The secretary of state has published her new draft education bill. As Tristram Hunt pulls together the team of MPs who will be working on it, it is essential that we provide a smart opposition to this slim yet crafty document.

Before we get into the blows we should be landing, let’s be crystal-clear about what we should not be doing, namely, total uncompromising opposition. It does us no favours to be wholesale against reform in our schools system – it is not credible and it does not help our pupils. It is to our credit when we take poorly thought through reforms and make them better.

1) Good for the goose, good for the gander

The bill is primarily concerned with ‘coasting’ local authority schools – those that are plodding along, doing on OK job and not pushing themselves. If deemed to be ‘coasting’ the bill gives the secretary of state power to convert them into academies.

First, we should agree that coasting is not good enough (particularly if the school is not closing the gap between poor kids and their wealthier peers) but we should be unrelenting in our belief that ‘coasting’ schools come in all shapes and sizes – including academies. We should be clear that the Labour party has high expectations for schools and that they apply across the board. We should be asking why the secretary of state does not share those universal high expectations and what impact it will have on those pupil’s who attend coasting academies.

Getting bogged down in the ‘Are academies better than local authority schools?’ argument will get us nowhere. This is the smarter attack and puts us on the right side of the ‘standards not structures’ debate.

2) Absolute power corrupts, absolutely

With her powers to convert a school if it is coasting added to powers if a school is failing this bill takes another step towards centralisation. In situations where schools are not performing, swift intervention is needed but – and it is a big but – it is essential that the process is open and fair. This bill removes the need for any consultation with parents if a school is moving from the local authority to an academy chain (or indeed from chain to chain). It cuts parents out, ensures that their voices are not heard and is nothing short of arrogant in the assumption that the Department for Education will always know best.

I have argued before for ‘local hearings’ when new schools open or when schools move between ‘providers’. These hearings should be jointly led by the regional commissioner and local councillors, run bit like a planning meeting and form an official part of the process – even if the view isn’t the final recommendation.

3) Smoke and mirrors

This bill is going to distract us. It is not quite ‘throw a dead cat on the table’ territory but it is not far off. Coasting schools are not the big challenge in our education system. What is most problematic about this bill is what it does not say. Nothing on teacher shortages – particularly in STEM subjects; nothing on primary place shortages – particularly in London; and nothing on the implications of a 10 per cent cut to education budgets (and who knows what to early years and further education). Smart amendments to tackle these problems will draw the debate back to where it needs to be.

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Matthew Hood is a director of a national education charity and assistant head at a secondary school in Morecambe. He tweets @MatthewHood and writes in the Reform Time column on Progress