Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

In moving Amendment 91A I shall speak to the other amendments in the group. These amendments are intended to give us a chance to look at Clause 40 as a whole and to discuss how the relationship between a local education authority and the colleges now being brought back under its wing is to be conducted. The Government express the core of this in Clause 40(1) which states: ""A local education authority in England must secure that enough suitable education and training is provided to meet the reasonable needs of persons in their area"." I take that as pretty strong control and indeed that seems to be the way it is being interpreted by local education authorities, which even now are tramping around colleges saying, "We are not going to allow you to do that because we want you to do this", and generally putting a rather dirigiste interpretation on how the relationship will run. Indeed, that is the flavour I get from it as well. If a local education authority has a duty to secure that a particular kind of education is available, one that it decides on because it has to settle that the education is suitable, presumably it will use these powers over its colleges to make sure that they provide that education and do not provide other things. Amendment 91A substitutes for the word "secure" the words "satisfy themselves" to indicate a different kind of relationship where it is the responsibility of the local education authority to make sure that education of a suitable kind is in place, but makes it clear that the authority itself is not responsible for providing that education. An authority will not have to take steps to ensure that the education is provided because, after all, it does not provide the education but merely directs one of the bodies under its control to do so. That theme is pursued in most of the other amendments in the group, and certainly in Amendments 91B and 91C. Amendment 91D seeks to leave out lines 23 and 24. That is an amplification which really asks why a local education authority should be concerned about, ""the locations and times at which the location or training is provided"." Again, that moves into the timetables of the colleges subject to the local education authority’s edict. I do not see why those details should be of concern to the authority. Amendment 91E provides that if the authority is going to take on all this control, it ought to be subject to the opinions of the people on whose behalf it says it is acting. Local education authorities appear to be doing this out of their own invention and direction rather than paying any attention to the people they should regard as their customers and, indeed, their masters in this matter. Amendment 93A follows the general line I have laid out, while Amendments 100A to 100C underline what I said earlier in that they seek to change the relationship of the authority from one of master to provider. In other words, the relationship would change from one of controlling what colleges provide to looking at what the customers—the individuals who require the education or training—actually want. That is almost the end of the group. Amendment 102B looks at the duty of LEAs to co-operate with each other. It seeks to reinforce the duty requiring local authorities to co-operate, particularly when there are a lot of authorities involved. A large further education college may well be serving 20 or so local education authorities altogether—some of the very big ones rather more than that. I want to increase the duty on local authorities to co-operate and make it clear what sort of co-operation is expected by saying that they have to co-operate not only in the interests of persons resident in their area but in the interests of persons resident in other areas. Colleges that they are responsible for, although in their area, may well be offering education to a very large number of people from outside their area. The whole direction the college takes, and the management of that college, should be in the interests of all the people it serves and not just the people in whose area the college happens to be. It does not seem to me that the local education authority’s duty to those people outside its own area is clear enough. I beg to move.