The Local Authority is responsible for promoting high standards in maintained schools and ensuring that the curriculum for each school is balanced and broadly based, promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life.

The basic principles governing the relationship between Torbay its schools is that good schools manage themselves; we only intervene in schools’ management in inverse proportion to schools’ success.

The Local Authority is under a duty to:

• Make sure there are enough school and pre-school places
• Ensure that school admissions are fair. Torbay is responsible for determining the arrangements for the admission of pupils to community and voluntary controlled schools (for foundation and voluntary-aided schools this responsibility rests with the governing body). The Local Authority operates a co-ordinated admissions scheme which has been agreed with all schools in the area. The schemes ensures that a child is offered one school place on the allocation day.
• Enforce school attendance