Clause 3 - Duty to consider parental representations
Education and Inspections Bill
1:30 pm
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
I now realise that amendment No. 6 is a pale imitation of the one I should have tabled. It seeks to define the time within which the local authority has to respond to representations from parents. Some local authorities might simply sit on such representations for months on end and not bother to address parents’ concerns.
Clause 3 is excellent and in many ways ought not to be necessary. In theory, it should not be necessary to prescribe that an elected body has the duty to respond to representations, but the reality is that some local authorities have become divorced from society and the concerns of parents, and that they have become nothing more than state-run bureaucracies.
This clause is one of many in the Bill that one could describe as prescriptive and centralising. The hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) has said that the thrust of her party’s policies is against that, but the Bill is full of many similar clauses that do precisely that. This clause forces local authorities to respond within a reasonable time, and this amendment defines that reasonable time as two months.
However, having read the illustrative guidance the Minister sent to all Committee members, I have learned that I and my hon. Friends were wet when we proposed that period of two months. Paragraph 23 states:
“As a minimum we would expect local authorities to respond to any parental representations within four weeks”—
in other words, in half the time we propose in our amendment. I simply ask the Minister to agree to add to the clause a reference to that four-week period. If she were to do that, that would certainly receive our support on Report. Can she give a commitment now to introduce such an amendment? This shows how useful and valuable it is for the Government to issue such guidance alongside Bills.
There are other useful statements in that illustrative guidance, and some of them are so useful that it would be helpful if they were added to the Bill. For instance, there is the issue of what constitutes a parental representation. Is that a letter, or a generalised complaint, or does it have to be a formal representation in some specified form? The guidance points out:
“Research on parental preferences carried out in 2001 showed that almost 3 in 10 parents ... did not apply to their nearest state school.”
It also points out that
“the local authority should exercise its judgement in considering whether the approach is a representation from parents requiring a response under the new duty.”