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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 12, to 15, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. This series of amendments is almost, but not quite, on the opposite track to that proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe. The Government propose that, other things being equal, all new schools should be foundation schools. The noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, suggests not only that all new schools should be foundation schools but that there should be positive encouragement for all existing schools to become foundation schools. We argue somewhat differently. Our amendments propose that, in the competition for new schools, there should be even terms between foundation schools and community schools. What is the difference between foundation schools and community schools? Both are financed via the dedicated schools budget, which comes through the local education authority and is paid for partly by government grants and partly by local taxes. But the foundation school owns its own buildings, has control over its own budget and runs its own affairs. It is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, said, an independent state school. The community school, via local management of schools, manages around 93 per cent of its budget, but the local education authority owns its buildings, employs its staff and appoints its governors, who are responsible for its overall running. The key issue is the link to the local education authority and how far the school can act wholly independently of that authority. As the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, stressed, the notion of foundation schools, deriving from the Conservative proposals for grant maintained schools, is that state schools should be independent of local education authorities. We believe that the link with local education authorities is beneficial, because we see education provision as a system whose parts—nursery schools, Sure Start centres, schools and colleges—are interdependent at community level and need some overarching control system at that level: the local education authority. Schools and colleges are there to serve the local education authority. The community helps to pay for them, so it is right that the community should have some say in how they are run and that there should be some accountability, through the governance process, to the community. I talked about foundation schools being derived from grant-maintained schools, but the idea goes back considerably further, because the concept of the grant-maintained school was derived from voluntary-aided and voluntary-controlled schools, which are the church schools. That was part of the deal done with the churches at the end of the 19th century and, particularly, as enshrined in the Education Act 1944. While the state would meet all the current expense of such schools, the church would maintain the capital fabric of the school and appoint the governors. That model of the voluntary-aided school was copied in the 1980s, when the Conservatives introduced the grant-maintained system. The only difference with foundation schools, which were introduced in 1998 under the School Standards and Framework Act, is that the old grant-maintained schools became foundation schools and were financed through the LEA budget rather than directly by the department for education, as grant-maintained schools had been. I stress that Amendments Nos. 12 to 15 do not seek to undo this process in any sense. We accept that church schools and foundation schools exist in the system and that they have been—as the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, and the Minister both stressed in their arguments in Committee—a popular and successful model of governance albeit, as the Sutton Trust research highlighted, one serving a disproportionately middle class constituency. We are also happy to see this model extended to more schools, new and old, where that is the wish of the local community. That is the key issue in this group of amendments. Amendments Nos. 12, 13 and 14 seek to allow local education authorities to propose the establishment of a new community school alongside other proposals that may go forward for foundation schools or for other, what I would call, ““company schools”” run by companies such as Edison as foundations in competition with new schools. That is essentially what my noble friend Lady Williams, in moving the amendments in Committee, called establishing a level playing field between the foundation proposals and the community proposals. In Committee, we had a protracted discussion on these issues, with extensive consideration of international comparisons and the virtues or otherwise of comprehensive education. As the noble Baroness will probably remember, the debate ran late into the night. I do not wish to consider all those issues again, and the set of amendments that we have tabled today is slimline. It concentrates only on when a local education authority may propose a community school, to be considered alongside other proposals. The Government rightly state that the Bill allows local education authorities to propose a community school; but, whereas other providers, more or less irrespective of their track record, may propose these schools—it should be remembered that the proposals are in competition with each other, and the providers will then be judged on their track record—LEAs are not allowed to enter that competition unconditionally unless they have been awarded the top performance assessment rating of ““4””. Only 11 out of some 145 local authorities have achieved that top assessment rating. The remaining local authorities would all need to satisfy further criteria and obtain the Secretary of State’s permission to put forward proposals. We have tabled Amendment No. 15, because even when an authority meets the criteria and is within the top Ofsted category, it still needs permission from the Secretary of State to publish its proposals. Our amendment states that when a majority of parents have indicated in a ballot that they wish to have the chance to consider local authority proposals, those proposals shall be published alongside the others. In his concluding remarks in Committee, the Minister emphasised that the Government had, "““struck a sensible balance … between allowing local authorities that have a good track record and can show that they support the principle of diversity to be able, in appropriate circumstances, to promote community schools while ensuring that there are strong incentives for diversity, especially in areas where local authorities are lower performers””.—[Official Report, 12/7/06; col. 818.]" We maintain that there is not a fair balance. There are constraints limiting the scope of local authorities to publish their proposals and put them alongside others. First, such constraints on their rights to publication run counter to the principles of local choice and local accountability. As democratically accountable institutions, councils need flexibility to respond to local needs and circumstances. They should be required to present a full range of options for new schools in their communities. If local people want a new school and the locality needs one, a community school should be among the choices. Secondly, the current proposals contradict the Government’s wider devolution agenda. The Lyons local government review’s interim report highlights the need for local government to be less constrained, more accountable locally and more innovative. The principle of earned autonomy which supersedes local people’s wishes and accountability can impact across a large range of local authority commissioning and delivery functions. It is at odds with the Government’s commitment to devolve power to local communities. Lastly, the Government’s proposals run against the principles of the Bill itself, which sets out a new strategic role for local authorities in education and seeks to promote choice and diversity and to champion pupils and parents. By allowing only certain councils the freedom to propose new community schools, the Government are suggesting that only certain councils can undertake the full strategic role that all councils have a duty to deliver. As I indicated in my opening remarks, schools are provided and run for the benefit of the local community. A good part of the council tax that we pay goes towards the provision of that education. We elect our local councils to oversee these activities and decide what best suits local people. They are democratically accountable and should have some say in what sort of schools best meet local needs.