Education Bill

March 2006

Tony Blair has said he wants to reform schools. But many people think the current Education Bill is a step back rather than forward. Parents, the community, local schools, teachers and the local council should all work together to improve schools. I set out my views below:

The best way forward is for schools to work together. I believe we have seen that in Portsmouth to the advantage of every school and every pupil. Schools should help each other where one has a particular weakness and build on and share their strengths. What we do not need is one school set against one another. I would like to see schools policy returned from Blair’s bureaucrats to local councils – particularly restoring local accountability to 14 to 19 learning by taking budgets from the LSC quangos ad giving them back to elected local authorities. And I believe that there is a important role for the community as a whole to play in the development of their local schools directly through involvement in their school and through their democratically elected local councillors and the Local Education Authority which has a legitimate role to provide some services and develop guidance and policies and provide overall oversight of local schools.

The Government's Proposals

Commenting on the initial White Paper a head teacher told the BBC News Website: “However, some sections of the White Paper are strong on assertion and weak on evidence. They go some way beyond the 2005 election manifesto. They have triggered an exceptional level of opposition amongst Labour MPs. It isn't because we're against innovation. Most of us, as parents and politicians, have welcomed the innovations of the last few years and are keen to see more. We all support the prime minister's relentless focus on standards, discipline and equality of opportunity. We're just not convinced that the structural changes proposed provide all the answers. Or even that all of the consequences of a system of "independent state schools" have been fully thought through. Having worked so hard to improve so much in the last eight years, teachers, support staff, school governors and LEA professionals are now told they can't be trusted to carry on improving without being subject to wholesale opting out. This sounds dangerously ideological.”

I support what he says.

Despite concessions by the Government, there remain significant concerns about how Trust Schools – effectively as the head teacher above says “independent state schools” – will operate and how administration policies will operate. There are also concerns that the moment through a variety of means, better off parents get their children in to better schools – through the way catchment areas operate and some of the admissions policies that operate at the moment. As first proposed by the Government, the Bill did very little to combat this. But in some ways we have now seen a tightening up of admissions policies following the rebellion by Labour MPs over both the White Paper and indeed the current situation. For example all schools will now have to “abide by” the code and not just have regard to it. Although it remains to be seen how this works in practice.

And there are concerns on the way that Trust Schools could operate - potentially selling off some of their assets such as property or playing fields. Education increasingly requires schools to collaborate - to share best practice, to deliver the broader 14 to 19 curriculum and to share facilities. Yet Trust schools will have no duty or incentive to colloborate with neighbouring schools. This will make strategic management of teaching provision harder for other local schools. Far better would be to promote collaboration - like the Lib Dem idea for Community Learning Trusts - local schools, colleges and employers working together to deliver real pupil choice in 14-19 education.

In short, I believe that this Bill is a lost opportunity and Blair and the Labour Government should be concentrating on standards and not structures and build on the work that dedicated teachers and staff and hard-working students are doing. Freeing schools from Blair and his bureaucrats would be real reform