Clause 27
Education and Inspections Bill
2:00 pm
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
This clause is very welcome because it abolishes school organisation committees. Those committees were established by this Government in section 24 of their first education Act, the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, which stated:
“Each local education authority in England shall establish a school organisation committee for their area.”
The regulations that accompanied the section stated that those committees must consist of between one and seven members of the local education authority; between one and seven nominated by the diocesan board of education for the Church of England; between one and seven nominated by the local Roman Catholic Bishop; between one and seven appointed by the Learning and Skills Council; at least one member each of a governing body of a primary school, a secondary school, a special school, a middle school, a maintained nursery school and each category of school attended by at least 5 per cent. of the area’s pupils; and up to seven governors representing the interests of the community.
During the Committee stage of that Bill, Estelle Morris, as she was before she became Baroness Morris and a Labour rebel, in her capacity as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Employment, as the DFES was then called—[Interruption.] Indeed, much has changed in eight and a half years. She said:
“The Government's underlying philosophy is that one of the unacceptable aspects of the present system is that many decisions about local school plans closures, expansions and so on are taken centrally in Westminster by the Secretary of State. At present, about 300 proposals a year are determined centrally...Therefore, our underlying principle is that it is better if such decisions are taken at local level.”
She continued:
“When we move on from that starting point...we have the challenge of ensuring that all the bodies responsible for providing education locally feel that their interests are guarded by the new structure. That is why we are introducing a school organisation committee and an adjudicator.”
When probed by Opposition Members, she said:
“To some extent, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Members of the school organisation committee will have a vested interest in making the system work, as well as defending their own interest within the committee.”—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 10 February 1998; c. 367.]
If the proof of the pudding was to be in the eating, I guess that the clause reveals the Government’s judgment that it tasted rather bad.
The school organisation committees have been a serious impediment to reform in education, particularly important structural reform. In their important research paper for Policy Exchange, James O’Shaughnessy and Charlotte Leslie state on page 23:
“The SOC is made up of bodies that represent operators of schools within a given area. There is usually no representation on these bodies of parents groups, despite the exhortations of central government that their wishes are paramount. The threat to existing providers of new entrants into the system is clear—they might attract pupils away from their own schools, thereby representing a loss of income to those schools.”
There is within the SOC system an inherent contradiction and a built-in block against useful proposals and against anything, including school closures, that might alarm existing vested interests within a school area. The types of people who are appointed to the SOCs all seem to relate to the existing school provision within an area, so it is inevitable that they will want to maintain the status quo. This is therefore a very welcome clause. It confirms—I hate to say it—some of the concerns raised by my hon. Friend in 1998. Nevertheless, better that one sinner repenteth, so we will support the clause this afternoon.