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Education and Inspections Bill

I was not going to speak in this debate, and I realise that time is pressing on, but I just want to make a point that is crucial to the core of the Government’s Every Child Matters agenda. In that agenda, the school is seen as a central place for the delivery of many services. That goes back to the discussion about what a school is and what it is to its local community. I went to school an hour’s distance from where I lived on my working-class estate. That meant that my parents never went to anything, even if they might have done anyway. My local primary school in my village in Norfolk is the centre of our community life, and I can see the Every Child Matters agenda working beautifully in terms of extended schools. However, this issue needs to be thought through as we look at the range of academies and trust schools. We must ask whether we see this central tenet of the Every Child Matters agenda in every place or whether we are absolutely clear that in some schools it simply cannot work.