The Education White Paper: Higher standards - yes! Better Schools for All - great! But - (There always has to be a but …)

The Government's new Education white paper is a massive document, with a great many proposals in. I guess only Paul Gray and the Executive member at this point could give an indication of the work that will go on to form a detailed response, and the length of time this will take. It's a paper that's full of ideas and ideology. There's a quite a way to go in terms of legislation and setting up the new systems, and a lot of decisions still to be made. In putting forward this motion, we have chosen to focus on three areas of concern, which - in educationspeak - will be particularly challenging to Surrey and may lead to undesirable outcomes.

Let's take first the white paper's proposals on Admissions. Every school is supposed to become its 'own admissions authority'. At the same time, the requirement on Local authorities to co-ordinate admissions is approved. When it comes to secondary schools, the White Paper insists that there "will be no return to the divisive 11+". However 'a particular aptitude for some subject' is different and, as happens now, specialist schools can give up to ten percent of their intake to those with such an aptitude. At the same time there'll be the possibility of banding, to make sure the intake of popular schools is spread according to of abilities measured by intelligence tests. How on earth is this supposed to be fair if, for example, a school has a specialism where aptitude in that specialism correlates strongly with general intelligence? Will we find little Jenny, who wants to go a secondary school specialising in, say, maths and science, being coached to fit in whichever ability band looks likely to have vacancies? Could she fail through getting too high marks?

Schools will be expected to keep to the admissions code of practise - but how is this going to square with their new independence? The more complicated the system becomes, the harder many parents will work to understand and beat it - and the more schools will be able to manipulate it, to allowing covert selection. and excluding the hard-to-place children who are less of a 'pleasure to teach'.

We have an admissions system in Surrey that works most of the time, and are going through a long, complicated - and no doubt expensive- consultation process to see if it can be made better and fairer. Letting every school re-write the admissions criteria as they like will not lead to a fairer situation, or one that will please parents better - unless you listen only to the winners, and not the losers.

The other outstandingly bad idea in this White Paper is that all schools should be encouraged to be 'trust' schools, and there will be no more Community Schools - effectively, Community Schools would be phased out. Schools that 'acquire' Trusts, or are set up by Trusts, could appoint the majority of the Governors, undoing the progress that has been made with the reconstitution of Governing Bodies to include more parent Governors, but instead instituting 'Parent Councils'. The claim is that setting up "Charitable Trusts who can appoint Governors" will strengthen Governing Bodies and "provide an external source of direction".

The local authority is going to be expected to rapidly shut down schools that are not performing well enough, and hold competitions among providers of new schools - if local authority wants to set up a school itself, it will have to get permission from a new Schools Commissioner, and it won't have the option of opening a Community School.

I, for one, don't like where we're going with this. Governing Bodies will, more than ever, be small, self-perpetuating cliques, with less democratic input from the local community than at present. Their powers will be greater, so that schools can expand as they like. You can say, why shouldn't a good school expand, if it attracts the pupils - but what makes a school popular is most often an exceptional Head attracting good staff and managing them well. Heads can move on. It's harder to move new building put up to house the extra children. And the expanding school may be in the wrong place for the community it now serves. Also, particularly at the primary level, expansion can be self-destructive - what many parents want for their young children is a good, small school close by, where friendships can be easily maintained outside as well as inside school.

The system envisaged in this white paper is described as 'dynamic' but is in effect Darwinian - schools will compete, and the winners will survive. The competition will be made even fiercer by falling school roles, which are already having a serious effect in Surrey, but are only mentioned briefly in the White paper, and then in the context of secondary schools. The Local Authority will be expected to close down weak schools, and 'run competitions' to open new ones, These can be Foundation, Trust, Voluntary Aided, Academies - but not Community. It will have to provide a site for the new school - most likely the old site - and after that its powers over the new school will be quite limited, unless it gets into trouble and has to be closed down again.

If the Local Authority puts forward its own proposals for a new school, they will have to get approval from a new, national Schools Commissioner. The powers of this 'Commissioner' are not clear - but it will be another powerful, unelected voice in a structure with increased, not decreased, bureaucracy.

It's hard to see in this structure where there will be room, or the incentive, for schools to be fully involved with the co-operative working and integration of services that is part of the Every Child Matters agenda, for example with the provision of Children's Centres through the county, which will rely very heavily on co-operation with and between schools if they are to be a success.

At the other end of the age-range, there is mention of increased co-operation between Local Authorities and the Learning and Schools council to broaden 14 - 19 education - but still no determination to address the disparities in funding between Sixth form colleges and school sixth forms, and integrate the Colleges more closely into the changes that need to be made to improve staying-on rates and allow the cross-phase working essential to the individualised approach to education set out in one of the good bits of this paper.

There are, in fact, some really good bits in this paper that anyone can welcome, regardless of their political views. Individualised learning across the whole range of abilities; better trained staff; tackling bullying and disruptive behaviour.

The final chapter, on Resource and Legislative implications, is quite skimpy, and makes only a vague commitment not to "create unfounded new burdens" on local authorities. At the start of that process, I'm asking that individual members of this Council take up these specific, but very important points, to argue that genuine improvement can be achieved without yet more radical changes to educational structures. Surrey's MPs should be made aware of the potential harmful effects on an area by area basis, and our overall concerns should be put to the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. I don't know whether she will listen, but weight of opinion has been known to influence what actually comes out of a White Paper. If you don't ask, you don't get.