Education and Inspections Bill

moved Amendment No. 27: Page 3, line 22, leave out subsection (1) and insert- ““( ) A local education authority must, with a view to improving standards, appoint suitable persons (to be known as school improvement partners) to provide assistance and support to head teachers and senior management teams in maintained schools, academies and city technology colleges.”” The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 27 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 37, 38 and 40. We move on to Clause 5 which relates to school improvement partners. Just to remind the Committee, the Education Act 2005 introduced a new, lighter-touch school inspection arrangement and established school improvement partners following the publication of the Ofsted/DfES document, A New Relationship with Schools, in June 2004. The Government have described the school improvement partner as the ““professional critical friend”” which is to play a central role in improving a school. The partners will be accredited by the National College for School Leadership, and the White Paper published last autumn implied that all secondary schools should have a school improvement partner by this autumn and that primary schools should phase them in soon thereafter. The purpose of these amendments is to make clear that the responsibility for appointing and maintaining the role of school improvement partners lies with local education authorities. Amendment No. 27 would provide that school improvement partners will be appointed to maintained schools—community, foundation, voluntary-aided and voluntary-controlled schools—and to academies, city technology colleges and city colleges of the arts and technology which are at present excluded from their remit. We seek that because we feel strongly that in so far as a critical friend is a good idea for a school, it is also a good idea for academies, CTCs and city colleges of the arts and technology. We would like to see the role of school improvement partners extended to such schools. Amendments Nos. 37 and 38 provide that the appointment should be made by the local education authority, not by the Secretary of State. What schools need in their critical friend is someone who knows the local scene and understands the context in which the school operates. In effect, we see local education authorities using school improvement partners often as informal pairing arrangements, bringing the head teacher from a strong school into contact with perhaps a less strong school and being able to pass on best practice from one to another. I think that that is very much the role the Government themselves see in this. It is a relationship not only with the head teacher, but also with the senior management team. In that context, we feel it is extremely important that those who appoint are knowledgeable about local schools. This is why we again come back to looking to the local education authority to make the appointment rather than to the Secretary of State. We do not think that the Secretary of State can have the necessary local knowledge of the school to make the appointment. Thirdly, Amendment No. 40 is in line with the vision of formal and informal pairing between the school improvement partners. We put forward Amendment No. 40 to make it clear that where schools are working either formally or informally with each other under some sort of federation, this can be deemed to fulfil the function of the school improvement partner. In the other place, the Minister made it clear that the Government do not consider a federation to be a substitute for the critical friend in terms of the school improvement partner, yet they are very anxious to promote collaboration. Both the GTC and the Association of School and College Leaders—the old Secondary Heads Association—endorse very strongly this notion of collaboration. They ask in the general briefing they have given us that some sort of incentive towards collaboration should be written into the Bill. Insofar as this is concerned, Amendment No. 40 encourages collaboration in this way and we believe that it is a good way forward to promote the ideas of collaboration. As to the general issue of school improvement partners, I should like to put two questions to the Minister. First, who will they be? The document A New Relationship with Schools: Next Steps appears confident that they will probably be serving head teachers. The proposal for experienced, credible persons in the role of advising a school on its effectiveness and the ways in which it can improve is, in theory, welcome. In practice, however, there are serious concerns about the capacity within the system for this to occur. Given the current shortage of head teachers, is the department confident that there is the capacity within the system to provide this necessary extra role for head teachers and that they are able to perform it? Secondly, who will pay for them? If they are appointed by the LEA, will the LEA pay for the time of the school improvement partners? Or, given that schools will be controlling their own expenditures, are schools expected to pay from their own delegated budgets for the time given up by other head teachers to helping them? I beg to move.