Education Bill

The finance regulations will apply to PRUs in the same way that they apply to maintained schools, and, of course, we are currently consulting on the entire school funding arrangements. The purpose of new clause 21 is to ensure that rights enjoyed by pupils in boarding academies are the same as those in maintained state boarding schools. Under section 458 of the Education Act 1996, local authorities are required to remit boarding fees for pupils from their area who are attending state boarding schools in certain circumstances. Those provisions apply solely to maintained schools. When section 458 was enacted, there were no academies, and as a number of boarding schools are taking the opportunity to convert to become academies, we want to ensure that the pupils at those boarding academies continue to have their right to be considered for a remission of boarding fees safeguarded. So the new clause mirrors the provisions in section 458, with the exception that we are not mirroring subsection (1), which enables local authorities to charge fees for boarding. That provision is unnecessary in the case of academies, because the funding agreement allows academies to charge boarding fees. It must be right that on the remission of boarding fees we have a level playing field in our treatment of pupils at maintained and academy boarding schools. Government amendments 34 and 35 are being introduced so that some of the pupils who would most benefit from good alternative provision—AP—can be referred to AP academies.