Education Bill

I thank the Minister for his response and I thank Members of the Committee who have spoken on this subject for their contributions. I absolutely agree with the Minister that underperforming schools cannot be allowed to continue underperforming indefinitely. I feel as passionately about that as he does. So do many Members of the Committee, I suspect. However, the key question is: how effectively can we drive that improvement in performance, particularly when underperformance has been persistent over a period? Sadly, it is also generally the case that underperforming schools are not distributed evenly around the country. They tend to be concentrated in areas where local authorities are weak or where there are endemic problems and so on. There is often a concentration of underperforming schools. That issue needs to be grappled with. The route that the Government are taking is different in some respects from the one that we were proposing. The previous Government wanted powers to direct a local authority to act, but not necessarily the sweeping powers that this Government are taking to allow the Secretary of State to make the judgment directly about closing the school. That is a key difference. I can entertain the possibility that there may be a place for the Secretary of State to have that power but, in deciding this in Committee and on Report, we ought to have a much clearer idea of the criteria that the Secretary of State would use to make the decision for direct closure and the kind of circumstances in which those powers would be used. There are other powers that it may be more constructive to use. For instance, there are powers to intervene directly with the local authority. As a Minister, I did that in a number of local authority areas in setting up performance management boards. Sometimes it was with representation from a Minister, chaired by a Minister with Department for Education officials with independent representation, with experts, with the chief executive of the local authority, with the director children’s services and with head teachers, charged with driving up performance, not in 10 years but demonstrably in one or two years. That method might not be suitable everywhere, but where it is appropriate it drives up performance in schools without the nuclear option of closing local schools with the uncertainty that that creates for parents. In that system, if maintained schools improve, they will stay as maintained schools. That is another key difference between our vision and that of the Government; we saw a place for diversity in having schools of high standards both in the maintained sector and, where this was necessary to drive up standards, as academies, with the freedoms that academies have. I do not think that is the case here, and my concern, as I have voiced before, is that the different measures taken together in the Bill will actually enable an acceleration of academies simply by diktat when the Secretary of State closes schools. The schools that will replace those schools will by definition be academies, not maintained schools, so I still have concerns. I saw the Minister and his officials nodding. It would be helpful if it were possible for him to write to me before Report with some idea of criteria and the circumstances in which these powers to close schools and reopen them as academies would be used, so that we could make a judgment on what is on the Government’s mind on this issue. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 122ZC withdrawn. Amendment 122A not moved. Clause 43 agreed. Amendment 122B not moved. Clause 44 : Complaints: repeal of power to complain to Local Commissioner Clause 44 : Complaints: repeal of power to complain to Local Commissioner Debate on whether Clause 44 should stand part of the Bill.