Clause 11
Education and Inspections Bill
12:00 pm
Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)
The clause re-enacts the provisions of section 68 of the Education Act 2005 in respect of England. It provides for specific circumstances in which a new maintained school may be planned to be a member of a federation from the outset, and become one as soon as it opens. The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton is right in his assumption that that relates to what we tend to call a hard federation, as opposed to a softer or more informal one. He mentioned accountability. Even in a hard federation, schools retain their individual identities. They will publish separate results, although they may also decide to publish joint results as well. However, the accountability for results remains clear for each school, and there will be separate admissions processes for the individual schools, so the choice that the hon. Gentleman identified will remain with each school within the federation.
The vision that the hon. Gentleman outlined is apocalyptic, but I do not imagine it to be a serious concern. On the whole, the direction of travel in respect of collaboration and federation is beneficial for the development of standards and local collaboration. We will remove by regulation the current maximum of five for a federation of schools, but I do not foresee the development of unwieldy federations. One of the intentions behind the trust model is that it will provide us with a different way of developing collaboration and joint working between schools. However, to reassure the hon. Gentleman, I can tell him that accountability and admissions proposals in respect of federations remain as he asked me to assure him they would.