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Education and Inspections Bill

These Benches have great sympathy with the two amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing. The issues being discussed are the degree to which a SIP should be compulsory and the degree to which a school should choose its own SIP. We have much sympathy with both issues. The model that we were picking up from the Government and trying to put forward was one which, to a degree, moved in that direction, although it was still left to the local authority to appoint—but we were looking at the federation model as a self-choosing model. We have much sympathy with the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, which removes the ““must”” and allows the school to decide its own partner.