Education Bill: Schools agency to take on council role: Funding to be reformed and new associations given task of tackling local deficiencies

The main proposals outlined in the Bill

The Education Bill published yesterday by John Patten:

creates a Funding Agency for grant-maintained schools;

simplifies opting out procedure;

enables local authorities to scrap education committees;

allows local education authorities to provide services to grant-maintained schools for two years only;

enables parents and voluntary groups to set up new grant- maintained schools;

allows small primary schools to opt out as a group;

strengthens the obligation to develop religous education;

amalgamates the National Curriculum Council and School Examinations and Assessment Authority to create a new School Curriculum and Assessment Authority;

creates a new tribunal to hear special needs appeals;

enables the Secretary of State to submit his own plans to close down surplus school places and have his proposals referred to public inquiry;

allows the Secretary of State to set up Education Associations which will take over failing schools, including church schools.

A NEW Funding Agency for Schools will gradually take over from local education authorities wherever schools opt out, under the Education Bill published yesterday.

John Patten, Secretary of State for Education, told the House of Commons select committee this week that the agency would initially be a national organisation, without regional offices. But he left open the possibility of a regional network if the grant-maintained sector grows rapidly over the next few years.

The Bill confirms all the central proposals in Choice and Diversity, the White Paper issued in July. But the answer to the biggest question - the proposed Common Funding Formula for opted- out schools - will not be published by ministers until the end of this year.

Mr Patten said in July that he expected the Funding Agency to be a streamlined bureaucracy, doing little more than administer the supply of grants to opted-out schools, and ensure that enough school places were provided.

However, the Bill will give 44 new powers to the Secretary of State, many of which he can devolve to the Funding Agency. If a lot more schools opt out, the agency will become a powerful administrative arm of government.

As soon as 10 per cent of the pupils in any area are attending opted-out schools, the Funding Agency in England, or Schools Funding Council, in Wales, will share responsibility for providing places with the local education authority. That could mean 10 per cent of secondary places, or primary. In smaller local authorities, therefore, it will only need one large comprehensive to opt out for the Funding Agency to acquire equal responsibility for secondary school places in that area.

Once three-quarters of either primary or secondary schools have opted out, the agency will take over the whole responsibility from the local authority. It is quite likely - as Mr Patten acknowledged to the select committee last Wednesday - that many areas of the country will have their secondary schools funded by the agency, while their primary schools continue to be run entirely by their local council.

Local authorities - which may be left with only special educational needs and school transport to administer - will be able to dissolve their education committees. They will be allowed to continue providing opted-out schools with other services, such as payroll work, or peripatetic music teaching, but only for two years. After that, opted-out schools will have to buy such support privately.

Apart from distributing funds to opted-out schools according to a common formula, the agency will be able to give grants for specific purposes - enabling the Government to target money to particular schools for its own projects.

The agency will also have the power to propose closures, extensions and the creation of new schools. Groups of parents, voluntary bodies and business sponsors will be able to propose new schools, so long as they can find 15 per cent of the initial building costs, and convince the agency that additional places are needed. It will direct schools to accept pupils expelled elsewhere.

Groups of primary schools will be able to opt out as a cluster, under a single governing body. Mr Patten hopes that will encourage small schools, particularly those in rural areas, who might otherwise feel unable to cope with what the minister calls 'self-governing' status.

If opted-out schools want to make substantial changes to their character - by becoming wholly selective, for example, adding a sixth form, or creating a full-time nursery school - they will have to submit proposals to the agency.

Mr Patten also hopes to speed the pace of opting out by simplifying the balloting procedure. Local education authorities will be prevented from mounting big campaigns against opting out, and the minister will have the power to fund governing bodies which are unable to pay for their own campaign in favour of opting out. He told the select committee that, in effect, each side of an opt-out contest will be able to publish a leaflet.

Opted-out schools will have to agree joint admissions procedures with the local education authority; if they cannot agree, the Secretary of State will impose one.

Where opted-out schools fail, or their governing bodies cannot cope, the minister will be able to appoint two extra governors, and remove the founding or 'first' governors. Those provisions are designed to tackle the kind of problems encountered earlier this year at Stratford School in east London, where governors clashed with the head teacher over the running of the school.