Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I have listened to what the Secretary of State says, but he should visit Thomas Tomlinscote school in my constituency to explain why they have received correspondence telling them to terminate their plans for construction. If there is absolutely nothing to worry about, why has he appointed Sir Andrew Foster to investigate the situation? Why get a Sherlock Holmes to investigate quango crimes if no crimes have been committed? As well as being concerned about bureaucracy in the further education sector, we have similar concerns about children's trusts. We all want better inter-agency working and recognise that when it comes to child protection, welfare and support it is important to get all the organisations with an interest working better together. However, it is clear that children's trusts have not fulfilled the high hopes invested in them. The case of baby P proves that. The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families took firm and effective action when the joint area review report was brought to him; I pay tribute to him for that. However, there was already a children's trust in Haringey and it did not prove to be the effective preventive institution that we would all have hoped that it might be. There is a potential for confusion in the way in which children's trusts are being set up—for example, over who will be the principal author of the children's and young people's plans. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), who is introducing the Autism Bill on Friday, has mentioned the crucial importance of clarity as regards the authorship of those plans. There is also some confusion, which is certainly reported by local authorities, about the division of responsibility between local safeguarding children boards and children's trusts. It is important when we bring forward new institutions and new ways of working that we are clear about the lines of responsibility. I hope that in Committee we will have an opportunity to provide a degree of reassurance to those people on the front line who are worried. On the subject of support for professionals, as the Secretary of State mentioned there are provisions in the Bill on discipline, too. We welcome the extension of powers to search students but we fear that they might not go far enough. We feel that the exact requirements to ensure that there are two staff of the same sex as the individual being searched; that only outer clothing can be searched; and that searches can be carried out only for specific goods, on reasonable suspicion and with proportionate use of physical force, might include too many restrictions. We believe that it would be more appropriate to give head teachers a general power that can be exercised for all materials that might be destructive of good order in schools. In our view, it is important that we give head teachers every weapon that they need in order to improve education. Above all, when we are considering improvement in the state education system, we need to recognise where improvement has come fastest in the past few years, and why. Improvement has come fastest in those schools that have benefited from the independence that the academies programme has brought. As the Secretary of State has acknowledged, improvements at GCSE in those academies that are at a stage where students are taking those examinations have been faster than in the rest of the state sector. The academies programme has been a success. We should have expected that, because its predecessor programme, the city technology college programme, was also a success. The 12 original CTCs now have examination results at GCSE that are better than the average level of all independent schools in this country. They are comprehensive schools and they are doing better than independent schools. It is because independent state schools and the academies programme have been so successful that it is so worrying that the voice of academies has been raised against the Bill. The Independent Academies Association has written to the Secretary of State and the Minister for Schools and Learners to say that it finds"““with growing dismay that those of us within the Academies movement have witnessed government's changing tack over the last eighteen months or so.””" The association's members are the people at the front line of improving education. They say:"““It appears that with every consultation, each missive and even new legislation from the DCSF, there comes further erosion of the independent status of Academies. Sponsors…Governors and Principals up and down the land are seriously questioning the long-term sustainability of the programme, when their efforts to positively impact on driving up educational standards and progress are being increasingly hampered by requirements to bow to the whims of quangos and to abide by additional regulations.””" The Bill, which creates new quangos and additional regulation, is specifically attacked by the association because it underlines the independence and autonomy that the association's members need.