Education and Inspections Bill
1:00 pm
David Chaytor (Bury North, Labour)
I shall speak to amendments Nos. 180 and 182. Amendment No. 182 would amend schedule 2, not clause 7, but that does not matter for now because its spirit is identical to that of amendment No. 180.
I have some sympathy with amendment No. 66, which is why I put my name to it. It is important in that it has enabled us to explore the arguments for and against the Secretary of State’s veto. I am far more concerned about arguing the case for amendment No. 180, which makes the point that if the Secretary of State is to be given the power to exercise a veto, there would be a contradiction with the spirit of the White Paper and the Bill—which give greater emphasis to the voice of parents—if that veto were exercised when a significant number of parents wished their children to attend a new community school. At the heart of this group of amendments, and the other two groups of amendments to the clause, is the precise relationship between the roles of parents, the local authority and central Government. It is misguided to characterise this as a debate between those who are utterly centralist and those who put the voice of parents at the forefront of every decision about the future of our schooling system. I do not see it that way. It is a question of striking the right balance between parents, the local authority and central Government.
Without revisiting the debate on the previous group of amendments, specifically amendment No. 179, my argument with the arbitrary selection of 50 parents as an automatic trigger for a new school is that it ignores certain practical realities. For example, if there were another group of 51 parents who campaigned vigorously against the opening of a new school, how could it be logical to allow the voice of the 50 to have priority? If those 50 parents happened to have children in year 11 and were unlikely to have any future interest in the school, how could it be logical to give them the key power to influence the building of a new school?
I said in our debate on the previous group of amendments that I was fearful that the Opposition might take on board some of my criticisms and thereby improve their amendments, but I am now relaxed because it is clear that they have not. If they wished to improve the amendment, it would surely make more sense to establish a percentage of the eligible body of parents as the threshold figure to trigger the request for a new school. Fifty parents in a rural area with a small school may be an overwhelming majority of eligible parents.