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Education and Skills Bill

My Lords, I again declare my involvement as president of the National Governors’ Association. I support everything that was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. Now that the NGA and the head teachers’ association have got together on their respective responsibilities, it seems not only fair but sensible that there should be equal numbers represented on school forums, which have quite considerable power. I cannot think of a more sensible way of going about that than through a probing amendment such as this. There is also a slightly dubious situation when excess money sometimes comes back into the local authority. What is that to be spent on or recycled into? If an equal number of governors and head teachers cannot guide the local authority on particular needs, perhaps spending decisions might not be seen as entirely fair from an outsider’s viewpoint. Sometimes a school has unspent money in excess of some 5 per cent of its annual budget, which is not an insignificant amount. Then there is the issue of the status of ““parent””. I very much hope that my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham might provide some guidance on the situation that has been discussed of the status of ““parent”” in relation to people in prison. Various things happen, whereby the state may not be as good a parent as it should have been when looking after the health of the prisoners in its care. That is not a dissimilar situation to that of children in care. We know that a child in care is 10 times more likely to be excluded from school and that three out of every four children in care will leave school with no qualifications, compared to 6 per cent among the general population. I stress these issues because they need to be looked at in more detail. It would be extremely useful to receive some guidance from the Minister.