Education and Inspections Bill

This group of amendments is about aspects of the appointment of school improvement partners. I shall speak first to Amendments Nos. 28, 29, 31, 34, 39 and 41. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked about Amendment No. 36. I understand that that was debated last week. Local authorities have responsibility for the standards and levels of attainment in the schools they maintain, and schools are accountable to their maintaining local authorities. We are introducing school improvement partners to support that accountability. It is therefore right that each school's SIP should work for the local authority under its direction and be contracted to that authority. We expect the local authority to pay attention to the preferences and needs of individual schools when deploying SIPs, which might well entail discussion with the governing bodies. Once appointed to work with a school, the SIP will need to be sensitive and responsive to the views of the governing body. But the role of the school improvement partner is to provide external challenge and support to the school. That challenge and support are more likely to be consistently effective if the SIP is appointed by, and accountable to, the maintaining authority rather than the governing body of the school, which is responsible for the school. Amendment No. 34, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, seeks to specify that the local education authority shall remunerate the school improvement partner appointed by the school governing body. We believe that the amendment is not necessary. Some local authorities are already employing or engaging school improvement partners, which is quite rightly part of their role. My department also provides funding to local authorities to help them run the SIP programme, and that funding includes an element for the remuneration of the SIP as appropriate. Amendment No. 42, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, concerns the time that each school improvement partner will spend with the school. The interaction of school improvement partners with schools will not be uniform. Our guidance is that each SIP will devote five days a year to the school, but that is an average for all schools. There is sufficient flexibility in the system which will allow for the days allocated to each school to reflect the needs and context of each school. It is quite right that this level of detail should not be dictated by the department. Local authorities will be able to appoint SIPs and allocate them to schools, reflecting local context and local priorities and tailored closely to the school's individual needs and circumstances. Amendments Nos. 30, 32 and 43, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, seek to relax the requirement to appoint a school improvement partner to each school. We are committed to the appointment of SIPs for all primary and secondary schools because all schools need to work systematically for improvement. Even in schools that perform well overall there may be underperformance by particular groups of pupils; for example, relatively low achievement by its most able pupils, low achievement by pupils entitled to free school meals, low achievement among members of one particular ethnic minority group—