Afew months ago I wrote about concerns arising from the rapid expansion of some academy chains as they establish themselves as permanent features of the education landscape. But poorly performing chains are just a small part of a bigger headache now facing all the political parties as they contemplate life after the General Election. With so many academies and free schools answerable only to central government, and local councils with varying degrees of capacity, who steps in when things go wrong? Who takes responsibility for ensuring there are enough high quality school places where they are needed? Who guarantees that admissions are managed fairly and that the most vulnerable children are supported and empowered?
It is a massive problem, to which many of the politicians who have spouted the rhetoric of freedom and autonomy over the last 15 years now have to turn their minds, without also appearing to turn their backs on their earlier (in my view) ill-thought through headlong rush to reform structures without understanding the long term consequences.
The Labour academy programme, albeit small, targeted and more manageable that the mish mash of schools we have now, paved the way for Michael Gove and the coalition’s 2010 Academies Act. This in turn accelerated the academy conversion process and led to the exponential growth in the numbers of ‘independent state schools’ in the last four years. So everyone must take some responsibility.
That’s not to say that school level autonomy and freedom to innovate aren’t good ideas. Indeed they are hallmarks of high performing education systems around the world. But according to international studies like the OECD’s PISA, those high performing systems match independence with strong, coherent systems of local oversight, which in many parts of our country are disintegrating.
So this question of the middle, or mediating, tier will undoubtedly be a key feature of the party manifestos as everyone jostles to prove they have the best answer to a problem they have collectively created. First off the starting block last year was the coalition, with its announcement of eight regional school commissioners to help broker new academies and take on the underperforming ones in their areas. But this still leaves accountability for maintained schools, and those that are not underperforming, unaddressed.
The Labour Party retaliated with a report from former Education Secretary David Blunkett, which proposed the appointment of independent directors of school standards to hold schools to account and broker collaboration. However it left the role of the local authority itself, which still holds many statutory powers and oversees the majority of English schools, deliberately vague.
Then the government hit back with a hyperbolic announcement that the Conservative Party manifesto would give their regional commissioners powers to sack head teachers and implement behaviour and uniform policies in any school, of any type, deemed inadequate by Ofsted. Given that each commissioner could have thousands of schools in his or her region, this could prove a blunt and distant instrument – and the way it was announced appeared more concerned with headline grabbing than with making a constructive contribution to the debate.
Which is of course the trouble with so much policy-making in England, where 24-hour news media outlets devour announcements swiftly, before begging for more. It is also why what is probably the most practical contribution to this debate – a policy document from the Institute for Public Policy Research – failed to hit headlines even though it should be a set text for everyone concerned with education policy.
It is far too sensible to appeal to the Daily Mail because it suggests a compromise that might actually work. Sub-regional school commissioners, appointed by one or more local authorities to give them democratic legitimacy, could work at city or county level and would have the powers to challenge and support (by brokering partnerships) all schools, regardless of ‘type’. They could also run competitions for school providers, which should include maintained schools as well as academy sponsors. Local authorities could continue their role planning places, overseeing support for SEND pupils, managing admissions, fair access and relations with parents who, in my experience, like to have somewhere local to turn with questions and concerns.
It won’t appeal to the diehard supporters of reinventing the LA role as it once was; nor does it deal with the eternally ‘sticky’ question of the funding agreements – the contracts that mean independent state schools are ultimately only really accountable to Whitehall. A logical next step might be to re-assign funding agreements to the local commissioners. But it is a move in the right direction, which, if adopted, might win widespread support amongst parents and schools, and ultimately votes for the party wise enough to do it.
