Reading this new report from the Centre for Educational Systems on accountability in systems International Comparative Education Reviews & Resources | CES Centre for Education Systems set me wondering about the accountability of the school system in England at present. To help focus my thinking, I considered one of the key issues facing many policymakers in education at present: declining pupil numbers or ‘falling rolls’ as it is more commonly called.

My starting point was to look at the last time ‘falling rolls’ had a significant effect on the school system in England. The last serious occurrence was at the end of the 1970s, and into the early 1980s. The other periods of declining rolls since then have either been less significant in scale or offset by changes in the learning leaving age, as when it was increased from 16 to 18.

In the late 1970s, as the minority Labour government trundled towards its inevitable fate, education in England was still being described by academics as either ‘a partnership’ or ‘a locally service nationally administered’. In reality, the governance of schooling was on a journey from local decision-making to almost total national policymaking, or more realistically policy interference from the centre in those areas where policymakers at Westminster have an interest. The accountability strand within governance at the ‘macro’ level has been largely overlooked. Accountability of individual institutions, such as ofsted had been the subject of many discussions.

This lack of consideration for accountability relating to policy in the school sector brings me back to ‘falling rolls’ as a case study. At the end of the 1970s, I had just completed almost a decade working in Haringey in North London; from January 1971 to December 1977 as a teacher at Tottenham School (now long disappeared from the scene), and  then from September 1977 to August 1980 as deputy warden of the borough’s teachers’ centre – what would now be called a professional development centre, where such establishment still exist- developing courses mainly for secondary school teachers. Between September 1979, and my resignation in August 1980, I was on secondment – on full pay; those were the days – to study for the MSc in Governance of Education at Oxford University.

My role at the Teachers’ Centre, in an institution at the centre of the borough’s schooling life, allowed me to witness how falling rolls were dealt with from 1977 onwards in Haringey. In passing, it is also worth noting that 1979 was a traumatic year for schooling in Haringey. During the ‘winter of discontent’ the school caretakers went on strike and the schools were closed for a number of weeks. National government showed no interest in how the strike was handled, and ignored trying to enforce the legal requirement that schools remain open for 190 days a year. It was not until a parent, Dr Meade, took Haringey to law that the national government, through the Secretary of State took any interest, and the strike ended.

It is interesting to compare that ‘hands-off’ attitude of the Westminster government in 1979 to what happened in 2020 with the arrival of the covid pandemic, and the actions of the DfE throughout the pandemic in order to see how policymaking has changed. Although, even during covid, the DfE seemed to do little more than set high level policies, and left schools, MATs and local authorities to work out the details on the ground. There seemed to be little consideration of accountability during the pandemic and it will be interesting to see what the Covid Inquiry has to say about how schooling was handled during the pandemic.

But, back to 1977, and ‘falling rolls’ in Haringey. The borough was generally seen as a safe Labour borough at the time, having only run by the Conservatives between 1968 and 1972, following the Labour debacle at the 1968 local elections:  a debacle that current followers of political fortunes might want to revisit ahead of the 2026 elections in London, to be fought on many of the same boundaries.

In the late 1970s, officers in Haringey were aware that when projecting school rolls into the 1980s, there would be too many places, especially in the secondary sector, where a new school, Northumberland Park, had been built on the eastern edge of the borough, even though this was where pupil numbers were likely to fall fastest, as the declining birthrate together with the reduction in Commonwealth immigration, especially from the Caribbean islands, was likely to exacerbate the school population decline.

Officers created a taskforce to review rolls. This may have also been stimulated by an internal survey into sixth form teaching in Haringey’s schools, undertaken by the Borough’s advisory service in 1976 that revealed extremely small sixth form teaching groups in many subjects across the borough. If groups were already small, I expect senior officers were interested in what would happen to secondary schools when rolls fell?

Afterall, the secondary schools in Haringey had only just become fully comprehensive in response to the Wilson government’s Circular 10/65 on the phasing out of selective secondary education.

In the spring of 1977, officers produced what was known as a ‘green ‘paper, setting out options for change, including the naming of schools likely to face closure. In view of previous leaks of confidential documents, it was decided to publish the report in full. In a borough with a lively set of pressure groups ranging from teacher unions, represented on the Education Committee, to a branch of CASE (The Campaign for the Advancement of State Education), not surprisingly a row erupted over the plans.

It is worth noting that the DES (as the DfE was then called) knew about ‘falling rolls’ from the early 1970s onwards. As early as 1971, the part of the DES responsible for the school building programme reduced the number of new primary school places being created, although, as with Northumberland Park, new secondary schools were still being authorised. In 1974, cutbacks in teacher training numbers were announced by the Teacher’s Branch at the DES, but it was only in June 1977, a month after Haringey’s paper was published that the DES issued their first circular on the subject to local authorities, Circular 5/77. Governance of the system as a whole seemed non-existent, even where specialist branches within the Des were making appropriate changes to meet the emerging trends.

The merits of the five different schemes in the Haringey paper does not concern us here. What is more interesting is that it took until 1983 for reorganisation to actually take place in Haringey, and then only after the Secretary of State gave his consent in February 1982 to the revised and more draconian re-organisation plans. By then, nearly six years had elapsed, and the Chief Education Officer had moved on from his position.

What was interesting in the 1970s was the fact that there was planning locally, and also open debate in a borough with a strong set of pressure groups willing to discuss policy in a framework of an Education Committee involving many elected councillors and key un-elected members, including figures from the Church of England and Roman Catholic dioceses, but little apparent oversight from the DES. Clearly, not a ‘partnership’, and realistically not ‘a national system locally administered, except in the widest sense of the phrase.

Compare that climate of relatively open debate with a strong local press, and local decision-making, with the current situation, where the local authority cabinet system puts great power in the hands of one local politician, and the officers, and where the historical issue of the voluntary school sector involvement in planning is further complicated these days by the existence of academies and multi academy trusts.

Governance may be easier today, but to what extent has local input from interest groups been removed from the process? To whom are decision-makers accountable in the 2020s, if they make mistakes? Does the DfE show any more interest in accountability over issues affecting the system, such as ‘falling rolls’ than it did in the 1970s?

Locally, perhaps all council Scrutiny Committees should have an annual review of education provision on their workplan that would allow regular discussions on how place planning was being managed across maintained and academy schools in a locality.

But, with the end of the semblance of ‘partnership’, still seemingly in existence in the 1970s, what role should the government at Westminster play today in ensuring a coherent and cost-effective solution to the falling rolls issue? That question sheds a light on the accountability for the schooling system as a whole in England at the present time.

For some, it seems the accountability of the market still dominates thinking in Whitehall, and there is no place for whole-system planning at any level. Government guidance on dealing with falling rolls, even at the level of ministerial statements might show there was some coherent thinking about problem solving nationally by the present government. How schooling is governed and what accountability measures should exist today, is worthy of debate. I don’t think the present Bill before parliament will add much, if anything, to the debate.