Education and Inspections Bill

I am glad to hear that the answer is no. I wish to elaborate on Amendment No. 68. The proposed new clause defines the grounds on which the Secretary of State can withhold consent to a proposal from a local education authority to establish a community school—it would replace Clause 8—namely, the Secretary of State has to believe that a community school would not improve the quality of education of pupils in the area. The White Paper had proposed that all new schools would in future be academies, foundation schools or trust schools, and that there would be no new community schools. As we know, this has proved to be highly controversial. The case for local authorities retaining their powers to propose new community schools was well made by the authors of the alternative White Paper, the Members of the Select Committee and many others. In response, the Government have accepted that there may be occasions where a community school may be the best option to meet local needs. Therefore, the Bill now proposes that local authorities will be able to propose a community school, provided that the Secretary of State gives consent. Proposals will be decided by the adjudicator, as the Minister made clear. In Committee in another place, the Minister said: "““The regulations will allow local authorities with an annual performance assessment of 4—the highest score—to enter a community school into a competition automatically, without the need for the Secretary of State’s consent. We should trust those high-performing local authorities to decide what type of school would best serve the needs of their communities. Currently, there are 11 local authorities with an APA of 4 … three groups of local authorities will not be permitted to propose a community school: local authorities with an APA of 1, which are those with the poorest performance in children’s services; local authorities with an APA of 2 and in which less than 15 per cent of schools are foundation or voluntary schools; and local authorities with an APA of 2 and more than 15 per cent of schools in Ofsted category 4—in other words, badly-performing authorities that either have a large proportion of schools that are failing or have low levels of diversity””.—[Official Report, Commons, Standing Committee E, 20/4/06; col. 317.]" ““Diversity”” here means 15 per cent of foundation and voluntary schools. The remaining 130 local authorities—there are 11 in category 4—will be able to enter the competition with the Secretary of State’s consent. That means that only 11 local authorities are currently able to enter a competition for community schools without the Secretary of State’s veto. This is demeaning, limiting and limited. The new clause that we are proposing provides that the Secretary of State should only withhold his consent to the publication of proposals if he is satisfied that the proposals would not lead to an improvement in the quality of education for the pupils concerned. It is for those reasons that we question whether Clause 8 should stand part, and we wish to substitute for it our Amendment No. 68. I beg to move.