§ Mr. McCrindleasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he has any proposals to encourage better deployment of teachers between schools; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Chris PattenIn the White Paper "Better Schools", the Government emphasised their aim to improve the effectiveness with which the school teacher force is deployed across and within local education authorities. We recognised that authorities had difficulty 319W relating Government policies for the size of the teacher force nationally to their decisions on local teacher numbers, and encouraged the establishment of a joint official working group with the local authority associations. This group has recommended that national planning horizons should be established for teacher numbers, and appropriate guidance should be issued to local education authorities. In considering our response to the group's advice, we shall want to take account, among other things, of the scope for local authorities to rationalise their school provision and thus to mitigate the staffing diseconomies associated with smaller schools.