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Education and Inspections Bill

The point was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North. Clearly, there is a register of parents whose children attend a particular school. That does not preclude consultation with other members of the community. If my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Ms Johnson) is concerned about making sure that the community is involved in trust schools, I hope she will support the amendments to increase the percentage that a local authority can nominate to trust schools. One cannot argue both ways, though one can try. I shall deal briefly with amendment No. 7 in my name. I have attempted to clarify what we mean by diversity. Clause 2 presents a problem. Local authorities have a duty to promote diversity. Those on the Front Bench say that it is not their intention to force trusts on anybody. I accept their assurance on that, but if we define diversity only in terms of structures, we have a problem when it comes to making decisions on new schools. My amendment, which I think accords with what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, enables a local authority to discharge its duty to promote diversity in secondary schools by encouraging a range of specialist provision in those schools. I think that is the right way to go. We have heard repeatedly in the debate that what makes a good school is the head and the teachers in that school, rather than the structure, and that what makes for diversity and gives real choices to our young people are the different kinds of specialism on offer and the different kinds of ethos of a school, not simply the structure under which it is set up. If it is true, as my right hon. Friend said earlier from the Front Bench—if I understood him correctly—that the Government want diversity to be seen in those terms, why will they not write that into the Bill? My amendment seems uncontentious and in accord with what the Secretary of State said. He touched on the regulations that would be introduced, but that requires a leap of faith, because we have not seen them. I hope that when the Minister sums up, we will hear from him about how the Government intend to draft the regulations on diversity. It is vital that when we talk about a range of schools, we are talking about a range of options on offer to our young people—specialisms in languages, arts and so on. We must allow them a real choice. There can be many different structures but still no real choice. Choice and diversity are not the same thing, though they are often confused.