Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister and the Bill team for the helpful discussions that one had towards the end of the vacation, as I suppose we could call it, and for their subsequent helpful correspondence. I also declare an interest as president of the National Governors’ Association. We have not heard a great deal so far on governors, but maybe they are about to come into their own. The background to all this goes back as far as February 2000. Following the death of Victoria Climbié and the subsequent report by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, the Government set out their intention to reform the provision of children’s services. At the time, the Children’s Minister, Margaret Hodge, said: ""We want to give parents and families greater support. Integrated teams of professionals working in and around children’s centres and schools will bring services more directly to families"." Children’s families were certainly a central part of the Government’s response and there has been much successful work—we have discussed some already this evening—in such centres. At the National Conference for Sure Start Children’s Centre Leaders in March 2008, Beverley Hughes, the Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families, said that, ""a Centre can build pride and confidence in a deprived neighbourhood, with potential to act as a base for all kinds of additional activities to benefit the whole community … links with local primaries are clearly particularly crucial; the stronger these are, the more likely it is that you will be able to help the children in your Centre to make a successful transition when it is time for them to start school"." That came up in the previous set of amendments, as your Lordships know. The Bill seeks to embed this success by placing such centres on a more secure footing. Indeed, the Government acknowledge that such centres might have local governance arrangements at some unspecified point in the future. I have to admit that that side of it continues to puzzle me: it would be much more sensible to set up the arrangements and bring them into force at an appropriate time—but at least to have them in the Bill. My amendment would make that aspiration a reality. It would remove the suggestion in the Bill that local authorities "may" create governing bodies for children’s centres and replace the option with a requirement. There are four points. Proposed new subsection (1) would make it a requirement for local authorities to create governing bodies to have responsibility for children’s centres. Proposed new subsection (2) would require those governing bodies to establish parents’ forums. Proposed new subsection (3) would allow governing bodies to be given additional powers and obligations via secondary legislation. Proposed new subsection (4) would allow arrangements for the staffing, organisation and operation of children's centres to be changed by secondary legislation. The rationale for all this is that many children’s centres are collocated on school sites, and the intention is that the majority of centres will be collocated as the programme is developed. Children’s centres have very close relationships with neighbouring schools. Currently, such centres are funded and co-ordinated via the local authority. The local children's trust has a co-ordinating role for the centres, with strategic priorities being set by the trust. The vast majority of school governors support this form of provision, but many are concerned about the poor governance of children’s centres and the loosely defined responsibilities and funding in place in many areas. The entire thrust of Every Child Matters policy has been, and is, that services should be delivered and co-ordinated as close to families as possible. The advisory model proposed in the Bill gives those local families no real power to tailor such services to local need. Local governance, following strategic priorities set by the local children’s trust, would give local people a real input into these services. There is an additional point: schools with specific funding routes and accountabilities are being asked to work with children’s centres and, in so doing, are taking on serious responsibilities. These schools and the governing bodies within them find themselves working with management arrangements and structures that are very different from those of the school. School governing bodies attempting to develop partnership working with children’s centres have been frustrated by the process. One governing body described running into "a wall of bureaucracy" when it attempted to work with a children’s centre. Another complained that decision-making was distant and remote, when the rationale for the programme stresses the importance of neighbourhood teams. One answer to a questionnaire on this issue sent by the NGA to governors illustrates the case. The question was what issues of concern governors felt had yet to be resolved. There came the answer: ""We feel we need clear terms of reference that set out what the local authority, the Partnership, the children’s centre advisory board (still to be set up)"—" incidentally, how many of them have been set up where there are children’s centres? That is one of the issues. Perhaps the Minister can give me answer— ""and the Management of the centre do, and are responsible for, in relation to children’s centres"." The second question was: ""Do we need a set of Standard Operating Procedures to cover site/pedagogical relationships between Children’s Centres & Schools?"." The answer was: ""We feel we do not need a set of SOPs, because we would then be interfering with the management of the centre and that would not be an advisory capacity. Any more direction would make us responsible without the authority for the finance"." The clear conclusion of most of the NGA responses to the questionnaire, when members were asked to comment, was that clear governance—possibly joint governance with the governing body of a partner school—would offer the best solution for children's centres. Any such governing body would need a mechanism to consult families, which is why the NGA supports the formation of parents’ forums for these centres. Local governing bodies for children’s centres would deal with these problems and be in line with the Government’s wish to focus children’s services at the neighbourhood level. Local governing bodies for children’s centres make even more sense when children’s centres and schools are collocated. Common governance arrangements would surely make strategic planning and local consultation simpler and more effective. There is no timescale for the amendments, as I said earlier, but once the legal requirement—the "must" rather than the "may"—is in place, it would be for the Government to consult on when such arrangements would come into focus. I hope that the Minister will be able to give rather more assurance to the NGA and those supporting this approach that the Government will take account of this. I beg to move.