Clause 17
Education and Inspections Bill
12:00 pm
Jacqui Smith (Minister of State (Schools and 14-19 Learners), Department for Education and Skills; Redditch, Labour)
I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith). She has injected precisely what we need in this Committee, which is a bit of inspiration, creativity and excitement about what the proposals in the Bill and the next stage of reform could mean. I thank her for that.
The combined effect of amendments Nos. 353 and 354 and new clause 6 would be to provide that the governing body of an existing foundation or foundation special school could publish or implement proposals to acquire a trust only if it met certain conditions on involving other schools in the trust. Specifically, all proposals by an existing foundation or foundation school to acquire a trust under the Bill would have to contain either at least two secondary schools within six miles of each other or two primary schools within six miles of each other.
New clause 6 would allow other organisations to be partners in a trust. Although I recognise that the list in the new clause is not exhaustive or prescriptive, there are nevertheless a number of obvious omissions, such as parent and community groups, businesses and the interesting examples that my hon. Friend identified as potential partners. The hon. Member for Brent, East has made it clear that her intention with amendments Nos. 353 and 354 and new clause 6 is to probe—I hope that it is only to probe—the extent to which trusts would support collaborations. My criticism is of the narrow view and the constraining effect on the ability of trusts to contribute to schools and standards in the way that we would want them to.
The proposals relating to collaboration are unnecessary. A wide range of collaborations between different types of schools are already flourishing, as many hon. Members have mentioned. Schools are already collaborating effectively to deliver a broad 14-to-19 curriculum. We have promoted collaboration through, among other things, the excellence in cities programme. Soft federations are developing in local areas. As the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) rightly said, there are some very effective head teachers working with other schools to drive up standards—not just in his constituency, but throughout the country, and quite often supported through some of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust’s projects—and, of course, academies and trusts will be encouraged to collaborate, and support and challenge each other, in the same way as are schools.
I do not think that any Member has argued against the potential benefits that a wide range of collaboration can bring. The amendments, and the approach behind them, are fundamentally wrong. It is not undesirable for a number of schools, primary or secondary, to work together in a trust. Far from it; that could be an excellent model. We have suggested previously, as an example of good practice, that a charitable incorporated trust could provide the necessary long-term relationship and framework to allow a network of schools to collaborate in order to help to raise standards and share best practice.
In case the hon. Member for Brent, East comes back at me and says, “Well, you have just identified a whole range of ways in which schools are already working collaboratively,” the problem with trusts is that too often those collaborations are based on ad hoc arrangements. Sometimes heroic individuals have helped to form that collaboration, and when they move on they take with them that expertise. One of the big contributions that the trust model could make would be to enable a more permanent route through.
On Second Reading, the Secretary of State referred to, and I think that I did too in an earlier part of the Committee stage, a presentation in Downing street from a group of headteachers who are working already in successful schools, but helping also to drive up standards in schools performing less well. They suggested that that is why federation could be an important way of raising standards for children, and an example of how trusts might be of great benefit.