The Education and Inspections Bill started its life with a huge political bang—but recently completed its passage through Parliament with the tiniest of whimpers.

Other than a late frisson of excitement about the prospect of admission quotas for faith schools, the final stages of debate, in both the Lords and the Commons, were soporifically consensual.

In one sense this is hardly surprising.  The neocon rhetoric of the original Education White Paper was always at odds with the substance of 90% of its content. Who could disagree with the idea of reducing the bureaucracy of the inspection regime, improving facilities for youth, tightening the nutritional standards of school meals

or, most importantly, making the curriculum more flexible to match the individual interests and talents of each pupil?

These are the issues that parents, teachers and other professionals have focussed on for years and the Government has finally responded.

And the new Education and Inspections Act introduces  many other detailed improvements of great interest to professionals working in  the field. The clarification of teachers’ legal right to discipline pupils, the extension of parenting orders and the clear new responsibilities on parents, governing bodies and local authorities for the education of excluded pupils will all help to extend good practice in these areas. 

The new single inspectorate, the new duties on schools to promote the well being of pupils, the new duty on schools to promote  community cohesion and the stronger strategic powers of local authorities will all help to advance the Every Child Matters agenda in a positive and progressive manner. 

In respect of  ASPECT’s  very specific interests, there was a valuable debate at the Commons committee stage on the concept and operation of school improvement partners and some useful clarification provided by Government ministers.

The Commons debates on SIPS were extremely constructive and informative. Incidentally, if any  ASPECT  member would like to read the text of the debate (not normally a fun thing to do but useful, I think , in this case) my Westminster office would be happy to provide the web reference or hard copies of the Hansard. 

However, in spite of the new consensus on education policy, many questions remain unanswered. Realistically, how many schools will choose to go down the Trust route—other than those who have it thrust upon them? How will the tension between the stronger strategic planning  powers granted to the local authority and the new voice given to parents gradually be resolved? 

On school admissions, huge progress has been made, both in the Act itself and the new Draft Admissions Code. The  new emphasis on eliminating covert selection by ability has been widely welcomed. The continued tolerance of overt selection by ability (in schools spread across almost a quarter of  English local education authorities) remains a grotesque anomaly. 

With regard to 14-19 developments, how do we reconcile the increasing autonomy of individual schools, and Andrew Adonis’ call for all schools to have their own sixth forms, with the development of the  managed tertiary system which offers the only practical means by which the post-Tomlinson curriculum can be effectively implemented?         

Much of the anxiety of the debate on last year’s White Paper was centred around  the implications of  increasing choice. There was a feeling that ‘choice’, as a political priority, was gaining a life of its own which was rapidly getting out of control.  

The more considered debates of the last few  months have led to a better understanding of the implications, the contradictions and the limitations of the  choice agenda. More people are now ready to accept choice as one strand of a range of policies that contribute to school improvement –a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

More people  now  recognise that one  parent’s choice is another parent’s denial of choice: that one school’s choice to expand its sixth form is the neighbouring school’s budget cut.  A better understanding of some of the paradoxes of choice will be helpful in building the more cooperative integrated structures that the development of children’s services requires.

Overall, I stick by the comments I made in the Report stage debate in the House of Commons. The impact of the Bill will be far less than its most ideological supporters initially intended and  far less  than its most passionate  opponents originally feared.

It is possible that its most lasting impact will be political as much as educational. For the second time in two years ( the previous occasion  was the great tuition fees debate) a major new  education policy, that could have been presented as a radical piece of progressive legislation,  was  mishandled in a way that divided the Government, caused chaos in our party and confused the electorate.

To make one such mistake could have been an accident. To do it  twice was obviously carelessness. No Prime Minister, and no team of Downing St advisers, can survive this kind of misjudgement. This one hasn’t. I hope  the next one learns from the mistakes.

This article was published in Aspect's Improvement Magazine.