THE Schools Bill, currently in the House of Lords, is set to become law later in the year.
The Lords resumed its detailed examination of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on Tuesday of last week. The Bill was debated at length at the Committee stage, due to finish next week. We wait to see what final amendments will be considered, and what its final form will be.
The stated aim of the Bill is to “remove barriers in schools and improve the education system to make it more consistent and safer for every child”. It includes a wide range of changes that seek to implement significant Labour manifesto commitments. From the Church’s perspective, however, there may be unintended consequences, which will need working through with the Department for Education (DfE), and the Church of England Education Office (CEEO), and local authorities more generally.
On a macro level, first, the Bill aims to tighten up the safeguarding of children outside institutions currently regulated as schools, including considerable additional regulation of home schooling.
Second, the Bill is removing legislation that favoured academy governance as the preferred structure, seeks to remove the remaining academy freedoms (largely brought in by the Conservative Education Secretary, Michael Gove), and will require academies to meet certain obligations applying to maintained schools. It will also make academies subject to the same powers of intervention by the DfE.
This is a radical change of direction. Taken together with changes to admissions, and the establishment of new schools — which appear no longer to have to be academies — it indicates that the DfE wishes to enhance the part played by local authorities both as providers of schools and with strategic direction in education overall.
SO, WHERE might there be some unintended consequences for church schools and diocesan boards of education?
The first surrounds the fact that the Bill will remove a duty on the Education Secretary to issue a directive academy order when a maintained/local-authority school is failing, and, instead, gives the Secretary only a power to so do.
Currently, when a directive academy order is issued to a church school, there is an established part to play for the diocesan director of education, to make sure that any proposed academy solution is worked through carefully with the diocese to protect the school’s Christian character.
But what of the new system, where the solution for a failing maintained school may be its improvement under the existing structure rather than its absorption into an academy? How will the diocesan director of education be brought into the loop, and when? How will the Christian character of the school be protected? There may need to be a revised Memorandum of Understanding between the DfE and the National Society/CEEO to cover any gaps created by the new Bill.
Another worry concerns the remaining small church primary schools that are not yet in multi-academy trusts. Money is tight across the sector: government funds are low at local and national level; the academy conversion grant has already been withdrawn; the future of sponsorship grants for failing schools is now in doubt; and it is known that multi-academy trust reserves have been falling consistently across England.
It may be, then, that multi-academy trusts will no longer be willing to take in small schools without the conversion and school-improvement grants. These schools may be left to flounder in a very under-resourced local authority sector. Will local authorities be forced to close small schools as a result?
One further consequence of the fact that academies will no longer be the favoured school-improvement solution: will the energy — never very great — disappear from efforts to deal with longstanding trust and property issues surrounding church schools at the point of conversion to an academy? Local authorities are likely to say that they do not have the resources to sort out historic legal issues surrounding statutory transfers and land ownership generally — to the great detriment of church schools.
OTHER elements contained in the Schools Bill might have an impact on church schools: for example, the proposed introduction of compulsory breakfast clubs for primary schools in England for at least 30 mins before the school day.
The object is a noble one, but how the policy will play out if it is introduced universally it difficult to predict. Will these clubs put a disproportionate pressure on small rural primary schools? Schools are already trying to meet the needs of their local communities: will it be possible to divert some funding to support existing initiatives rather than a “one size fits all” policy regime?
For our church-school governors and diocesan boards of education, the educational landscape is unsettled, yet again. There is uncertainty about the future of the maintained-school and academy systems, and about the serious lack of funding from both central and local government.
Never has good governance in our church schools been more important, as schools have to navigate these new challenges.
Howard Dellar is Senior Partner and Head of the Ecclesiastical and Education Department of Lee Bolton Monier-Williams.
