My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend Lady Thornton. I declare an interest: I am president of a co-op trust school, St Clere’s School, which is a cluster of schools. It has one secondary school, formerly known as St Clere’s, and two primary schools: one junior and one infants. The ethos of that school is very much community-based. It was set up to extend its facilities and to work with the local community to get the best support from the assets held by those schools. St Clere’s has also been successful at ensuring that those pupils who came from feeder schools and potential feeder schools would want to be part of the school and its success before they joined. As noble Lords will remember from their school days, having some contact with a secondary school before joining it can make it a less frightening experience. That seamless trust that co-op schools provide has been excellent.
What surprises me about the amendment is that my noble friend has had to table it. It seems to me quite logical common sense that, if a nursery wishes to be part of a co-op trust, it should be able to do so. It is a
matter of choice for the nursery. To deny it that opportunity is something that some parents may feel is rather unfair. I was really encouraged when the Department for Education, under the leadership of Michael Gove—I probably did not agree with very much when Michael Gove was Secretary of State for Education, but on this I did—seemed willing to open up discussions so that, if nurseries wanted to be part of a co-op cluster, they would have the choice to do so. It seems that that has been taken away and no progress has been made. For me, it is a simple matter of that ethos of the co-op: if parents of children in those nursery schools who then go on to primary and secondary schools in the same area wish for them to be part of that trust and choose to do so, they should be allowed that opportunity. It is hardly a radical or striking move, but it seems to be very much a common-sense one.