Following the Education Bill’s passage into the House of Lords and its first reading on 12 May 2011, now seems to be as good a time as any to consider what role local authorities will play in the provision of education if the Bill’s proposals are implemented in their current form.

The Education Bill was introduced on 27 January 2011 as a vehicle to overhaul the education system in the UK building on reforms  (see Legal update ) originally set out in Department for Education’s education White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching” (see our Legal update on the White Paper).

Key proposals in the Bill affecting local authorities include:

• Extending the Academy and Free School programmes (see our case study on Academies for links to further materials). As part of this once a local authority has made a decision that a new school in their area is required, then the decision over which type of school should be established will be made by the Secretary of State not by the local authority itself.
• Removing the requirement to include a local authority governor on school governing bodies.
• Increasing free of charge early years provision to a targeted group of two year-olds.
• Reducing local authorities roles in dealing with admissions to schools in their areas.
• When directed to do so by the Secretary of State issuing warning notices to underperforming schools or ordering them to close.

Currently, many local authorities are responsible for providing a number of services to schools, such as in relation to the provision of ICT and health and safety. However, if there is a shift towards Academies and Free Schools being in charge of their own budgets, as the Bill proposes, then local authorities will need to be more competitive so that the schools continue to procure services from them.

Continuing involvement in education provision

Given that it is likely the role of local authorities will diminish  somewhat if the Bill’s proposals come into force, in what other ways can local authorities continue to be involved in education provision?

Sharing services and partnership working

It may be that local authorities are able to drive down the price of their service provision by working with each other to offer a more cost-effective solution appealing to the new types of schools. However, as with any shared service there is the inherent risk of working across authorities. There is a risk of delay and tension between the local authorities, particularly where local authorities have different political administrations in power (which can change during the course of the shared service project).

For more information on shared services and partnership working, see our toolkit.

Social enterprises

Some local authorities may feel that the best way of providing a service to a school in its area is through the creation of a social enterprise, such as a staff mutual. From the public authority’s perspective, outsourcing to a third party to provide public services has the major benefit of placing the obligations relating to delivery of services on a new independent provider. On the other hand, by outsourcing services to a third party, the authority loses direct control over those services and must therefore rely on the service contract with the new provider to be able to enforce the service standards it requires. See our Practice note for more information on the main issues associated with establishing an independent social enterprise.

Increasing the role of school improvement “champion”

The Schools White Paper stated that local authorities should have a key role as champions for parents and families, providing a wide range of choice of educational establishments, ensuring there are sufficient high-quality school places, co-ordinating fair admissions and supporting vulnerable children and challenging schools which fail to improve. Clearly the government envisages that local authorities will move to a strategic commissioning and oversight role since many schools may lack the expertise or simply choose not to commission services from someone other than their local authority. Therefore, it is likely that local authority expertise will be an incentive to encourage schools to procure services from their authority  rather than from other service providers. For more information, see the “New schools system (section 5)” section in our Legal update.  

A funding role?

The Education Bill also makes a number of changes to funding for schools including moving towards a national funding formula (see our Legal update on the recent consultation), which will mean that local authorities will no longer be responsible for handing out funds to schools in their area. This will inevitably mean that schools will be forced to make more decisions about funding than they do at the moment, and it is here that local authorities are likely to retain a role. The impact of the funding changes on each school will need to be assessed and limited and local authorities will be well-placed to contribute to such discussions.

However, funding is likely to be an on-going issue for local authorities given the judicial review action being brought against the government over academy funding.  In these proceedings, the claimant local authorities are seeking to challenge the government’s reduction of the Revenue Support Grant for the financial year ending 2011/2012 by £148 million which the councils argue is far in excess of the costs savings that local authorities will make. 

Conclusion

It is difficult to see how the proposals in the Bill in relation to increasing the autonomy of schools can be reconciled with the oversight role that local authorities are expected to retain. The answer to this is likely to be borne out by seeing whether the newly established Academies and Free Schools choose to procure their services or seek advice from their local authority or whether they choose to shop around for better deals from external service providers.