03 December 2004
Stripping councils of their education funding powers will leave schools isolated and hinder the drive towards more integrated services, local government leaders warned this week.
The comments came as the government unveiled its Education Bill on December 1. The legislation will grant schools three-year devolved budgets, bypassing the local authority funding system.
Alison King, chair of the Local Government Association's children and young people board, said taking local education authorities out of the loop would leave schools cut off from their local communities.
'Schools will just be placed in the situation of being micro-managed by distant Whitehall bureaucrats who have no way of knowing or understanding the individual needs of each school across the country,' she said.
The LGA is concerned that the Bill places no statutory duty on schools to work with their local authority. King reiterated the worry that severing the ties between schools and local authorities would override the aims of the Children Act, which plans to deliver joined-up children's services.
'Councils are best placed to take on this role to improve and integrate all services in their locality, at the same time as leaving schools free to do what they must – teach,' she said.
But Education Secretary Charles Clarke has insisted that local authorities will still have an important role to play, chiefly in setting up children's trusts but also on taking forward the 14–19 reform programme and facilitating collaboration between schools and colleges. He added that councils needed to accept that central government had certain roles and responsibilities.
'I don't think it is true there is less power,' he said. 'My offer to local government is: work with us in a partnership, and we will see if we can get more money and more responsibilities going through local authorities rather than through the various bypassing structures we have at the moment.'
As well as making provision for the three-year budgets, the Education Bill, published on December 1, replaces annual governors' reports with school profiles, which will provide parents with a summary of a school's ethos, performance and improvement priorities.
It also puts in place a more streamlined and lighter touch inspection regime, taking forward Ofsted proposals agreed earlier this year on shorter, 'sharper' inspections occurring every three years, rather than every six.
Welcoming the Bill, chief schools inspector David Bell said: 'The changes… will result in a more efficient and proportionate inspection system that will reduce the burden of inspection on schools.
'At the same time more frequent inspections at little or no notice will also ensure that parents and pupils receive up-to-date, no-holds-barred information about the quality of education in their local schools.'
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