The School Standards and Framework Bill was published on 4 December 1997 and has had its third reading in the House of Commons. It is expected to become law in England and Wales by the summer.

The Bill includes these measures:

Education Action Zones

• Powers to establish Education Action Zones, each of which will cover two or three secondary schools and their feeder primaries for three to five years.

  An Action Forum in each zone will be made up of parents and representatives from businesses and local education authorities (LEAs). The forums will set action plans to raise standards, which will be approved and funded by the government.

  Zones will get the first call on government funds. They will also have greater flexibility in awarding salaries so that outstanding performance by heads and teachers can be rewarded. They will help pilot ''advanced skills teachers'' - who will be paid managerial-level salaries but opt to stay teaching in the classroom.

  The government hopes to establish up to 25 Education Action Zones in England by the end of this Parliament. Action zones will only be set up in Wales with the blessing of the Welsh Secretary (and subsequently the Welsh Assembly); early indications are that such a move is unlikely.

• Powers for ministers to tackle failing schools and LEAs by sending in an improvement team.

  Class sizes

• Proposals to cut the size of infant classes. The Secretaries of State (for education and for Wales) will be able to introduce limits on the maximum size of classes, and LEAs may refuse admission to infant classes on the grounds that they are ''full''.

  Costings which the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) has drawn up assume that no child should be in an infant class of more than 30 pupils from the 2001/02 school year onwards. The cost of reducing class sizes in England by then is estimated at £193m.

  Standards: schools

• LEAs to have an enhanced role in improving standards. They will be required to have clear targets for improving standards through Education Development Plans - statements of their proposals for developing provision in their areas.

  Where a school is deemed to be failing an LEA will be able to issue warning notices to identify key weaknesses. It will be able to appoint extra school governors or withdraw financial delegation where schools are clearly struggling. The DfEE will be issuing a code of practice that will set out the limits in the action an LEA can take.

• Where a school is failing, and there is insufficient evidence of recovery, it will be given a ''fresh start'' - either permanent closure, takeover by another school or closure followed by re-opening under another name and new management.

  Standards: teachers

• Powers to tackle incompetent teachers. All schools will be required to have procedures for removing failing teachers.

• Introduction of home-school contracts, which explain what parents' rights and responsibilities are, so that they know what they can expect from schools - and what is expected in return.
• Greater parental representation on governing bodies of schools and at least one elected parent governor representative on the education committee of each LEA, with two or three in larger LEAs.

  New types of school

• Three new categories of schools: community, foundation and voluntary, to replace the existing school structures. County schools will become community schools, and voluntary controlled and voluntary aided schools will retain their existing characteristics within the new voluntary category.

  The government expects grant-maintained schools to become foundation schools, although they will be able to choose which category of school they want to come under when the structures change. Eventually all schools will be able to choose which school category they wish to belong to.

• Each LEA will be required to establish a school organisation committee for its area to draw up a local plan for education.

  Admissions

• Parental ballots to determine the future admission policies of grammar schools. Provisions in the Bill give powers to the Secretary of State to make regulations which would determine the way parents will be balloted. A ballot, which could see a grammar school become a non-selective comprehensive, would be triggered by a petition of parents. Peers scrutinising the Bill have criticised this section for being ''too vague'' on issues such as how many parents would have to sign a petition to trigger a ballot, and who would be eligible to take part in the subsequent vote.

  The Secretary of State will issue a code of practice on admission policies generally. Schools will be prohibited in future from operating arrangements which select pupils by ability, except in relation to ''banding'' within schools.

• LEAs will come under a duty to establish an Early Years Development Partnership - a local forum on provision for nursery-age children - and draw up a corresponding development plan.

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