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Schools’ three-year funding guarantee needs to be conditional on them taking responsibility for children and young people in their area, a conference heard last week, writes Amy Taylor.

Speaking at a Children Bill conference Christine Davies, lead for children’s services at the Confederation of Education Services Managers, said that the funding guarantee, outlined in the government’s five-year education strategy , put schools in a “privileged position” and with that came responsibility.

She said that the funding should be conditional on schools working in partnership with all the other local schools to take a “collective responsibility” for children and young people in their area.

Davies added that this was particularly important in terms of school admissions and exclusions. She said that between them the schools needed to ensure they were taking in all the children and young people living locally.

Although there is a duty on schools to promote wellbeing in the 2002 Education Act the duty to co-operate to improve wellbeing in the Children Bill does not apply to schools.

Davies went on to warn that there was a danger that the new children’s services agenda could cause new groups of professionals being created when the opposite should be happening.

She said that instead groups needed to be “collapsed” so people sat around the table once rather than numerous times talking about the same issues.