Clause 40
10:30 am
Jim Knight (Minister of State (Schools and Learners), Department for Children, Schools and Families; South Dorset, Labour)
It is a delight to welcome you back to the Chair after your week’s sojourn, Mr. Chope. Clause 40 sets out the new central duty being placed on local authorities, as announced in last year’s White Paper, “Raising Expectations: enabling the system to deliver”. The clause inserts section 15ZA into the Education Act 1996 and requires local authorities to secure enough suitable education and training to meet the reasonable—a crucial word in this debate—needs of people in their area who are aged 16 or over but under 19, and those who are aged 19 or over but under 25 and are subject to a learning difficulty assessment.
The duty has been carefully crafted to reflect the new duty on young people to participate, for which we legislated last year. All young people will be required to participate in some form of education and training up to age 17 by 2013 and to age 18 by 2015. The Bill places local authorities in the lead for the outcomes of all young people aged 0 to 19 and those more vulnerable adults up to the age of 25. With those responsibilities, local authorities will, for the first time, be able to take a multi-agency and integrated approach to providing targeted support for the educational and wider needs of those for whom they are responsible.
At first glance, amendment 250 seems to be not much more than a stylistic change to include a reference to facilities. As the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole has explained, the amendment uses the language used to express the core duties, as set out in legislation in 2000, of the Learning and Skills Council. I understand the concerns that lie behind the amendment, namely that the clause somehow imposes a lesser duty upon local authorities than that currently imposed upon the LSC, but I emphatically reassure the Committee that that is not the case. The new duty will be every bit as tough as the duty on the LSC; it is juts a different expression of that duty and one that is better focused on the needs of learners. The new duty also has the advantage of fitting better with other local authority duties under the 1996 Act into which section 15ZA has been inserted.
Local authorities will have a duty to secure enough suitable education—as opposed to facilities—and the clause applies a series of tests to ensure that that provision is of the right quality and meets the aptitudes and abilities of young people in their area. Provision of facilities implies that they would meet all learner demands locally, rather than securing provision for learners, wherever it is appropriate, which is, in effect, the core difference. The Learning and Skills Act 2000 refers to a national organisation and its requirement to secure facilities nationally for all learners; the provisions under discussion apply to the need for local authorities to secure the needs of learners, rather than securing facilities in their local area. I hope that that clarifies the issue.
We have already heard that amendments 251 to 253 would make the duty in section 15ZA an absolute duty requiring local authorities to meet the individual needs, whatever they might be, of every learner within their authority area when securing learning opportunities. I accept that these are probing amendments, and are therefore not an attempt—not at this stage, anyway—to amend the legislation so that, for example, if a learner in Northumberland wants to study a course in Cornish literature, or another in Derby wants to pursue a course in maritime engineering, a local authority would have to provide for them in its local area. I am sure that the Committee agrees that that is not a reasonable request, but an equivalent request for either course in Cornwall, where there may be greater demand and a greater chance that at least one institution could provide such courses, would be more reasonable. Amendments 251 to 253, however, would remove any flexibility for local authorities to make a judgement as to what is reasonable.
Clause 40 contains a reasonable—I should probably use the word genuine instead—attempt to offer some guidance on how subsection (1) should be interpreted. Subsection (3) notes:
“In deciding for the purposes of subsection (1) whether education or training is suitable to meet persons’ reasonable needs, a local education authority must (in particular) have regard to”
four things. Subsection (4) then states:
“In performing the duty imposed by subsection (1) a local education authority must”
comply with five further things, such as acting in accordance with diversity, which effectively offer the legislation’s definition of reasonableness. As we have heard from the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, reasonableness is a familiar concept to us in legislation and as a term that is ultimately interpreted in court.
On the fundamental question that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole raised about whether reasonableness applies to the individual or the collective, there is a duty to look at the needs of all young people in the area. The needs of every individual in the area need to be addressed by the local authority. That is fundamental to making a success of raising the participation age, which we legislated on in the 2008 Act.