Education and Inspections Bill

moved Amendment No. 185F: Page 43, line 8, after ““school”” insert ““or the employee of the authority itself”” The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 185F, I shall speak also to AmendmentNos. 185G, 187C, 188A and 188B. Amendments Nos. 185F and 185G both relate to Clause 56, which is about local authorities intervening to inject some life into coasting schools. The draft guidance that has been sent out to chief education officers or directors of children’s services said of the clause: "““In effect clause 50 [now clause 56] provides a spectrum of intervention within one power—so it could be used differentially by authorities, depending on the school’s specific needs, where the governing body of the school are resistant to outside support. For example, it may be particularly helpful for a ‘coasting’ school to receive mentoring or similar support from a quality-assured external consultant or consultant head, whereas federation options will be more appropriate for schools in special measures””." Clause 56 offers a range of different possibilities. Both Amendments Nos. 185F and 185G are probing amendments. Amendment No. 185F asks how far the old model of a local education authority adviser working with a school to help move it forward is still on the cards. Or is it now assumed that these services will be boughtin, often fairly expensively, from organisations such as W S Atkins or Vosper Thorneycroft, even though one might not think that those organisations gave education advice? However, they have both diversified into this area of service provision. The amendment refers to an employee of a local education authority. If a local head acts as an external adviser, that head is employed by the local education authority if he or she is head of a community school. But traditionally a group of people employed by local education authorities have helped schools in special measures. How far is that model to be moved on completely, or is there still some role here for local education authorities to retain within their ranks people who can be used as schools advisers? Amendment No. 185G suggests that where a local authority makes such proposals it should consult, in addition to those named in Clause 56(2), the head and staff of the school concerned and the head and the governing body of any school or college that it is pushing into a collaborative arrangement. It is probable that the Minister will tell me that this is envisaged, because it seems fairly obvious that if you are going to suggest, for example, that a school should collaborate with another school, you should have discussed it with the heads of both the schools involved before you announce the measures. They are not mentioned as people who should be consulted. Amendment No. 185G is really a probing amendment to see whether that is assumed. I confess that I had not looked at the detailed guidance, and it is possible that it is subsumed in the guidance. On Amendments Nos. 187C and 188A, we go forward to Clause 60, which concerns the Secretary of State intervening to make additional appointments to the board of governors. The effect of the amendments is to suggest that before doing so the Secretary of State should consult the local education authority and the governing board of the school as well as, in the case of Church or foundation schools, the diocesan board or the foundation governors. Again, if the Secretary of State makes such a move it would seem sensible and practical for him to consult these two sets of people. Amendment No. 188B seeks to deletesubsection (4). Subsection (4) enables the Secretary of State to pay anyone who he appointed as a governor when he intervened to place someone on the board of governors. The amendment is probing because traditionally governors are unpaid volunteers who give a great deal of time to a local school out of good will. Do we really want to start introducing payments for governors? Might that not create an unfortunate precedent? I beg to move.