Education and Inspections Bill

There are some good things in the Bill and it is a great improvement on the White Paper, but we would have had those aspects that are good anyway. I have to concentrate on what the Bill will do for Grimsby, and in my view the answer is very little. First, the gutless failure to abolish selective education in Lincolnshire means that every day more than 100 kids are transported from Grimsby by bus and Range Rover to selective schools. That represents a loss of ability and parent power to schools in Grimsby. With more choice, that number might increase. People in the villages on the border might be eligible for the six-mile free travel for poorer children to attend selective schools in Lincolnshire. Secondly, secondary education is improving fairly rapidly in Grimsby. We will probably have three academies, which means that there will be much more competition. How will schools improve their competitiveness and secure a higher place in the league tables? They will do so by attracting more kids of greater ability, and they can do that only by draining ability from the remaining schools in the area. Therefore, what measures will be put in place to help and sustain those schools suffering the drift away of able children to the better schools? How will those schools be protected, and how will they get the extra teachers, money and resources that they need to combat such competition? Thirdly, how will the schools commissioner ensure that we do not have what might be called post-code trust-school syndrome, by which I mean that trust schools will be in the better areas, and not the poor or deprived areas that really need them? Trust schools are a very good idea, as long as power in the school is proportionate to contribution. Governors will have to make a massive contribution to their schools: otherwise, there will be no point to the changes, and we will have what amounts to merely an academy-light system. Fourthly, governors will have too many duties. Their duties will be enormous, and will prove to be much too hard for ordinary working people and families, and especially single-parent families, to perform. They also need to be paid—not out of school funds, but by the local authority or the state—if they are too to do the job properly, and if working people are to be represented among their ranks. Finally, the power of local authorities needs to be strengthened, not reduced. Only they can ensure fair play for the whole area, with a fair distribution of SEN kids and other children with problems, and expulsions.