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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, as the noble Baroness has said, Amendments Nos. 10 and 11 are wholly unnecessary for maintained schools. School improvement partners of those schools work under contract to the relevant local education authority and it is inconceivable for the contract not to provide for the sending of reports to the authority as client. Therefore, no specific statutory requirement is needed. In respect of the other schools that Amendment No. 11 would class as relevant, academies, as the noble Baroness said, are accountable directly to the DfES for performance. Accordingly, their school improvement partners are contracted to the DfES, but because we are introducing the school improvement partners programme nationally, we regarded it as equally important that the programme should apply to academies too. School improvement partners of academies work in broadly the same way as those of maintained schools, share the same national support arrangements and are subject to the same national accreditation requirements. Amendment No. 10 would introduce a statutory requirement into these non-statutory arrangements. It would require SIPs of all relevant schools to send copies of any reports they make to the relevant local education authority. The Government obviously want co-operation across each local authority area among schools of all types listed in Amendment No. 11, but statute is not necessary for this purpose. There is, for example, a local authority representative on the governing body of every academy, and that representation is specified in the academy’s articles of association. The local authority therefore has a means to secure those reports, even if they are not directly made available. The noble Baroness’s aims are therefore adequately secured.