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Education Bill

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Laming for tabling these amendments. I have just one quick question for the Minister, following on from the question of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, who talked about the impact on children with special educational needs. What does he think the impact might be on children in the care of local authorities? In principle, I can see that outcomes might be improved if there is at least a strategy that involves schools working with local authorities and thinking about how children’s homes and foster carers could be better meshed into the system. Schools already have various duties with regard to looked-after children, but this might be another means of promoting outcomes for them. I should be grateful to the Minister if he circulated some copies of the plans for children and young people. I suppose it would be fairly easy for me to find those plans in the Library, but I should be interested to see how they work. I recognise the Minister’s drive to reduce bureaucracy, and I wonder whether the legislation is perhaps going a bit too far in trying to right that wrong. Finally, I share the noble Baroness’s concern about the academies process. There are many positive sides to it, but there is the danger of schools becoming atomised, and the process would seem to add to that risk. I look to the Minister for reassurance in his reply.