The Department for Education still wants to introduce legislation to crack down on unregistered schools and tighten rules on teacher misconduct after its flagship Schools Bill was shelved.
The government also remains committed to strengthening regulation of private schools, Tes understands.
All these plans were contained in the government’s Schools Bill, which education secretary Gillian Keegan confirmed yesterday would not be going ahead.
However, Tes understands these are all policy areas that the department is committed to pursuing when the legislative timetable allows them to.
The DfE also wants to legislate to create a register of children not in schools - as had been planned in the Schools Bill - as Ms Keegan indicated to MPs at the Commons Education Select Committee yesterday.
Uncertainty has surrounded the Schools Bill for months after it ran into difficulty in the House of Lords before the summer, over concerns that plans to create new standards for regulating multi-academy trusts (MATs) would amount to a Whitehall power grab over the way schools were run.
This led to large swathes of the bill - relating to the standards that could be expected of MATs - being withdrawn.
This was followed by months of political instability at the top of government, which has led to five different education secretaries having been in post at Sanctuary Buildings over a period of four months.
Yesterday, Ms Keegan, making her first appearance at the Commons Education Select Committee, confirmed that the Schools Bill would not be going ahead in the third session of Parliament.
However, she said that creating a register to identify and account for children not in schools was “definitely a priority” along with helping more faith schools to join MATs.
Tes understands that as well as legislating to create the out-of-school register, the government also wants to be able to progress its plans on unregistered schools and improve regulation of private schools and teacher conduct.
What safeguarding measures were planned in the Schools Bill?
The Schools Bill set out proposals in each of these areas.
When the bill was published, a supporting DfE document said that legislation was needed to strengthen inspectors’ powers to investigate a suspected criminal offence in relation to both unregistered or registered independent schools.
This would “better enable prosecutions to be brought against those responsible”, the department said.
Its plan to address unregistered schools would have permitted Ofsted inspectors to act in “a more intrusive fashion” during an inspection of a suspected unregistered independent school, and also during inspections of registered schools believed to be acting unlawfully.
The DfE document explaining the proposed changes added: “For example, rather than being permitted to ‘inspect and take copies of’ documents found, inspectors will be able to search for evidence and seize what is found.
“This means inspectors may be able to access and review nearly all evidence that is available in an educational setting which is believed to be operating unlawfully.”
Intervening at independent schools
On the regulation of independent schools, the DfE Schools Bill documents set out how it aimed to create new powers to be able to suspend the registration of private schools where serious safeguarding failings pose a risk of harm to students.
It also intended to give the education secretary the ability to intervene by making it a criminal offence for the proprietor of the school to continue operating the school while its registration is suspended.
The government said at the time that existing action to close failing independent schools was “unacceptable”, as it can be slow and difficult to achieve where institutions show periods of improvement but are still failing to meet the required standards.
Widening net on teacher misconduct
The Schools Bill had also set out plans to broaden the current teacher misconduct regime.
This included investigating cases where people have committed alleged misconduct when not employed as a teacher, but who have at any time carried out teaching work.
The DfE was also set to broaden the scope of the regime to include a wider range of education settings and to enable the education secretary to consider referrals of serious teacher misconduct, regardless of how the matter comes to their attention.
Tes previously reported on how these changes would allow the Teaching Regulation Agency to be able to consider cases of alleged misconduct that the DfE has identified itself, such as school fraud or exam malpractice.
It is not clear how much of these proposals could be taken forward in any new legislation.
