9:00 pm
Chris Keates: As you rightly observed, Nick, by referring only to the ASCL and the NUT, the NASUWT has not taken quite the same line: we are actually broadly supportive of the Bill’s aim, which is to bring coherence right across an important public service, acknowledging that schools alone cannot meet all the needs of children and young people and therefore have to be part of a much tighter community.
We are very supportive of regulating children’s trusts and many of the other regulatory functions in the Bill. We do not see it as imposing additional burdens on schools; most people would say that they are doing those things already—that they are co-operating. Our view is that if they are doing those things already, then the regulation is not going to place an additional burden. There is no reason why a regulatory provision, for example on children’s trusts, should be a burden on schools. It simply places a duty on them to co-operate, across the local authority, with the young person’s plan and surely that has to be right when you are trying to make a service more coherent. I cannot see huge bureaucracy coming from that, but clearly schools will have to play their part in that structure.