Education and Inspections Bill

Hon. Members are still trying to decide how to vote. How can anyone believe that the Government are serious about any real substance to this commissioning role when at the same time as they announced it, they also announced the first dedicated schools grants, which bypass local authorities and for the first time ever take education funding decisions out of their hands? Secondly, when local authorities commission other services they follow a standard model of good practice whereby they carry out a needs assessment, then commission services to meet those needs and hold service providers to account. The model in the Bill has been spun as little more than giving local authorities the power to book the newspaper space to advertise the competition. There is a key strategic role for local government here, which has not been adequately acknowledged. This Bill, like the Conservative legislation in the late 1980s, has been driven by 10 years of rising school rolls and increasing levels of distress and anxiety on the part of parents, particularly in the capital, who have found they cannot get their children into a school they that they are happy with. However, we are about to face 10 years of falling school rolls, and we will lose an estimated 500,000 teenagers from our schools in the next 10 years. Do the Government expect the market to manage school allocation and resources efficiently? What will happen when a school faces closure and opts out to become a trust school? Unless councils are given a more explicit role in managing resources, they will find that they have two conflicting duties: efficiency and good management of public finances, and providing choice in the system. The Government have simply not tackled that. The improved role of local authorities to step in when schools are coasting or failing academically is to be welcomed greatly. However, local authorities also have other duties, including fulfilling the requirements of ““Every Child Matters””. They have no powers to step in when trust schools fail to achieve those criteria. Indeed, the spin on the model is unlikely to encourage the cross-departmental approach to children and young people’s services that is required. We are therefore back where we started. Do we need a model for education that encourages competition and places choices in the hands of schools and their trustees, or do we want one that champions choice for pupils and parents, and promotes autonomy and collaboration? I know which model I believe will deliver for children, especially the most disadvantaged, who already miss out so much under the current system. The Bill fails to do that. The Government should go away and think again.