Clause 1 - purpose and interpretation of chapter 1
Education Bill
10:45 am
Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West, Conservative)
I am delighted that the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough has tabled the amendments because they allow us to explore the Government's thinking on the role of the local education authority. It was slightly unfair of the hon. Gentleman to caricature the position of the Conservatives on education at the previous general election As all hon. Members of the Committee know, the free schools policy accepted that some residual roles would remain with local authorities, notably in special educational needs and school transport. It also set out an overarching requirement to provide an appropriate school place for every child.
It would be interesting and instructive to compare and contrast the Bill, particularly the clauses dealing with innovation and the suspension of education legislation as it applies to certain schools or groups of schools, with the vocal attacks that the Government made on the Conservatives' position on education at the time of the last election. Ministers can considerably circumscribe the powers of local education authorities and we should look at that.
If I had tabled the amendment, I would characterise it as a probing one. We must explore what the Government see as the appropriate role of the LEA. The document issued by the Department for Education and Skills, ''The role of the local education authority in school education'' states, at paragraph 11:
''good schools manage themselves; and that Authorities only intervene in schools' management in inverse proportion to those schools' success''
We have heard that before in regard to the Government's proposed interventions in schools. They have not lived up to it, but we have heard the phrase. It goes on:
''there are a number of essential functions which cannot and should not be discharged by individual schools. Examples of this are planning the supply of school places for a given area, taking account of population trends and transport patterns across Authority boundaries -often involving contentious decisions about school closures or mergers; making sure that every child has access to a suitable school place, or has suitable provision made for him or her outside mainstream school; intervening in failing schools which have shown themselves incapable of putting their own house in order; and taking decisions in consultation with schools, about the distribution of the schools budget to take account of schools' differing needs.''
The document was published in 2000 and is, as far as we can establish, a statement of the Government's current policy and thinking. I would be most interested to hear how the Minister reconciles the statement that those functions cannot and should not be discharged by individual schools with clauses 1 and 2, which make provision for schools to operate in precisely the way that Ministers say they cannot and should not. If the Minister says that the document remains an accurate statement of Ministers' views and that schools cannot and should not discharge those functions, I assume that that means that he will accept the amendment. However, if he refuses to place any restraint on Ministers' powers to allow schools to innovate and to operate without the framework of the local education authority and without the frameworks within which schools today operate, Members on both sides of the Committee will have serious questions about whether the Government really stand by the role of the local education authority, or whether they do so only sometimes.
Does the Minister stand by the phrase:
''there are a number of essential functions which cannot and should not be discharged by individual schools''?
If they cannot be carried out by individual schools, they cannot be carried out by any individual school. Does the Minister stand by that position, or does he believe that, in some cases where innovation may be restrained by a local education authority, those functions could and should be discharged by individual schools?