Tag Archives: local government

The end of the beginning

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Next week this blog celebrates its third birthday. I would like to be more upbeat at this time, but many of the values that brought me into public service are now being eroded, seemingly faster than ever.

Yesterday I heard Sir Andrew Carter tell a conference on teacher recruitment that ‘all schools will become academies’. Later in the afternoon I had the same view that schools will be forcibly taken away from local authorities at some point in this parliament confirmed from two different sources: both said it was an open secret at Westminster. Such may be the consequence for the electorate of electing a Conservative government last year. We now await a White Paper on the future of schools that will precede a Bill, probably pencilled in for the autumn.

Whether schools become academies or some new form of organisation doesn’t really matter. What will be a consequence will be the ending the link between local government and the running of schools that has existed since 1902. I have written in the past that I can just about accept that for the secondary sector, but need to be convinced that a credible governance and planning structure, and reasonable funding model, has been devised for the primary sector and especially many of our small rural schools.

I am not sure what the consequences for the Tory party would be of any wholesale merger of village schools to save money, especially if the transport costs associated with busing pupils to the next village were left with the local authorities as part of a botched arrangement over who does what in the brave new world devised by Michael Gove and now implemented by Nick Gibb. Who will handle admissions if local authorities cannot force schools to take extra pupils and what is the future for pupils with special educational needs or children that are vulnerable in other ways?

The Church of England and, to a lesser extent, the Roman Catholic Church and other faiths responsible for schools will be under intense pressure if schooling is nationalised under the control of un-elected Regional Commissioners with no remit to support the historical pattern of primary education in England. There are no ‘voluntary’ academies as there are voluntary aided and controlled schools. Will the government allow single-faith multi-academy trusts in the new order along diocesan boundaries or compel different arrangements so that the faith schools will have to fight to retain their ethos?

I will be a real irony that the nationalisation of schools will take place under a Tory government in the name of, presumably, freedom.  But, such is the world in which we live these days. I also wonder whether the days of governing bodies are numbered after an academy chain announced it was going to dispense with such local governance. This from a Tory government whose predecessors were once exercised about the fact that infant and junior schools were served by a single governing body.

I suppose one outcome will be that there won’t be any need for a national teaching force because all teachers, like schools, will be part of the national service.

 

 

Councils lose another education role

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The Conservative government has lost no time in taking another duty with regard to education away from local government. In his letter of the 15th June to the directors of children’s services, Lord Nash, the Minister, gave local authorities just 15 days’ notice that they would no longer has responsibility for choosing the sponsor for a new school. Many years ago the Blair government started the process that has led to this letter by mandating that all new secondary schools should be academies. This was later extended to all new schools. Local authorities retained the responsibility to run the beauty competition to decide the sponsor to suggest to the DfE. That appears now to have been handed to the unelected regional school commissioners. So much for localism.

As far as I can see there has been no explanation for this decision and no clarification as to whether it applies only to new competitions or also to those already under discussion and not finalised by the 1st July. It may be that the DfE was irritated at some of the choices made by local authorities: it certainly made Oxfordshire re-run the process for selecting the operator for a new primary school as it didn’t like the outcome, this despite the sponsor selected being on the DfE approved list. The fact that the re-run process produced the same outcome may have led to this draconian and precipitous change in the selection process.

For those councils that don’t like the academy process the letter can probably be ignored since they can seemingly continue to expand existing maintained primary schools by adding on extra classes. Whether it might now tempt some Conservative local authorities that care about their local schools, but have supported academies in the past, to do the same would be an interesting outcome.

Certainly, counties with lots of new house building, and I suppose there aren’t many of them given how few houses are being built nationally, now face the possibility of having to deal with academy chains located a long way from county hall and possibly with little local knowledge. Even worse, the academy can fix its size and if new houses are added to the development can refuse to expand: seemingly at present with neither the regional commissioner nor the DfE being able to do anything about such a situation. That it could increase council spend on home to school transport unnecessarily doesn’t seem to matter. After all, the local authority could always close another library or children’s centre to pay for the buses.

Schooling is now firmly a national service, as I explained earlier today to someone taking the local authority to task because the school where they are a governor wasn’t funded as well as other local schools. I pointed out that the School Forum set the formula and no councillor had a vote unless they were elected as a governor. There is still a widespread belief local authorities run schools. They don’t, and it is now the DfE and their un-elected officials that take the decisions.

Middle tier in schooling needs democratic input

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Shock horror: local councils are back in favour to play a part in education. After around 30 years when local education authorities have been increasingly both emasculated and marginalised in the running of education in their local areas the Schools’ Minister, David Laws, seems to be calling a halt to this sidelining of democratically elected local councils in a speech to the CentreForum think tank later this morning. According to the Local Government Information Unit press summary:

Minister plans to hand back power to councils

Proposals by schools minister David Laws would see councils given more powers to intervene in struggling academy schools, reversing the trend of increasing autonomy. The Liberal Democrat minister is expected to argue in a speech today that the system of school governance introduced by Michael Gove has abandoned schools that converted from local authority control to standalone academy status, leaving them without the resources or support they need to improve. Mr Laws wants responsibility for improvements to be passed from the DfE to a “middle tier” of local authorities and academy chains, backed by successful schools and head teachers. This middle tier would also potentially assist any schools in need of improvement, not just academies. More than 4,000 primary and secondary schools out of 19,000 mainstream schools in England are currently rated as “requires improvement” or “inadequate”. “I think in a good and realistic scenario, where we had an effective middle tier, we would have 2,000 fewer schools in the ‘lowest’ categories of requiring improvement or special measures,” Mr Laws will say.

Personally, I hope there is also something about both admissions and the creation of new schools. It is daft that academies with spare capacity can deny that space to local councils potentially forcing them to bus pupils elsewhere at public expense. Councils also need more control over who runs news schools and if they select a school or group approved by the DfE then Regional Commissioners should no longer have the power of veto unless there was something at fault with the selection process.

There is an earlier post on this blog outlining in details why I think these issues matter, especially for the primary school sector. Such schools are deeply rooted in their communities and breaking up that link with local authorities, which has generally worked well, has made no sense at all.

The real issue is whether there will be time to implement any of the changes suggested by David Laws before the election; or is it just an attempt to put some distance between the Lib Dems, a Party I represent as a county councillor in Oxfordshire, and the Tory Party ahead of the most interesting general election probably since 1906 and the rise of the Labour vote.

The design of a sensible middle tier is the key issue in education. Academy chains haven’t worked; Regional Commissioners have as much cache as Police and Crime Commissioners and are even less democratic, being appointed; and local authorities have been withering on the vine. I am off to listen to the speech in detail and will report back later about whether the substance was materially different from the press reports.

Today is also ITT census day, so hopefully a post on that topic this afternoon.

No role for local authorities in education

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NOTE: This document appears to have been removed from the DfE’s web site shortly after this post appeared. There may, of course, be no connection between the two events.

A report on research priorities and questions published today by the DfE under the title ‘Accountability and governance’ makes it clear that there is no role in the new national schooling world for local authorities. The document can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/288118/Accountability_and_governance_research_priorities_and_questions.pdf and within it the government makes clear that:

Our vision is for an accountability system which is challenging, fair and transparent – one in which school level governance and national arrangements hold autonomous schools and colleges to account for the education they provide.

So there is seemingly no role there for local authorities.

The document also states that:

where children are at risk of being failed through poor providers, central government will intervene swiftly – primarily through Ofsted. High-quality Ofsted inspection will challenge all schools and Colleges to strive for excellence in achievement, leadership, teaching and behaviour (schools only). (sic)

Local authorities risk being relegated to little more than educational trading standards watchdogs, having to report concerns to big sibling in Whitehall or their regional Commissioner Representative. For the document concludes that:

There are now many types of governance structures, including standalone and federations of maintained schools, single academy trusts, sponsored academies, multi-academy trusts and umbrella trusts. We want to understand the factors that lead to the most robust governance arrangements and hence the most effective school-level accountability, particularly for education standards.

Again there is no mention of any local accountability other than through governing bodies since multi-academy trusts are not required to have a geographical coherence, although many do in reality.

The absence of mentions of diocesan responsibility might provide the faith communities with pause for thought were it not for the fact that they have seen a local elected body replaced by one at Westminster that is far more remote to most of them. The challenge will come when Ofsted, having obtained powers to inspect academy chains, as it surely will, then asks to inspect diocesan education arrangements where faith schools are under-performing, and some undoubtedly are  not doing as well as they might as schools.

Startling for its absence from the document is any mention of teachers, their training and employment. Who is concerned about the governance of that process, so vital for any achievement by schools? I have expressed concern before about the lack of supervision of the National College now that its Board has been abolished. Presumably, it is good enough that the DfE Board can monitor its performance;: but who sets standards for success and failure in say, recruitment into the profession, and what are the sanctions?

The 2015 general election will mark the passing of local education services, whatever the polite fiction that is maintained. Sadly, none of the main political parties were prepared to stand-up and fight for local political involvement in education. It may be self-seeking, since I am an elected county councillor in Oxfordshire, but I regard the change as likely to be detrimental for our education system.

Nationalisation of our schools: the latest state of play

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A couple of weeks ago the DfE submitted to parliament the Annual Report on Academies for 2011-12, as required under the 2011 Education Act. The document can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/206382/Academies_Annual_Report_2011-12.pdf

During the year from August 2011 to July 2012 there were 1,151 funding agreements signed, meaning at the latter date there were 1,952 open academies, of which 365 were of the sponsored type created originally by the Labour Government, and 1,587 were of the converter variety invented by the present Secretary of State. By May 2013, the total number of open academies had increased to 2,924. And as at 31 July 2012, 42% of state funded mainstream secondary schools and 3% of state-funded mainstream primary schools were academies, a figure that is no higher although nearly a third of local authorities still had no primary academies within their boundaries.

According to the Annual Report, academies are sponsored by many diverse bodies, so that at the end of the 2011/12 academic year there were 471 different approved academy sponsors. Of these, 161 were academy converters sponsoring other academies; 40 sponsors came from the business sector; 82 from the charitable sector; 40 from dioceses; 65 from the further education sector; 34 from the university sector; 13 were grammar schools, of which 10 are now themselves academies; 13 were independent schools; two were special schools, and 21 were sponsors from other public bodies, including local authorities.

These figures show that the Conservative led coalition is as keen, if not more so than the previous Labour government, at encouraging the creeping ‘nationalisation’ of the school system in England under the guise of providing freedom to individual schools and their sponsors. Local democratic oversight, it was rarely control, is gradually being eradicated from the day to day management of the nation’s schools to be replaced by unelected officials whose political masters are sometimes happy to play fast and loose with planning rules to see their schemes succeed.

In a technical document on attainment between academies and other types of school published in association with the annual report* the DfE identifies the improvement academies have brought to the education scene, although there is no evidence at all as to whether this has been achieved with more or less resources that at other schools.

I hope that local authorities will put together mechanisms for comparing the progress of the academies in their locality against those schools that have not yet been converted or been created as an academy. Not only can such comparison raise questions about what is working, and what is not creating results locally, but it can help develop a local oversight of the whole education system and its Value for Public Money that a fractured system might obfuscate in an unhelpful manner. Even though the national budget for schools is ring-fenced that doesn’t mean it should be squandered in a wasteful manner setting up new schools where they aren’t needed. And just as we have seen responsibility for public health returned to local authorities, there is always the possibility that a future government will return control of schools to local authorities, especially if there are hard budget decisions to make once the ring-fence is finally removed.

*https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/206529/DFE-RR288.pdf

Back to the future: the return of the Advisory Teacher

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Ofsted is clearly becoming the linchpin in what looks like the increasing nationalisation of our school system. The idea of national teachers parachuted into the shires by officials in London in order to demonstrate good practice to under-performing teachers would have been unthinkable some years ago. But, as I have said before, those who are able to  access resources can be in the driving seat when it comes to facilitating change.

For the past quarter of a century successive governments have denied local authorities the right to intervene in their local schools by ensuring that funds that could be used for such purposes were transferred into school budgets, only to see the cash all too often end up unused in school bank accounts. However, when faced with a school system across London in meltdown a decade ago the notional of a regional challenge was born, even if it didn’t extend to central government listening to what was being said about future pupil numbers and the need for extra places. Despite the success of London Challenge in raising achievement in the capital’s schools, the local evening paper, the Evening Standard, has still seen the need to become involved in a large-scale reading campaign across the city region, demonstrating the importance of community involvement in raising standards of learning.

For some time I have been pointing out the message about rural under-performance that Ofsted has finally acknowledged. Indeed, the poor performance in Oxfordshire and Oxford City in particular, has been a theme I initiated nearly three years ago now, and was coincidentally discussed at a public meeting in the city last night arranged by the city church of St Michael at the North Gate. We were reminded at that meeting that the Oxford City Council, although it has no education brief, was able to find £1.4 million to invest in projects to raise attainment in local schools, whereas the county would have been questioned as to such cash hadn’t been passed to schools?

I firmly believe that a world-class education system starts in the primary schools, where the foundations of learning are developed. Primary schools are essentially local in nature, and many in rural areas are the hub of their communities. For that reason I believe they need to be part of the local democratic structure and, as in London, the challenge should be for the locally elected members to lead the drive for improvement. If they fail, then perhaps an interim board should be imposed, but most local communities won’t fail given access to the appropriate resources.

Indeed, the idea of national superstars descending on schools to show how teaching is done properly must already be causing a film-maker somewhere to be salivating at the mouth. You can just see the plot; a talented but hapless outsider descends on remote village school to show teachers how to improve the literacy of their children …. I leave you to finish the plot. Much more important is to provide a local focus using the best in the way previous generations of local authority leaders developed advisory services, and in the 1980s the concept of advisory teachers, where best practice was spread using local professionals with a stake in their communities. All that was destroyed when, what is usually now referred to as the ‘middle tier’ of the education system, was dismantled by successive Conservative and Labour governments.

By all means parachute in outsiders if there is no local talent, but I doubt any local government area is totally devoid of successful teachers able to pass on their success to others. Such locally based schemes might also be cheaper than a visit from ‘the team from the Ministry’ but it wouldn’t fit into a model of a national school system where every school reports directly to Westminster and local authorities are too often cast as the villain of the piece.

For anyone who believes in local democracy, Ofsted may have joined me in identifying a serious problem, but their proposed solution is not one I can endorse.