Education and Adoption Bill

Line by line examination of the Bill took place during the final day of report stage on 16 December. Amendments discussed covered clauses 1, 7, 8 and 10 of the Bill.

Third reading - a final chance to amend the Bill - is scheduled for 4 February.

Under the bill the secretary of state for Education (currently Nicky Morgan) will be given powers to force ‘inadequate’ and ‘coasting’ (definition yet to be decided) maintained schools to become academies by classing them as ‘eligible for intervention’. The local authority would also have various intervention powers for these schools.

The legislation removes the right of local parents and teachers to object to plans to convert schools to academy status.

The bill would give the Secretary of State powers to issue warning notices without going through the local authority, and schools will lose the ability to challenge warning notices by appealing to Ofsted.

Nursery and reception classes within schools will be affected, though nursery schools will not. An amendment says the  ‘Current legislation does not allow maintained nursery schools to become academies, and the Secretary of State cannot make an academy order for such provision. That is because maintained nursery schools do not fall within the definition of maintained schools for the purposes of the Academies Act 2010.’

The bill is also designed to speed up the adoption process by the Secretary of State requiring local authorities to make arrangements for their adoption functions (recruitment, assessment and approval) to be carried out by another adoption agency.

The bill can be found here