Selected extracts from: Duty to Respond to
Parental Representations about the Provision of Schools - A Guide for
Local Authorities
Published by School Organisation Unit, DCSF, Mowden Hall, Darlington, DL3 9BG
Full document at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/schoolorg/guidance.cfm?id=26
(Empasis in red
is ours; our comments in green)
Background
4. The
Schools White Paper set out the Government’s plans to put parents and
their children at the heart of their schools system, so the system as a
whole is increasingly driven by parents and choice. Specifically
it went on to say: "Parents may feel that what is needed is an entirely
new school or new provision within an existing school. We want to
make it easier for them to express their views and to trigger
action. We will give parents the right to ask for a new primary
or secondary school. They may do so in order to improve standards of
local education, to meet a lack of faith provision, to tackle
entrenched inequalities or to promote innovative teaching methods. LAs
will be under a duty to be responsive to parental interests. Where
these demands have support, they will be expected to provide dedicated
consultancy support to help parents develop a concrete proposal."
5. Accordingly
the Education and Inspections Act 2006 (“the Act”) places new duties on
LAs to promote diversity and increase parental choice in planning and
securing the provision of school places. The Act also places an
explicit duty on LAs for the first time to respond formally to parents
seeking changes to the provision of schools in their area, including
new schools.
6. As
the champion of parents and pupils, LAs will support new schools
and new provision where there is a real local sustainable demand from
parents or where existing provision is poor. Improving
the range and quality of choice for parents will also mean LAs
spearheading action to challenge low standards in their schools and
improve provision for children through every means at their disposal.
The new powers on swift and decisive action to tackle school failure,
improved measures on school discipline and increased opportunity for
parental engagements in their child’s education – together with the new
duties on choice, diversity and fair access – are the drivers to ensure
that every child achieves their potential and every family has a choice
amongst good schools for their child.
7. Section 13 of the Education Act
1996 establishes the high-level functions of the LA in securing
education for the area, which it should undertake with a view to
promoting high standards and (as amended by the Education and
Inspections Act 2006) the fulfilment of educational potential for every
child and with a view to ensuring fair access to educational
opportunity. Section 14 of the Education Act 1996 places LAs under a
general duty to secure sufficient schools to provide primary and
secondary education in their area. They should also have particular
regard to securing special education provision. The Education and
Inspections Act 2006 amends the 1996 Act to place additional duties on
LAs in relation to Section 14. It inserts a new Section
14(3A) which places LAs under a duty to promote choice for parents
and secure diversity in the provision of schools.
8. It
also inserts a new Section 14A which places LAs under a specific duty
to consider and respond to parental representations when carrying out
their duties under Section 14. There are also duties on
LAs under Section 315 of the 1996 Act to review the arrangements made
by them for special educational needs.
10. Under
Section 12 of the Childcare Act 2006 LAs will be under a duty to
establish and maintain a service to provide information, advice and
assistance for parents and prospective parents – this includes
information about education services and schools. This service
will need to be able to inform parents of their new rights, the
authority’s current plans for provision, the ways in which they can
make their voice heard, what they can expect of the authority and where
to go if they are not satisfied with the result. LAs will
need to ensure that the information is available to people who might
otherwise have difficulty in accessing the services they need.
Guidance in relation to this duty will be issued as part of the
statutory guidance to support the Childcare Act.
Parental
Involvement and Consultation
11. The
best LAs are already strategic leaders of their communities, who work
hard at listening to their communities and work with them to articulate
their needs. When planning they think creatively
about the current and future patterns of demand; and, in commissioning,
they look critically at the range of current and potential providers to
secure partners who can work with them to provide improved
services. Their job is not to second guess or micro-manage
providers but to establish a system that allows innovation and
creativity in delivery, together with robust challenge on behalf of
their citizens when standards of service are not high enough. [S-o-T City Council
please note!]
12. We believe that
all authorities should, as a matter of course, be designing diversity
of provision and factoring in parental views and wishes as part of
their planning process in order to drive up standards. Consulting
with parents, carers and local partners, studying demographics and
changes in local populations will be part of the proactive work
undertaken by LAs in designing a school system responsive to the local
community. Talking with local parents should not wait until
there are specific proposals for closing or opening a school in the
area but be an ongoing integral part of the planning process. The
Building Schools for the Future (BSF) initiative is giving LAs the
opportunity to review existing secondary provision, including special
school provision, and make creative changes in the pattern of provision.
16. To carry out their new duties effectively,
LAs will need to seek evidence about parents’ satisfaction and act on
evidence of parental dissatisfaction or unmet parental demand.
LAs will need to consider in particular how to gather information about
levels of satisfaction amongst ‘hard to reach’ groups of parents who
may not otherwise have their views taken into account.
18. These new duties in the
2006 Act are intended to ensure that LAs take account of the needs of
all communities when planning the provision of school places and that
they seek actively to increase the diversity of provision.
[S-o-T City Council
please note!]
19. All LAs will need to
think creatively about capturing the views of the full range of their
local residents, including socially and economically
disadvantaged parents, fathers, mothers and other carers, those who are
not fluent in English and those who are otherwise hard to reach. We
expect LAs to make information available to all parents informing them
of their new rights, the authority’s current plans for provision, the
ways in which they can make their voice heard, what they can expect of
the authority and where to go if they are not satisfied with the
results. LAs should use the full range of communications channels
to ensure that this reaches the widest possible range of parents and
should stick to plain language. [S-o-T City Council
please note!]
Information
to Parents
24. Many
LAs are successfully reaching out to the majority of parents in their
area and some are leading the way in innovatively engaging the full
range of local residents. In future all LAs will need to think
creatively about capturing the views of the full range of their local
residents, including socially and economically disadvantaged parents,
fathers, mothers and other carers, those who are not fluent in English
and those who are otherwise hard to reach. LAs should use the full
range of communications channels to ensure that information reaches the
widest possible range of parents and should stick to plain language.
Statutory Guidance
26. This guidance
relates to the handling of representations from parents, acting
individually or jointly, about the exercise of LAs’ duties in relation
to the provision of primary and secondary education under Section 14 of
the Education Act 1996. To
qualify under the Act, the parents involved must be parents of a child
of school age or under who lives in the authority’s area.
27. An informed and engaged
parental population will be better able to help LAs in the task of
consulting on and planning for school provision in the area. It is
important that parents know about their rights to make representation
to the LA and the duty on the LA to consider and respond to these
representations. [S-o-T City Council please note!]
28. Local parents
might approach the LA to seek action where they feel there is
deficiency in choice and diversity in schools provision or might come
forward with their own proposals. In every case the LA should
exercise its judgement in considering whether the approach is a
representation from parents requiring a response under the new
duty. Where there is an existing LA plan for the reorganisation
of provision, however, the established routes for parents to make their
views known should be followed. This
means that representations received in response to consultation by the
LA on options, or on specific reorganisation proposals, should be
treated as consultation responses and taken into account by the LA when
deciding how to proceed. Representations made in response to published
proposals should be treated as such, and taken into account by the LA
or schools adjudicator when considering the proposals.
29. Given the wide
range of circumstances applying in individual LAs, we do not believe it
is appropriate to specify a minimum number of parents whose
representation would ‘trigger’ the new duty to respond. As
a general rule, we would expect parental representations and LA
responses to be monitored by the authority at the highest official and
political levels. LAs will be able to use their discretion in
determining the weight to give responses [unfortunately, this
may give S-o-T City Council the right to almost completely
ignore
parents' wishes!].
30. Moreover,
an LA should not specify that parents should have to use a required
form of words or demand a particular kind of action (for example, the
opening of a new school) before the authority will respond.
It would not be enough, for example, for the LA to respond only to
formal petitions from groups of parents seeking a new school and
explicitly invoking the new duties introduced in the Act. LAs
can, however, develop and publicise
their own procedures for engaging parents and responding to
representations.
31. Where the LA
are satisfied that the communication from parents amounts to
representation under the new duty, then the LA should investigate and
respond in a proportionate way according to the circumstances of the
case.
32. Where there is
a group of parents already formed with a specific aim of bringing
forward a proposal for a new school, the LA will be able to engage with
the group immediately. Where local opinion is
less organised or developed the LA may need to do more to gauge the
level of parental concern, possibly through a public meeting to gauge
opinion more generally or other forms of local consultation and then
work with parents in articulating the problem and assessing the level
of demand for different provision in the area. As
the circumstances in each case will be different, the time required to
respond fully to representations will vary. If the
representations lead to statutory proposals, then the LA will consult
more widely with the community as part of that statutory process. See
http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/schoolorg/
34. As
a minimum, we would expect LAs to respond to any parental
representation within four weeks, setting out the authority’s initial
response and, where appropriate, a timetabled plan of future
action. This might include, for example, undertakings by the
local authority to consult further in writing or hold public meetings
about issues raised in the representation. In particular, the
local authority should indicate when they intend to produce a final
response. The local
authority has the responsibility to keep parents informed about action
and progress and update them at key points agreed in advance.
35. Having taken
the steps specified in the initial response (and any further steps that
might be necessary), the LA should respond to the original
representation or representations by means of a statement or statements.
The response might take the form of an undertaking by the LA to take
further action. This might include supporting parents or other
promoters to develop proposals for a new school in the area, or
alternatively, to hold a competition. In
other circumstances, it will be appropriate for the LA to put forward
to parents another option which does not involve the establishment of a
new school, for example, expanding another successful school in the area.
This might be the suitable course of action where, for example, parents
have complained or are concerned about the standards at a particular
school and their concerns are best addressed through action to improve
the quality of provision there.
40. ... LAs
will need to consider representations from parents on a case-by-case
basis and what constitutes an appropriate response in each case will
depend on the specific circumstances (including, for example,
the availability of a site for a new school). In
many cases action will be primarily on improving standards at existing
schools and the range of choice effectively available to parents.
Where new provision is proposed as the leading option the outcome will
depend on the publication of statutory proposals. This means that
even if a local authority supported parents to develop their own
proposals for a new school, the school might never be established
(because the local authority, taking account of the views of
stakeholders including other parents in the area, might reject the
parents’ proposals and the Schools Adjudicator uphold that decision).
Case Study A
41. ... Where it appears that the situation can
be resolved by working
within the current pattern of provision in the area, the LA may:
a. Work
with parents to ensure that they know the options open to them, the
strengths of schools in the local and wider area and their rights on
expressing preferences, free transport and so on; or
b. Encouraging the governing body of an existing school which is
unpopular with parents to strengthen the leadership and ethos of the
school by acquiring a Trust; or
c. Invite
the governing body of an existing popular and successful school to
expand (and LAs will also have powers to publish their own
proposals for the expansion of a maintained school of any category) or
federate with a less popular school.
Alternatively, the LA may decide that there is a good case for a new
school. In these circumstances, the LA may:
d. Bring forward proposals to close an existing school which is unpopular
[i.e.
undersubscribed, or with surplus places] with parents and invite
a parents group or other promoters to bring forward proposals for a
Trust school on the same site (the consent of the Secretary of State
would be necessary for a new school outside a competition) or hold a
competition for a replacement maintained school on that site; or
e. Identify a suitable site and buildings for a brand new school and
invite a parents’ group to establish a Trust school on that site (as
above, the proposers or the LA will need to secure the Secretary of
State’s consent to publish proposals without holding a completion); or
f. Identify a suitable site and buildings for a brand new school and
invite other proposers to bring forward proposals for a Trust school on
that site. Depending on the views expressed by parents, the
proposers might be a particular faith organisation – for example, the
Church of England – or an education charity – such as Montessori or for
a particular ethos, if the parents had expressed a preference for that
type of education. Again, the proposers will need to secure the
Secretary of State’s consent to publish proposals without holding a
competition; or
g. Identify a suitable site and buildings for a brand new school and
hold a competition for a new publicly funded school on that site.
In the case of e, f and g, the LA would need to consider how to address
any increase in the number of surplus places caused by the new
provision.
Outside a competition
46. Formulating a proposal for a new school is often
a complex and technical process, requiring expertise in a number of
areas as well as organisational and management skills. There are
sometimes awkward practical problems related, for example, to sites,
buildings and regulations. Some parent groups have skills and
expertise already in their ranks and have learned more as they go
along. But
for local parents to have an LA which is committed to offering
practical support and finding solutions to awkward problems could make
the difference between a live project and one which fails for lack of
constructive engagement. [S-o-T City Council
please note!]
51. In future, LAs will need to sustain the capacity
for increased responsiveness to parental demand by taking advantage of
the full range of powers available to them. These include the power to
publish proposals to expand both foundation and voluntary schools and
also the power to bring forward proposals to close schools where
necessary to reduce the numbers of surplus places [why propose the
closure of an oversubscribed school to reduce the number of surplus
places?].
