03 March 2006
Ministers have secured sufficient support to see the education Bill over its first parliamentary hurdle but further battles are likely, education experts predict.
The publication of the Education and Inspection Bill on February 28 won the qualified backing of senior figures both inside and outside the Labour Party following the government's climbdown over some of its more controversial aspects.
Launching the Bill, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly said it marked the next phase in the government's drive to raise standards in schools.
Barry Sheerman, chair of the Commons education select committee, said Parliament in dialogue with government had improved the proposals. He predicted a Labour majority on the Bill at the second reading debate on March 15.
Sir Jeremy Beecham, Labour vice-chair of the Local Government Association, called for the Bill to be supported. He said the ban on schools interviewing parents, stronger powers for local authorities to intervene in under-performing schools and the ability for councils to put forward community schools were all to be welcomed.
'Although we will want to discuss further points of detail as the Bill progresses through Parliament, we are now confident that this is a Bill that Labour in local government and indeed, every Labour MP, can support on second reading,' Beecham said.
Alison King, Conservative chair of the LGA's children and young people's board, agreed that discussions with ministers had been fruitful, particularly on the thorny issue of admissions. But, she said, the Bill should have gone further.
'The government has accepted that an unregulated admissions system is not the way forward, but its measures do not go far enough,' she said.
'All schools must face the same rules. Academies need to be an integral part of the local family of schools – taking hard-to-place pupils and those with special educational needs.'
The LGA is also unhappy that the secretary of state retains the right to veto a local authority's proposal to set up and run a community school.
Other commentators continued to maintain that the Bill was a missed opportunity. Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said the government should have concentrated on establishing universal nursery education, rather than pursuing the 'dead end' of structural reform.
PFmar2006
