The Education and Inspections Bill 2006 received Royal Assent on 8 November, and is now the law of the land. Exactly one week later, the Queen's Speech did not contain details of a major new Education Bill – although there will be an Further Education Bill – but merely the following reference: ‘My government's programme of educational reform will continue to raise standards in schools to help all children achieve their full potential.' No doubt the programme of educational reform will continue, but to have a new Labour parliamentary session without a major education Bill seems a rare luxury. The tiny handful of education legislation anoraks will be thinking, ‘What's to become of us?' after a welter of legislation since 1997. Cynics might argue that the Government can do much of what it wants in education through secondary legislation anyway. But that's another story. In fact, the Education and Inspection Act is a significant piece of legislation but not, perhaps, for the reasons that the Government hoped for in the heady days of October 2005 when the White Paper Higher standards better schools for all was published. The prospect of a system of ‘independent state schools', which generated a chorus of such disapproval and provoked a massive rebellion in the Commons, has now receded, although the Act promotes the concept of ‘trust' schools, which, although not new, is seen as the latest structural panacea for the ills of state education. What are of far greater significance in the Act, in fact, are the measures that will bind schools far more closely into the Every child matters agenda. When the Children Act 2004 was being discussed, there was a general consensus, shared by everyone apart from the Government, that schools should be named as one of the institutions which had a duty to co-operate in the delivery of the children's agenda. When the same issue was raised in the early discussions on this Act, the-then schools minister made the point that this was an education Act, and the Children Act had taken care of the children's agenda. However, very late in the day, Lord Adonis finally yielded to the strength of the argument that school was about more than just education. Section 38 of the Act places new duties on the governing bodies of schools to ‘promote the wellbeing of pupils at the school – as defined in the Children Act 2004 – and to promote community cohesion. These new duties, against which schools will be inspected, will significantly strengthen the role that schools will be expected to play in the Every child matters agenda. Equally significant is that governing bodies must have regard to the local authority's Children and Young People's Plan, in both the conduct of the school and the provision of extended services. An integral part of the new Act is the 16 sections on school admissions, principal of which is section 40. This deals with the code of practice on admission – currently out for consultation – which makes it clear that admission authorities have to ‘act in accordance with' the code, rather than merely ‘have regard to' it. Alan Johnson, secretary of state for education, made it quite clear from his first speech – in which he criticised parents who popped into church for a ‘quick knees down' in order to secure a place for their child in a church school – that fair access to the school was one of his top priorities. The code will not only proscribe a raft of admission criteria that some schools use to ‘select by stealth' but also provide clear guidelines on uniform and transport policies to give disadvantaged children a better chance of accessing the most popular schools, and will guarantee a school place to a child in care. It is interesting to speculate on how this Bill will be regarded in 10 years' time. Let us hope the verdict will be that the 2006 Act was the one which made school admissions much fairer and engaged all schools fully in the children's agenda. A far cry indeed from the ‘atomisation' of state education that some feared would result from the government's original intentions. Chris Waterman is executive director at the Confederation of Children's Services Managers
