Clause 7
Education and Inspections Bill
6:15 pm
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
Clause 7 is probably the key provision of the Bill; it is certainly the major factor in persuading the Opposition to support it. During his speech on 24 October last year—the day before the publication of the White Paper—the Prime Minister said:
“In our schools, as I shall go on to describe, the system will finally be opened up to real parent power. All schools will be able to have Academy style freedoms. All schools will be able to take on external partners. No one will be able to veto parents starting new schools or new providers coming in, simply on the basis that there are local surplus places. The role of the LEA will change fundamentally.”
In the White Paper itself, the Prime Minister stated:
“While parents can express a choice of school, there are not yet enough good schools in urban areas; such restrictions are greatest for poor and middle class families who cannot afford to opt for private education or to live next to a good school, if they are dissatisfied with what the state offers.”
Many parents are dissatisfied with what the state offers; the recent National Audit Office report into improving schools stated:
“As at July 2005, there were 1,557 poorly performing schools in England, which represented around 4 per cent of primary schools and 23 per cent of secondary schools...We estimate that these 1,557 schools educate around 980,000 pupils, or 13 per cent of the school population.”
The clause has been important in eliciting support from the Opposition, but it is also a major reasonfor Labour rebels’ opposition to the Bill. In their alternative White Paper, “Shaping the Education Bill: Reaching for Consensus”—I wonder how they got on trying to reach that consensus—they state:
“We propose that local authorities be empowered to assess and if necessary refuse or restrain the expansion of schools where this would not be in the overall interests of pupils in their area...Local authorities should retain the power to decide whether to function solely as commissioners, and not providers, of education...The Trust concept must be more fully developed and discussed before it could be enshrined in primary legislation.”
Before Easter, I was accused by the Minister of doing her job for her in citing the draft regulations in support of clause 3. In giving this explanation of the reasons for amendment No. 24, I may be in danger of being accused by the hon. Member for Bury, North—although he voted for the Bill—of doing his job for him. The amendment adds strength to the power of parents by triggering a competition for a new school and inviting proposals in circumstances in which 35 per cent. of school places are in schools that can be regarded as underperforming. I cited the concerns given in the alternative White Paper about what the provisions that became clause 7 do. Despite those concerns, the letter from the Secretary of State to the Chairman of the Education and Skills Committee still makes it clear:
“A key part of the vision set out in the White Paper is that the local authority increasingly acts as a commissioner, rather than a provider, of schools.”
Given the huge majority, as the Minister indicated, that the Bill received on Second Reading, I hope that that remains a key part of the vision. The amendment seeks to strengthen that vision by creating an automatic trigger for a notice to be issued under clause 7 inviting proposals for the establishment of a new school when 35 per cent. of school places are in schools that are underperforming. We defined underperforming schools in amendment No. 193 as those schools that appear in the bottom quartile of a value-added league table.