Speeches by O'Brien.

“I have two specific questions, although there may be no answer to the first—it may be for regulations, and there may be no decision yet. If a large local authority such as Birmingham wants to have more than one of these things, can it do so? My other question —which Iaised before the break—is about substitutes. What ha…”

“I beg to move amendment 20, in clause 4, page 6, line 33, at end insert— “(4A) Where the relevant person considers that the disclosure would be more detrimental to the child than not disclosing the information, this decision must be recorded.” This amendment requires decisions made not to disclose information to be rec…”

“Q I want to ask you about a few other issues, including pay and QTS. As a headteacher, you have used academy freedoms, and you have also worked in a global shortage subject, mathematics. I do not know what you think of the Bill more generally and whether there are things beyond what we have talked about already that yo…”

“Q Thank you; that is very helpful. I have a question for Rebecca. In Schools Week you wrote: “The schools bill working its way through Parliament…is not good legislation.” You described it as “micromanagement” and “stifling”. You talked about some of your experiences as a headteacher. Can you expand a bit on the overal…”

“Q Good afternoon. Thank you for bearing with us while we voted. During the course of the day we have been discussing free school meals in secondary schools. It is obviously desirable to give lots of people free breakfasts, but there has been a bit of a debate about how to prioritise in a situation of inevitably scarce …”

“Q What is the problem? David Thomas: I have worked with some fantastic people—generally late-career people in shortage subjects who want to go and give back in the last five to 10 years of their career—who would not go through some of the bureaucracy associated with getting qualified teacher status but are absolutely f…”

“Q There are lots of other big challenges in the sector at the moment: attendance, discipline and lots of other things. Is there anything else that you would like to either amend in the Bill or add to it? David Thomas: I have concerns about limiting the number of people with unqualified teacher status who are not workin…”

“Q Do you think it would be more attractive to extend those freedoms over both pay and conditions to local authority schools? David Thomas: I think it would absolutely work, as CST has suggested, to say that statutory teachers’ pay and conditions should be an advisory thing that schools and trusts need to have due regar…”

“Q So an amendment to bring those two things back into line—the stated intent and the actual Bill—would be sensible. David Thomas: Yes.”

“Q Can I ask you about the very general powers in clause 43 that give the Secretary of State the ability to intervene on a whole range of subjects? The explanatory notes to the Bill talk about using that to intervene on relatively micro things like school uniform. Do you think that untrammelled power is desirable, or wo…”

“Q David, welcome and thank you for joining us. I want to ask you first about the national curriculum and its imposition on all academy schools. We have heard about the use of that flexibility as a form of freedom—where schools are being turned around, they might do something different for a while and diverge from the n…”

“Q What I am getting at is that we need to change the Bill as it is currently drafted by officials, in order to achieve those things. Leora Cruddas: Yes, I would say that was true.”

“Q On pay and conditions, you might think that the idea of a floor, not a ceiling, is a decent direction of travel, but to be clear, that is not where the Bill is now and it needs to change. That is my position. Leora Cruddas: Again, I would cite the Secretary of State’s evidence to the Select Committee, where she made …”

“Q Would an amendment to that effect be helpful to preserve those freedoms? Leora Cruddas: It would be very helpful to have clarity on that position. Obviously, we have not had the curriculum and assessment review report yet. I have absolute confidence that Professor Francis will be eminently sensible. She is a very ser…”

“Q But in adjusting to that, some schools might face severe adjustments or even need new capital, facilities and stuff— Leora Cruddas: That is exactly right. Under this legislation, we could end up with a high-level national curriculum framework—once again, as I said on pay and conditions, with a floor but no ceiling. T…”

“Q I have a quick one for Leora on academies’ freedom with the curriculum. Some trusts not far from my constituency have used those freedoms quite strongly. They have deliberately focused on the core academics. In some cases, they do not necessarily even have the facilities to provide the national curriculum—if they are…”

“Q That is a potential problem for a small rural school. Rebecca Leek: It is a real problem for small rural schools particularly. They function really well in little pockets of two or three schools together, with maybe one executive head dealing with some of the headaches—because there are headaches—and with some things…”

“Q That is very helpful. You have run both types of school and have said that when you were running local authority-run schools, you were often told, “No, we cannot do that”, even when the action would solve a problem and benefit our pupils, and even though you can see the academy down the road doing exactly that. What …”

“Q You said: “We accept current arrangements are fractured: introducing the Schools Adjudicator worsens rather than improves this”. What do you mean by that? Leora Cruddas: We are not sure what the intention is behind the Government’s need to bring forward the clause in the Bill that would introduce greater powers for a…”

“Q That is very helpful and specific. Another thing you have raised concerns about is clause 50, which will give local authorities the ability to challenge a school’s PAN, even if it is just keeping it the same. I am sympathetic and understand what they are trying to do, with place planning and so on, but I have concern…”