My Lords, as we know, with this Bill we move from waste to education to farms to taxis and now to schools and nurseries. Amendment 20 would enable nursery schools to become full members of trusts and Amendment 21 would ensure that co-operative schools could establish an industrial provident society, should it be desirable, so bringing co-operative schools into line with other kinds of co-operative organisations.
By way of background, I should say that the first co-operative trust school was established just over five years ago. Few would have anticipated the extent of their growth: there are now around 700 co-operative trust schools and that figure is expected to rise to 1,000 by the end of 2015. In other words, more than 250,000 pupils in England now attend co-operative schools. The values of co-operative schools are drawn from the global statement on co-operative identity, which is recognised by the United Nations and forms the basis of co-operative law throughout the world. The co-operative values of self-help, self-responsibility, equality, equity and solidarity, together with the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others, have been seen by governing bodies to resonate powerfully with their schools.
Moving to a co-operative model provides a framework in which everybody with a stake in the school’s success—parents, teachers, support staff, local community organisations and pupils—have the opportunity to be involved in running it. There is a growing recognition that working co-operatively helps to avoid duplication and distraction, allows school leaders better to focus on the effective leadership of teaching and learning and raises standards. The value of this kind of collaboration and partnership working between schools was recently examined by the Education Select Committee, whose report highlighted the benefits that collaboration between schools brings, in particular where it is on the basis of mutual benefit.
Examples of these trusts can be seen in Cornwall, where over 100 schools have become co-operatives and are part of 13 trusts. Most of these are geographically based clusters, enabling small village primary schools to be part of a learning community with a secondary school that most of their young people will move to. In Leeds, a significant proportion of the city’s schools are already in co-operative trusts and others are in the consultation process.
The remarkable growth in co-operative schools has happened despite, not as a result of, current government policy. This demonstrates that the models developed under the pathfinder scheme programme following the 2006 Act under the last Labour Administration are enormously attractive to schools.
The reason why these amendments have been put down and I proposed them in Committee is that there is scope within the Bill’s intention—to,
“Make provision for the reduction of burdens resulting from legislation for businesses or other organisations or for individuals”—
to correct two specific burdens on the development of co-operative schools and co-operative school trusts. The first amendment concerns nursery schools. Many co-operative networks and co-operative trusts are based on strong geographically based clusters. They have an all-through vision of education, raising achievement by supporting young people throughout their journey through the education system. Yet the 2006 Act excludes nursery schools from becoming parts of trusts. The amendment would correct this and, in effect, amend the 2006 Act.
Nursery schools are in many ways the most co-operative part of the sector, in relation to both their engagement with parents and carers and their pedagogy, as is reflected in the early years foundation stage. Enabling nursery schools to become full members of trusts or, indeed, academies would provide a vehicle for that parental and family engagement in early years to enthuse the trust to further develop the all-through vision of education essential for sustainable changes in achievement.
The second amendment seeks to amend the School Organisation (Requirements as to Foundations) (England) Regulations 2007 to ensure that schools are able to establish themselves as an industrial provident society, should it be desirable. Despite an all-party commitment to co-operatives and mutuals in the public sector, co-operative schools have had to work around existing legislation, as no provision is made in the relevant education Acts for schools to be established formally as co-operative societies as defined in the 2014 consolidation Act. The new clause seeks to amend this, ensuring that any future legislation provides a level playing field and a more understandable legal framework for co-operative schools—in other words, using the co-operative legislation that exists.
There is a question of the Government’s commitment to co-operatives, mutuals and social enterprises in this area. In a real way, they are disadvantaged because they cannot use the legal form that exists for co-operatives. This issue was first raised in the Commons during the first part of the discussion about the Bill. The amendments were withdrawn then on the basis that there would be discussions with the Department for Education. While Michael Gove was the Secretary of State, he was personally supportive of the proposals but said that the department lacked the expertise and resources to adopt the changes. Since his departure, there has been what you might call a decided lack of enthusiasm about the issue in the department. We are told that the department would like to work with co-operative schools to help with these proposals, but that has yet to happen. I am not hopeful that the Government will accept the amendments now, but I would like to see some sign that progress can be made in this important matter. I beg to move.