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Education and Inspections Bill

In the case of school closure, it is entirely reasonable that a ballot should be part of the overall decision-making process. We are not talking about school closures at the moment, but, yes, I agree. Denying parents a vote on an issue of central importance will inevitably lead to greater division and a lower level of legitimacy for the final decision. The weakness in the argument that schools or governing bodies may choose to have a ballot, but it will not be mandatory, is that we then face the prospect of a series of different kinds of ballot being held according to different kinds of rules. If we have a democracy, everybody should play by the same rules. We cannot have school A holding a ballot with a particular definition of the electorate and according to a particular procedure, and school B, a mile down the road, doing things differently. That would be a recipe for chaos and would lead to challenges. It would be a huge job creation programme for the schools adjudicator’s office. There will be hundreds of appeals to the adjudicator if we do not ensure that consensus is at the heart of the process and if we allow a comparatively small number of people on a small governing body to have the final say—perhaps by a tiny majority.