Clause 66 - Proposals for new secondary schools in England
Education Bill [Lords]
3:45 pm
Mr John Pugh (Education Spokesperson, Education & Skills; Southport, Liberal Democrat)
The Minister must at least accept that school organisation committees throughout the land are still in a fairly rudimentary form. If we carried out an examination of who was serving on those committees, how long they had been there and what they understood their task to be, I think that we would be surprised at how unprepared they were for some of the quite onerous tasks ahead of them. That is clearly a matter of concern.
The Minister referred to the need for an independent decision maker if the local authority were in the frame, but that argument is slightly weakened by the fact that local authorities are among the major representatives on the school organisation committees. Even though his approach provides an advantage, that does not offset the disadvantages, because it would after all be the local authority that saw a need for a school in the first place.
If I may make one more point, because I do not want to make another speech out of this intervention—