Education and Inspections Bill

We have moved on a long way from the rhetoric of the White Paper six months ago. Some of the White Paper’s language could have been lifted directly from the speeches of Sir Keith Joseph in about 1981, shortly before he made his terrible speech in Preston and argued that all women in social classes D and E should be sterilised, as the solution to the problems of the welfare state. Nevertheless, we have moved on since that early rhetoric. I commend the Secretary of State and her ministerial team for the way that they have listened to the criticisms from a wide range of sources to try to convert the White Paper into a Bill that is practical and workable. Perhaps the key moment during the past six months, when we saw that we were moving in the right direction, was when the Secretary of State came to the Select Committee on Education and Skills and made the very simple and straightforward point that, regardless of the rhetoric about trust schools and the brave new world promised in the White Paper, in reality a trust school would be no different from the existing category of foundation schools that already have their own foundations. In fact, trust schools will be simply a subset of foundation schools. Given that we have recently legislated to allow schools to become foundation schools far more easily—a process that can be achieved in four weeks following the simple vote of the governing body—why on earth do we need a new Bill to launch trust schools? I shall support the Bill this evening. It has many merits, some of which were spelt out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher): the emphasis on curriculum reform, particularly at key stage 4, and on the personalisation of the curriculum and the measures on school discipline. However, there are controversial issues about the governance of schools, the role of local authorities and the admissions policies. Although we had genuine concerns about those issues six months ago, the Government have responded to them. Local authorities will be able to run new community schools, subject to the veto, and it is extremely important that the criteria by which that veto will be exercised are spelt out in the Bill. There are also concerns about the eligible bodies that could become involved in the new trust schools, and it is important that there are measures in the Bill to determine what external partners can become involved. The key criterion is that an external partner should be a charity or a corporate body that already has a good track record in delivering education, not someone who just happens to have a couple of million pounds to spend and wants to inflate his ego. As the corollary of the tightened admissions procedures already included, it is important that the code of practice appears in the Bill, albeit not necessarily in full. I am not convinced about whether such a long document could be included as a schedule to the Bill. Although it already has 18 schedules, I should have thought that a 19th schedule with the full text of the code of practice would not be unreasonable. The Bill should certainly state the key admissions criteria that are deemed acceptable and those that are not. Of course, the precedent has been established for inserting some criteria in the Bill, such as in the clauses that relate to banding and interviewing.