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Education and Inspections Bill

moved Amendment No. 10: Page 3, line 42, at end insert- ““( ) School improvement partners shall send to the relevant local education authority copies of any reports made by them on relevant schools within the local education authority's area.”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 11. These two amendments deal with school improvement partners. We had a lengthy debate about this matter in Committee. During that debate, we established that, although appointments are nominally by the Secretary of State, local authorities will be responsible for appointing local school improvement partners to schools in their areas with the exceptions of academies, city technology colleges and city colleges for the technology of the arts. A school improvement partner will be primarily accountable to the employing local authority. Accreditation will be through the National College for School Leadership, which will share with local authorities responsibility for the training and continuous professional development of school improvement partners. We also established that school improvement partners will be expected to spend about five days a year working with the schools with which they are partnered, but typically a SIP may have three or four schools under its wings and therefore give an average of something like 19 days a year to the job. They would be paid by local authorities, which would no longer have to fund the link adviser. So the extra money that the Government are putting into the system—some £21 million—is on top of the £7 million already spent on link advisers by local education authorities. Therefore, the rate of pay is somewhat greater than the back-of-the-envelope calculation put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, which meant that they would get little more than school dinner ladies, £6.50 an hour—I think it goes up a little but not that much. Nevertheless, doubts have remained about the funding of school improvement partners: how much will local authorities have to pay to encourage former head teachers out of the retirement bunker, and how could and should the possible conflicts between heads and school improvement partners be resolved? However, today's amendment does not address either of those concerns. Instead it addresses what in many respects is a minor issue about which the Minister spoke en passant in the previous debate; namely, the relationship between local authorities, academies, city technology colleges and city colleges for the technology of the arts in relation to SIPS. In one of the amendments that we tabled in Committee, we suggested that local authorities should be responsible for appointing all school improvement partners including those to academies and city technology colleges. The Minister responded very firmly. In law, those are independent state schools and, therefore, we feel it would be inappropriate for local authorities to appoint their improvement partners. That is not to say that the external accountability of those publicly funded schools is any less important. The two amendments that we have tabled today do not question the fact that the Secretary of State will appoint school improvement partners; however, we ask that the reports made by school improvement partners should be made available to local education authorities. At present, school improvement partners for academies, city technology colleges, and so forth, report only to the Secretary of State. We put this amendment forward on behalf of the LGA, which believes that if councils are to fulfil their proposed new strategic role, which includes ensuring the education potential of all children in their areas, that must include children attending academies and other centrally directed and funded schools. The performance of those schools will be reflected in the education element of the local authorities’ annual performance assessments. If local authorities are genuinely to champion children's educational well-being, the school improvement partner reports for academies and city technology colleges should be copied to their authorities so that they can be challenged and assisted, as provision would be for any parent or child locally. The school improvement partner reports cover all the Every Child Matters outcomes, for which a local authority is responsible for delivering to parents and children. Lack of information about the performance and the needs of the academies could lead to inappropriate or inadequate conclusions being drawn about other neighbouring schools and the authority-wide improvement needs of the children. This is a very modest amendment asking only that local education authorities should have a copy of the reports delivered by school improvement partners to the Secretary of State in their function as being answerable to the Secretary of State. I hope that the Minister will look sympathetically on it. I beg to move.