Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

Our amendments wish to address the concerns raised by the NUT, which believes that Clause 243 creates yet another bureaucratic burden on teachers and schools. There is already evidence that 98 per cent of maintained secondary schools enter into voluntary partnerships, therefore this duty seems unnecessary. To carry on with the theme of sledgehammers and nuts, I believe that this is a sledgehammer-to-crack-a-nut approach and that the Government would be well advised to rethink this. Surely it would be far more appropriate and responsive to put what is already happening voluntarily between schools and partners into guidance, rather than enact a blunt piece of legislation that has no sanctions for non-compliance. We on these Benches trust and support our head teachers and teachers. We feel that, under this Government, our schools have had to bear the addiction to bureaucracy, diktat and interference that has so obsessed the Government. Yet again, when schools are playing an active role in ensuring school behaviour partnerships, the Government do not need to interfere. Is the Minister able to give us details of the Government’s impact assessment of the time it would take schools to produce annual reports to children’s trusts and how much it would cost them? Is she able to say what that information will be used for? I look forward to her response.