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Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot think of a quip on ducklings; it is beyond me.
I turn first to Amendments Nos. 73 to 75. In our proposals for schools forums, which we have begun to talk about with all the appropriate bodies, we made clear that we proposed four main functions. Three of those were consultation on the funding formula for schools; consultation on various aspects of the management of the schools budget as specified in regulations; and consultation on aspects of local education authority contracts for services. I accept that the primary role of forums is to be advisory. We see the forums as acting in partnership with their authorities. We hope that they will bring the opportunity of a collective opinion on the way that the schools budget should be managed.
However, as I said, we believe it right that they should have a limited role in taking decisions. In the consultation we are talking about, the areas of expenditure which we propose should be remitted to the forums for decisions on delegation. I have outlined the most significant of those as being primary and secondary school meals. I have also indicated the other areas of museum and library services, and licensed copyright fees.
There are often local reasons why schools prefer one outcome or the other, and we hope that the forums can usefully address those. It is a modest exercise in giving schools more responsibility. I hope that, on that basis, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
I turn to Amendment No. 76 and say at once that I understand the concerns of the right reverend Prelate that on current plans there is to be no requirement for separate categories of school to be automatically represented on schools forums. However, the draft regulations on which we are currently consulting contain an explicit power for a local education authority to order its elections so as to achieve that result if it wishes.
We have spent some time considering this issue. However, the position on schools forums is very different to that for some similar bodies such as school organisation committees. First, the recurrent funding of maintained schools is hardly affected at all by its category. Therefore separate representation on the forum is not a clear necessity. Secondly, in many authorities the number of schools in certain categories is very low. Having an absolute requirement in the manner proposed by the right reverend Prelate's amendment would make the election process throughout the country more complex for little reason.
That is why we feel that the discretionary power in the draft regulations is sufficient. There will be authorities with large numbers of voluntary or perhaps foundation schools which will wish to consider using
it because of their local circumstances, and we shall be happy to see them doing so. But we feel that a universal requirement goes too far.However, I remind noble Lords that forums will also have non-schools members. In our consultation paper we made clear that we see diocesan authorities as obvious candidates for nomination to such membership. When we come to issue guidance to authorities on setting up forums we shall say that we expect them to take full account of the need to have diocesan authorities in membership. I hope that that commitment meets the spirit of the right reverend Prelate's concern to ensure that those interests are represented.
As we come to Amendment No. 77, after discussion of various aspects of the schools forums policy, I want to emphasise some principal points. I have made clear that we see the forums as mainly advisory bodies with a modest decision-making role. We want them to be meaningful. We want them to have a real job to do. Essentially, we trust that they will be vehicles for partnership, and we hope that local education authorities will increasingly come to value them.
We do not want them to be, and they will not be, another layer of top-heavy bureaucracy taking away significant sums from schools. In the average local education authority the cost per school will be around £200 for schools to play a proper part in managing the new schools budget. They will be a resource for schools and education authorities.
I know, and noble Lords have mentioned it—I address my remarks specifically to the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch—that the House has been concerned at the possibility that local consultation arrangements, some of them working satisfactorily and indeed praised by Ofsted, would be damaged by the introduction of the forums. Our aim is to spread best practice and not destroy it. That is why we shall be considering carefully the responses to the consultation exercise.
I readily concede that the debate remains open. I accept that the noble Baroness made some strong points as to what is already happening in different local authority areas, such as the road show in Cambridgeshire. The Secretary of State is mindful of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and others in Committee about the need for flexibility in this matter to avoid displacing good existing arrangements. I can say today that, when we consider responses to the consultation, we shall be looking to find a way to create sufficient flexibility to allow local education authorities the scope to keep the best features of their existing arrangements while making sure that effective forums are put in place in education authorities throughout the country.
I reiterate a point I made in response to concerns expressed earlier in our debate about the impact of increased delegation on SEN services. The existence of forums will provide the assurance of local scrutiny that will enable us to cease to set delegation targets for LEAs. They play an important role in our reforms of the funding system.
In conclusion I want to emphasise this. Schools have come of age in managing themselves. They now have larger budgets. They make most expenditure decisions for themselves. They take responsibility. But they do not operate in isolation. They are part of a community. The establishment of schools forums will add meaning to that and will become a vital component of it. By establishing forums we signal to schools that they should be taking part in the process of managing public resources, not in a way which usurps the overall responsibility of the democratically elected authority, but in a way which recognises that schools have come a long way since the first experiments in local financial management.
In the light of those assurances on the regulations and our search to find sufficient flexibility, and from her experience of the well-known experiments in Cambridgeshire, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
7 p.m.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall raise two points arising from those remarks. When arrangements become formal under the law, as opposed to being informal arrangements, they tend to take on a life of their own. We are talking about travelling subsistence for up to 50 people, service provision, and all the formality that will surround the information that will be collected, collated, checked and monitored. The Minister talked about £200 per school, which is a very modest sum. It also has to include supply cover for each teacher who takes half a day or more out of term time.
My second point relates to SSAs, which the noble Baroness said would no longer be a feature of education funding. Can I take it that SSAs for all other services will be swept away? Unless they are swept away for all services, it would make no sense to sweep them away for education only.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, the calculation of £200 per school is a real one. We talked about schools forums meeting three times a term as a possibility. We are keen to have flexibility on how forums are set up and that, as far as possible, they retain the most important aspects. We took incredibly seriously what the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, said in Committee about not wanting to tear down arrangements that are working successfully. The intention of schools forums is to bring about successful arrangements across the country. We shall have some early indications before Third Reading from the consultation that is taking place, and I shall be happy to write to the noble Baronesses, Lady Blatch, Lady Walmsley and Lady Sharp, to set out our first thoughts. I recognise that I am unable today to give the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, more assurances about these issues.
The answer to the noble Baroness's second point is that all SSAs are being replaced.
Baroness Walmsley: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her response. She is aware that we are
unhappy with schools forums. Although the area in which schools forums will be more than advisory is small and relatively insignificant, we wonder why the Government want to put the measure in place to achieve that. That could be achieved just as easily by extending consultations with schools on these subjects. We have nasty, suspicious minds about the purpose of these clauses and we shall certainly return to them at Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 74 and 75 not moved.]
The Lord Bishop of Blackburn had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 76:
- Page 27, line 11, at end insert—
The right reverend Prelate said: My Lords, I listened carefully to the Minister's remarks, and I am enormously grateful to her for the time that she has taken. I genuinely believe that she and her department have worked very hard, but I am extremely unhappy at the outcome. I am sorry about that, as it is my final amendment to the Bill.
We should be taking into account the special relationship between voluntary schools and money. We are dealing with governors who, on behalf of trustees, have a particular responsibility for the buildings. Large sums of expenditure are involved and unless their voices and views are heard, there will be dissatisfaction. There will always be a claim that there is prejudice and bias.
We all bring a certain amount of experience or baggage to such debates. In my 12 years as director of education in the diocese of Durham, there were times when various authorities within the diocese, of which there were four—I shall not name any particular one—sought to disadvantage the voluntary schools by not enabling them to provide nursery units and other things that were popular at the time, and which had a direct effect on recruitment to such schools.
I am disappointed that that point has not been acknowledged. I feel that perhaps I have been unable to express the nature of what we are discussing. It is not about expenditure on the running of schools, such as teaching and so on, but the fact that voluntary school governors have particular responsibilities with regard to the buildings, and ultimate responsibility if buildings deteriorate. Those future problems are not being addressed.
We shall have to consider further our attitude to schools forums.
Clause 42 [Accounts of maintained schools]:
"( ) Regulations shall ensure that the membership of a schools forum includes persons representing each of the categories of school maintained by the authority."
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