My Lords, the amendment asks that the governing body informs the parents that the school has been notified that it is coasting. It is not asking for consultation, although, in effect, it probably presages or precedes a period when there will be consultation. That came out of our lengthy discussion on precisely what coasting means.
The Minister made it clear that there are different options when a school is told that it is under surveillance, in effect, as a possible coasting school. The regulations make it clear that there are various options at this point. One is that the school might be asked to academise, but it might also be asked to link up with a local school to get help from a successful head. The regional schools commissioner has a lot of discretion about what to do and he may send one of the platoon of head teachers on his advisory board to advise the school about what to do.
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I notice that on page 15 of the consultation document there is a box labelled “What can parents expect?”. The box is not very helpful. There is no advice about the involvement of parents in decisions about the school. Instead, the box repeats the mechanics of how a school is defined as coasting. It would be more sensible to have a proper note that tells parents what they can expect. There is a lack of consistency here. The Education Act 2005 requires parents to be given a copy of any Ofsted report following an inspection. Where there is a failing school, under Section 15(2)(b) local authorities are required to produce an action plan after,
“informing registered parents of the proposed action, ascertaining their views on the proposed action and taking account of those views”.
There is a real democratic deficit here. In their haste to create more academies—we shall come to this later in the Bill—the Government are riding roughshod over proper consultation processes. It is insensitive, to say the least, and unthinking, to say the most. Everybody knows that in good schools teachers and parents work together to reinforce the processes of learning and that children thrive in those circumstances. Where there are disadvantaged homes, it often takes a very long time to build up trust and carry parents with you. Sometimes the interests of the children and the school require a clean break and a new beginning, partly because that trust is not there, but that is by no means always the case. Where schools have many children from homes that are chaotic, difficult and so forth, it takes time to build up that trust. The problem is that if actions are taken without the parents knowing they are going to be taken and without consultation or information going to the parents, they break that trust, and if you break that trust, you go back to the beginning and have to try all over again. It is very dangerous for the Government to leave out the processes of consultation in this way.