Education Secretary Gillian Keegan insisted the Government remained committed to some of the elements within the doomed legislation.
07 December 2022
A flagship piece of education legislation has been dropped after running into opposition in Parliament.
The Schools Bill, which had already been stripped of key elements, will not progress, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said.
She told MPs that parliamentary time was being focused on measures relating to the economic crisis, but insisted the Government still viewed elements of the Bill as a priority.
Schools like @MoorsideHigh are doing an incredible job in raising educational standards, boosting attendance in class and improving safeguarding.
Measures in our Schools Bill will ensure children get a world-class education, no matter where they live.pic.twitter.com/Ap56gNePVw
— Department for Education (@educationgovuk) May 12, 2022
The legislation was originally intended to cover issues including school funding, the regulation of academies, tackling truancy, ensuring the welfare of home-educated children and banning unsuitable teachers.
She told MPs the Schools Bill, which has already been gutted during its passage through the Lords, “will not progress”.
The legislation had been due for its third reading in the Lords, but the Government stripped out contentious chunks of the Bill that would have given ministers sweeping powers over autonomous academies.
Confirming the legislation would not progress, Ms Keegan told the Education Select Committee: “Obviously, there’s been a lot of things that we’ve had to focus on, and the need to provide economic stability and tackle the cost of living means that the parliamentary time has definitely been reprioritised on that.
“And we all know that we had to do that because of the pandemic aftershocks but also the war in Ukraine and we’ve needed to support families.
“However, we do remain committed to the objectives, the very many important objectives that underpinned the Bill, and we will be prioritising some aspects of the Bill as well to see what we can do.”
She said that many of the ambitions set out in the Schools White Paper, published in March under Boris Johnson’s premiership, could be implemented without legislation.
“A lot of the Schools White Paper is being implemented, it didn’t require legislation in many cases,” she said.
She said that a register of children not in school was “definitely a priority” as Committee chairman Robin Walker said he wanted to know how that could now be delivered.
Ms Keegan also said the Government could go “quite a long way to achieving our aims” on reforms to schools funding for England without legislation.
She also said the Government was committed to legislate on protections for faith schools joining multi-academy trusts.
