in with scheduled meetings, or to take school holidays into account. Every effort should be made during the consultation period to advise stakeholders of when the notice is likely to be published.

The fourth stage is the decision. All decisions relating to school closures are taken locally by the local authority or, in very limited circumstances, by the schools adjudicator, in order to allow those directly affected by the proposals to feed into the process at a local level. That way, decisions are taken by people who really understand the local area. If the local authority fails to decide proposals within two months of the end of the representation period, they must forward proposals to the schools adjudicator for decision. They must forward the proposals, including any received representations, within one week from the end of the two-month period. The Department does not prescribe the process by which a local authority carries out its decision-making function; however, decision makers must have regard to the statutory guidance when making a decision. All decisions must include reasons for the decision—irrespective of whether the proposals were rejected or approved—which should indicate the main factors and criteria for the decision.

The fifth and final stage is implementation. There is no maximum limit on the time between the publication of a proposal and its proposed date of implementation, but the circumstances may change significantly if too long a period elapses. In general, the implementation date for the proposals, which is stated in the statutory notice, should be within three years of their publication. Proposers may be expected to show good reason if they propose a longer time scale. I thought that the hon. Lady would find it useful for those regulations to be put clearly on the record. If she has any questions about the details, our officials would be happy to give her more guidance.

Let me turn to the particular case of Glenburn sports college. Lancashire county council launched a consultation on its proposed closure on 3 November, and that consultation is due to close on 14 December. Again, I stress that it is a live issue and that no final decision has been taken. The authority is under a duty to listen and respond to all the issues and concerns that are raised. It must ensure that any decision that it reaches addresses all the points that the consultation will inevitably raise, including some of the matters that the hon. Lady mentioned.

As I have already stated, once the stages of consultation, publication and representation have been completed, the local authority has a two-month window in which to make a final decision. Should the process take longer than that, the role of decision-maker will be passed to the schools adjudicator. I understand that Glenburn is a foundation school; as such, should the local authority decide to close it, the college’s governing body will have the right of appeal. Such an appeal would be heard by the independent schools adjudicator. It would be up to the adjudicator to review the statutory process that the authority had followed, as well as to examine the accuracy of the related information that the local authority had published in support of its case, including its impact on the final decision. While demonstrating transparency, the system underlines that the proposal, decision-making and appeals processes are all independent of the Department. It also demonstrates the levels of checks and balances that we have deliberately built into the system to allow schools and their communities to have their voices heard and to be an essential element of the final decision.

Local authorities are under a statutory duty to ensure that there are sufficient primary and secondary school places for all the children living in their area. In doing so, they should ensure that they achieve best value for money to guarantee the best use of resources. To enable them to achieve that, local authorities are not only under a duty to secure new school provision via the academy presumption when facing a shortage, but sometimes face the hard reality of a potential closure when a school may be surplus to requirements. That may be because of a lack of local demand for places, or because a school simply may not be delivering the required quality of education over a sustained period.

It is important that Lancashire county council diligently follows all the stages of the statutory process. It has sought to assure the Department that that is the case. As reflected by the hon. Lady’s comments, some of the difficulties experienced by Glenburn sports college over recent years are a matter of public record, including historical underperformance in GCSE attainment and a significant reduction in demand for school places from the local community, as well as being placed in special measures following an Ofsted inspection in March this year. Glenburn’s recent performance at GCSE is as follows: in 2010, 38% of young people achieved five A* to C GCSEs, including English and maths; in 2011, that figure fell to 29%; in 2012, it rose to 39%; and, in 2013, the figure was 41%. The data for 2014 will be released by the Department shortly, following appropriate checks. However, in spite of the hon. Lady’s comments about the proportion of disadvantaged pupils in the local community, which is a relevant consideration, I can say that, until now, the progress of disadvantaged pupils has been disappointing, which is no doubt why Ofsted has had concerns about the school.

Like other schools in the area, Glenburn has experienced a decline in pupil numbers between the 2005-06 and 2013-14 academic years. While some schools, such as Up Holland high school, have experienced a fall in pupil numbers of about 25%, Glenburn has experienced a particularly steep decline in pupil numbers, as the hon. Lady will know, of 54% over that time, which is no doubt one reason why the local authority is concerned. Nevertheless, none of those issues and factors, taken either individually or together, should mean that the school’s closure should be considered a foregone conclusion. Statutory guidance delivers a clear duty on local authorities to ensure that such proposals are carried out in a clear and transparent way. Local authorities must be measured in their conduct in order to ensure that all those affected are properly heard and able to voice their concerns.

I would urge all the students and families affected by the proposals to respond fully to the local authority’s consultation—as I mentioned earlier, there are still a number of days before it closes. It is only through engaging with that locally driven process that pupils, parents and the local community can ensure that their views are properly taken into consideration and have an effect on the decision-making process. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising her concerns about the proposed closure of the school and securing today’s debate on these important issues. I hope that I have explained to her the limits of what the Department can and cannot do, as well as the rules within which the local authority must operate. I am sure that her concerns have been heard by both her constituents and the local authority.