Education and Inspections Bill

I agree that collaboration is important. In effect, I see adopting a trust as a way of forging deeper collaboration between schools within the local authority system. For example, if a group of schools decided that they wanted to introduce the 14 new specialised diplomas, mixing vocational and academic studies, they might want to establish a permanent relationship, share staff, set up new facilities and bring in outside experts to help. Our proposal is one way to achieve that. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) points to how we will have accountability measures that will affect the proposal. First, the Bill introduces a new duty to secure the educational potential not just of the average child, but of every child, taking a real step forward in making sure that all local authorities concentrate on the difficult to reach children and not the easy to reach children. Secondly, my hon. Friend is right about progression. That, too, is important and we are looking at whether we should introduce progression measures to see how children fare after they leave school, as well as when they are at school. These are all issues that complement the five GCSE external accountability measure that is so important for our young people.