Education and Inspections Bill — Number of votes needed on a governing body to change a school's status — rejected — 19 Oct 2006 at 12:40
The majority Not Contents defeated an amendment[1] to the Education and Inspections Bill. This would have required school governing boards who wanted to move to Trust status to have a two thirds majority rather than a simple majority. Usually school board decisions only need a simple majority, but proponents of this amendment thought that acquiring Trust status was a sufficiently momentous decision that it should require a stronger mandate. However, the amendment was rejected. More information on what it means to be a 'Foundation' or 'Trust' school can be found here.
The main aims of the Education and Inspections Bill were to[2]:
- Allow schools to achieve 'foundation' or 'trust' status - this gives governing bodies greater freedom to manage the school.
- 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] Baroness Sharp of Guildford, House of Lords, 19 October 2006
- [2] BBC Summary of the Education and Inspections Bill, 8 March 2006
Party Summary
Votes by party, red entries are votes against the majority for that party.
What is Tell? '+1 tell' means that in addition one member of that party was a teller for that division lobby.
What is Turnout? This is measured against the total membership of the party at the time of the vote.Party | Majority (Not-Content) | Minority (Content) | Turnout |
Bishop | 2 | 0 | 8.0% |
Con | 71 | 1 | 33.8% |
Crossbench | 14 | 0 | 7.4% |
Green | 0 | 1 | 100.0% |
Lab | 91 (+2 tell) | 0 | 42.7% |
LDem | 0 | 30 (+2 tell) | 40.5% |
UUP | 0 | 1 | 100.0% |
Total: | 178 | 33 | 29.6% |
All lords Eligible to Vote - sorted by party
Includes lords who were absent (or abstained) from this vote.