Clause 14
Education and Inspections Bill
12:15 pm
Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)
“Sparsity” is a technical term of art, but it is important to recognise the difficulties that it causes to local authorities such as Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire’s population is evenly distributed throughout the county, whereas counties such as Devon have some areas of high population concentration and others, such as Dartmoor, where there is virtually no one at all. They do not, therefore, suffer as much as Lincolnshire does from the sparsity problem. Because our population is so evenly distributed its transport costs can be very high. That is the point that my hon. Friend was making. All the paragraphs in subsection (4) are perfectly sensible, and I am delighted that the Minister seems to have understood the position. Presumably it is why the provision has been framed as it has.
The reason for my amendments is that, although I have no argument with the idea of considering the criteria in the clause in relation to rural schools, I wonder why the Minister does not consider that many of the factors listed in the relevant paragraphs apply to all primary schools, wherever they are—this may be where I attract the interest of Members representing urban and suburban seats. My amendments would merely ensure that the sensible factors in the provision, which should be considered, would be taken into account when any primary school was closed.
Why, for instance, should the closure of a school affect the local community only if it is in a rural area? I should have thought that if we were to close a school in the heart of an inner city, a suburb or anywhere else the community might well be affected; it might be a big issue. My amendment is intended to tease out from the Minister why she thinks that those factors apply only to rural schools.
Another instance that we might consider concerns
“the availability, and likely cost to the local education authority, of transport to other schools”.
I must now wear my green hat, because of course I am now totally committed to green politics. I have done the school run in London for many years, and it is not only in rural areas, as we know, that people take their kids to school in cars. I do not, therefore, know why the Government think that the likely effect of a closure on transport to other schools is relevant only to rural schools. One need only look around London to see large numbers of 4x4s transporting kids to school. What do the Government mean by that paragraph?
The same argument also applies to paragraph (c) and to considering
“any alternatives to the discontinuance of the school”.
Why does the Minister think local education authorities should not take into account those factors?
To add insult to injury there is subsection (7)(b). I would like to know what it means. It leaves it to the Secretary of State to define a rural school. That might, surely, be a quite arbitrary decision. The paragraph enables the Secretary of State to choose which primary schools are expendable and which are not. I am sure that that is not the intention, so my amendment would delete that paragraph. It is surely difficult for anyone, let alone the Secretary of State in London, to determine whether a school is rural.
I suppose that I represent four or five traditional market towns and more than 100 villages, but some of the villages are not really villages any more. They are huge suburban communities to the north of Lincoln, which could by no stretch of any definition be termed rural. Presumably there is no difficulty in determining that other villages, with tiny populations of perhaps a dozen or two dozen people, are rural. However, there are many villages in between. How can the Secretary of State choose which primary schools are rural and therefore entitled to the extra defence under subsection (4), by which the local authority must have regard to the various factors?
I am delighted that subsection (4) is in the Bill and that the Government are taking note of rural schools, because, contrary to what many educationists believe, small rural schools provide an excellent service. I want to find out from the Government, however, why they think that the effects on transport and on the community do not apply equally in urban and suburban areas.