Government shelves controversial Education Bill
Neil Puffett
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Plans to compel underperforming schools to become academies and reduce the role councils have in the education system will be ditched, the government has confirmed.
In a written statement to parliament today, Education Secretary Justine Greening said the government has "reflected" on its strategic priorities and proposals for education legislation - as outlined in the Queen's Speech in May in the form of the Education for All Bill.
"Our ambition remains that all schools should benefit from the freedom and autonomy that academy status brings. Our focus, however, is on building capacity in the system and encouraging schools to convert voluntarily," she said.
"No changes to legislation are required for these purposes and therefore we do not require wider education legislation in this session to make progress on our ambitious education agenda."
Greening added that plans to allow new grammar schools to open are still being pursued, with a consultation on the proposals still ongoing.
Measures in the original white paper on which the Education for All Bill was based, published in March, would have seen every school become an academy, or have plans in place to do so, by 2022.
This was later watered down so that schools could only be forced to convert in cases where it was "clear" that a local authority could no longer viably support its remaining schools in an area where there had been a "critical mass" of academy conversions.
Schools could also have been forced to convert if a local authority consistently failed to meet a "minimum performance threshold" across its schools.
The Education for All Bill would also have created a new role for local authorities, shifting responsibility for school improvement from councils to "great heads and others in the school system".
Richard Watts, chair of the Local Government Association's children and young people board, said his organisation is pleased that government has acted on the strong concerns from councils.
"Today's announcement is the right decision and shows the government has been listening to our concerns, which have been echoed by MPs, teachers and parents.
"Councils have been clear from the outset that the proposals within the bill focused too heavily on structures, when our shared ambition is on improving education for all children.
"In particular, both the forced academisation of schools in areas considered to be ‘unviable', and the removal of the council role in school improvement, went against evidence that council-maintained schools perform more highly than academies and free schools in Ofsted inspections, and that conversion to academies did not in itself lead to better results."