Education Bill

My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to make comments on the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. I declare an interest as the chair of the Children and Young People Board of the Local Government Association. The Local Government Group very much supports the Government’s attempts to reduce bureaucracy that schools face. Our report, Local Freedom or Central Control, was launched last year. For that report we commissioned research that showed that in the past 10 years more than 1,000 pieces of legislation have been passed affecting schools. That means that there is a new piece of primary or secondary legislation every school day over that period. However, we do not necessarily see as excessive the burden on schools of co-operating with the local authority through children’s trusts. We do not believe that you can necessarily legislate for good partnership working, but many councils have found that the requirement on schools to co-operate with the children’s trusts is a helpful way in which to encourage them to participate. In many cases, the removal of a statutory duty will not immediately lead schools to refuse to work in partnership with local councils. Good schools will want to continue with good partnerships with councils. However, we worry, when all the messages coming out of the department seem to encourage schools to become academies free from local authority control and become more autonomous, that the removal of this duty will provide the wrong signal about the importance of local partnership working to achieve the very best outcomes for local children, young people and their families. I believe that safeguarding is a particular issue here. We think it is important that schools should continue to be given a very strong message that they must co-operate in local safeguarding arrangements, including the local safeguarding children boards.