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Education Bill

3.7 p.m.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Baroness Ashton of Upholland): My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now further considered on Report.

Moved, That the Bill be further considered on Report.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Clause 23 [Federations of schools]:

Baroness Blatch moved Amendment No. 46:

Page 14, line 25, after "government" insert "including members representing—

(i) parents at each school,

(ii) teachers at each school, and

(iii) such other categories as may be appropriate, given the religious or other character of each school within the federation"

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The noble Baroness said: My Lords, perhaps I may begin by putting a technical question to the Minister. If I ask it at the start of our debates, that will allow more time for an answer to be sought. Would a school that was a company under the companies proposals in the Bill, or a school that had formed part of a company, be allowed to join a federation of schools where the others in the federation were not part of that company or companies? Would the governing body of the federation become the new shareholder of the company; and would those governors who were the governors of the federation have to assume all the responsibilities of being company directors?

As has been stated in previous debates, schools may collaborate, co-ordinate, even confederate. It is agreed that there is much that they can do together. All the advantages mentioned by the Minister when arguing in support of these clauses can be achieved without formal federation under a single governing body.

The sovereignty of each school is affected by these proposals. There are bound to be occasions when a single governing body will take a decision which it deems to be in the interest of the group of schools that it represents, but it may not seem quite like that to an individual school in the group. Therefore, a confederate arrangement whereby schools retain their sovereignty through their own governing body, representing their own parents, staff and community, would allow for greater flexibility.

There is nothing to stop schools coming together in an alliance with one or more schools to achieve a more educationally effective or even a more economically effective service. They could designate governors and/or staff to form joint committees for particular projects. To use the European Union jargon, the pertinent phrase here is "variable geometry".

To have a single governing body for all purposes really is turning the clock back. We all remember the bad old days when one governing body represented large numbers of schools. We certainly do not wish to return to that situation. It is only a matter of months since the Government themselves argued that a school should have a governing body.

A school that over time became unhappy about the single governing body proposed in the Bill would have to go through a process to leave the federation. Under confederation there would be far more freedom and schools would retain autonomy where it mattered to them and—here is the great bonus—they would not need yet more regulations dealing with dissolution, continuity arrangements when a school joins or leaves the group, transitional arrangements, the transfer of property, rights and liabilities procedures and—the sting in the tail as always—any other matter considered appropriate by the Secretary of State.

Amendment No. 46 has been tabled in the event that we are unsuccessful in securing support for taking Clause 23 out of the Bill, or in the event of Amendment No. 49 not proving successful. If a school relinquishes its governing body in order to pool governance under a single governing body for a group of schools, it is important that parents and staff of the school should

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be represented. If a school has a distinct character, for example a faith school and/or a specialist school—I include here a special educational needs school—that dimension should also be represented on the federal governing body.

Once again we are attempting to secure the same aims and objectives as the Government. However, we believe that the proposals as set out in the Bill are more, not less, inhibiting. I believe that my amendments, and Amendment No. 49 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, offer greater flexibility and greater protection for schools and their interests. I beg to move.

The Lord Bishop of Blackburn: My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment No. 47, which is included in the group of amendments that we are discussing and which deals with a rather specific point within the purport of this group of amendments.

I believe that some of my noble friends thought that I went rather over the top in Committee as regards my support for the federation of schools. I continue to be an enthusiastic supporter, as does the Board of Education of the Church of England, of which I am the chair. We see our role as one of encouraging schools to see the advantages of federation in terms of improving the quality of the educational experience of pupils and reducing the workload of teachers and governing bodies, not least in parts of the country where it is difficult on occasion to find and to attract suitably qualified people to act as governors.

But that said, we see the federation of schools as contributing substantially to the promotion of social inclusion—a matter which has occupied your Lordships' House on a number of occasions. It is possible that, within diverse communities, a Muslim school for example might be encouraged to join a federation with an Anglican school and two or three local community schools. That would be a good example of community coherence and I imagine that the Government would want to support wholeheartedly such developments. That is all the more reason why federations of schools should allow the ethos of each individual school to remain intact. As I understand it, that is part of the purpose of Amendment No. 46 of the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch. Religious and diocesan authorities will have that concern particularly in mind. I understand from my helpful meeting with the Minister since the Committee stage that the Government share that intention.

Since these matters were debated in Committee, I have had helpful discussions with the Minister and her officials which have helped to allay some of our concerns, but, I have to say, not all of them—hence the tabling of Amendment No. 47 this afternoon. Our concern continues that only voluntary-aided schools seem to have been considered and nothing has been said about voluntary-controlled schools whose individual religious characters are important to the Church of England and not least to our rural parishes where a large number of those controlled schools are

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to be found and are seen as playing a great part in those local communities to the satisfaction of both the Church and the local community.

Arrangements have been identified with regard to staffing individual schools that make provision for the appointment of a head but not for a proportion of the other staff where joint staff appointments are to be made. That is a matter of continuing concern to us. I refer to an appeal where there is disagreement over an instrument which, of course, is made to the Secretary of State, but there is no indication so far as we can discover of the principles on which the Secretary of State might decide such a case.

I refer to an exit strategy that leaves the final decision with the governing body of the federated schools without any process of appeal at all as far as we can see. Therefore, until those matters are resolved, it is necessary to press for an absolute veto for diocesan authorities and, in the case of Muslim, Jewish, Sikh or other religious schools that might be encouraged into federations, for those who appoint the foundation governors to have such a veto. The existence of such a veto in law is not something I would prefer but it might encourage more religious authorities and their schools to explore the possibility of federation—to which I am anxious to lend full support—with all the advantages that I have outlined. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will hear this continuing concern and will be able to help me a little further when she replies to the amendments.

3.15 p.m.

Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, when we discussed this issue in Committee I made it clear that we on these Benches had great reservations about the concept of federation. Subsection (3)(a) of Clause 23 states clearly,

"Where any schools are federated by virtue of this section, they shall—

(a) have a single governing body constituted under a single

instrument of government".

As the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, mentioned, in the 1960s and the early 1970s there were groups of schools under large single managing boards, as they were called in those days. Those were bad old days. It has been extraordinarily good for schools to develop their own individual governing boards and to use them as a means of linking into the community.

We have been somewhat reassured in our discussions with the Minister, partly because in those discussions it became clear that it is entirely up to each individual board to decide whether or not to go forward with the matter. We are aware that on occasion boards of school governors can be under the influence of heads and heads may want to adopt this measure rather more than others do. However, the decision would be taken by the governing board. Some infant and junior schools share the same school campus and it might be a good idea for them to have a single board. However, we were worried about groups of schools coming together, and being encouraged to come together, as clusters, but actually

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being forced under one governing board. It is for that reason that we put forward Amendment No. 49 which concerns confederation.

Provided that we reach agreement on the concept of confederations, we on these Benches are at the moment prepared to go along with the notion of federations. I am not on this occasion speaking strongly against federations.

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