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
All Votes Cast - sorted by name
Lords for which their vote in this division differed from the majority vote of their party are marked in red. Also shows which lords were ministers at the time of this vote. You can also see every eligible lord including those who did not vote in this division.