Education and Inspections Bill — Second Reading — 15 Mar 2006 at 18:43

Those voting Aye agreed that the Education and Inspections Bill be read a Second Time. This means it now goes on to the Committee Stage, the next part of the Parliamentary procedure.

Although there were enough Labour Party rebels to reject the Bill for its Second Reading the Tories backed the Bill and enabled it to proceed.

The main provision of the Bill was to allow schools to achieve 'Foundation' and/or 'Trust' status. Foundation schools enable their governing bodies to directly employ the school staff, become the admissions authority for the school and take on ownership of the school's assets. Trust schools have foundation status with a charitable foundation to support the school.

More information about this can be found on the Supporting Trust and Foundation Schools website.

Other aims of the Bill were to^[1]:

• Reaffirm the existing ban on selection by ability and proposes a ban on interviewing.
• Give local authorities greater scope to intervene more quickly in failing schools.
• Ensure local authorities provide free school transport for the poorest families.
• Enable nutritional standards to be applied to all food and drink on school premises.
• Allow staff to discipline children for bad behaviour even outside of school.
• Ensure parents are held responsible for excluded pupils.

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• [1] BBC Summary of the Education and Inspections Bill, 8 March 2006

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