tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/educational-excellence-everywhere-25926/articlesEducational Excellence Everywhere – The Conversation2016-04-29T09:30:03Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/584622016-04-29T09:30:03Z2016-04-29T09:30:03ZForcing all schools to turn into academies is not education’s biggest problem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120606/original/image-20160428-28040-1e8pl0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Out of the classroom and onto the streets. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/theweeklybull/26167936335/sizes/l">The Weekly Bull/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nicky Morgan faced a grilling from MPs on the <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/news-parliament-2015/nicky-morgan-education-white-paper-15-16/">House of Commons Education Select Committee</a> on April 27 to answer questions – some positive and intended to be helpful and some hostile – about the government’s recent education <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508550/Educational_excellence_everywhere__print_ready_.pdf">white paper</a>. The secretary of state for education had faced an earlier <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/tory-backbenchers-ask-nicky-morgan-look-again-academisation-plans">bruising Commons encounter</a> with backbenchers, and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35883922">teacher demonstrations</a> against compulsory academisation. </p>
<p>The greatest opposition to the white paper is to its proposal for the compulsory conversion of all schools in England to academy status by 2022. Some, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-would-a-u-turn-on-academies-do-to-conservative-education-policy-58380">members of the Conservative party</a>, are asking for a reversal of the compulsory element of the programme. Others, such as those on the demonstration, just want it reversed.</p>
<p>But it is worth considering just how significant compulsory conversion is and whether it is the most important matter facing English schools.</p>
<h2>No one model</h2>
<p>I have <a href="http://www.ucl-ioe-press.com/books/schools-and-schooling/equity-trust-and-the-self-improving-schools-system/">argued elsewhere</a> that six years after the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/contents">2010 Academies Act</a> there is no longer one set of arrangements – successful or otherwise – that constitutes “the academies model”. Despite this, Morgan continued to refer to such a model in front of the select committee – and much sterile discussion followed. </p>
<p>According to Morgan, there are already 973 Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), non-profit organisations which run groups of academies. The vast majority have fewer than ten schools, but this can vary enormously.</p>
<p>Different MATs contain different combinations of primary and secondary schools, and run schools with a different geographical spread. The trusts also vary in the amount of autonomy they give to schools. And that’s leaving aside the free-standing academies, some of which the white paper said would remain outside a trust for now. </p>
<p>Some trusts, including ones where I have conducted interviews, are centrally managed. This means there is one governing board in charge of all the trust’s schools, the performance of principals at each school is managed centrally by an executive team, and staff are moved between schools, often to their benefit. </p>
<p>Other MATs pride themselves on retaining the individuality of their schools. Each of the schools in these trusts retains its local governing body and the central board just oversees strategy and the performance of the central team where there is one. </p>
<p>Some academies I have visited, including convertor academies (those good or outstanding schools choosing to convert from 2010 onwards) in loose local arrangements, have not changed at all since conversion. They have the same governors, name and continuing commitment to the communities they serve. The people who I have encountered leading and teaching in these schools have exactly the same passions and commitment to children as those in schools still maintained and run by local authorities. </p>
<h2>Democratic deficit</h2>
<p>There are good reasons to oppose academy status, such as the lack of local democratic oversight that comes with the system change. Some chains are remote, with their offices further away than the local council HQ, making local input from parents and the community potentially harder – though not impossible. And academisation only “works” if it enables good leadership with a focus on what is important – good teaching leading to good outcomes for children.</p>
<p>But in reality, this lack of any real oversight is also the case now for maintained schools. The old local authority system (never really one of “supervision”) is passing away, through a combination of budget cuts, strategic choice by local authorities and now central direction. If schools need support, they look to other schools in their networks, local MATs or more widely still. </p>
<p>So if the critics of the white paper have their way and the government decides not to force all schools to become academies, schools that remain maintained and run by a local authority would face an uncertain future. They will be isolated with diminishing support and disappearing local arrangements. </p>
<p>Things are moving very rapidly now. Many schools – who had waited to see the result of the election last year – resumed discussions about becoming academies and forming MATs before the end of the 2015 summer term. </p>
<h2>The bigger question: reducing inequality</h2>
<p>But MPs on the select committee also asked a really significant question of Morgan: how can academy conversion help schools that are already good or outstanding? The answer has to be the same: only in what it enables them to do. And that includes addressing a much more fundamental problem: how low attainment remains inextricably linked <a href="https://www.ucl-ioe-press.com/books/education-policy/research-and-policy-in-education/">“to life chances in England”</a> and remains a principal mechanism for the transmission of poverty between <a href="https://www.nao.org.uk/report/funding-for-disadvantaged-pupils/">generations</a>.</p>
<p>There have been successes in reducing attainment gaps, but the era of nationally imposed education strategies and solutions is also slowly being superseded by moves towards a self-improving schools system that holds promise for <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03054985.2014.979014">reducing such inequity</a>. The deeper reflection required on what happens in classrooms – and how learning is sometimes organised in ways that limit children’s potential – depends on much more routine relations of mutual trust between schools, heads and teachers. And the government and parents must trust them more, too – reducing external burdens that get in the way of their passions and commitment. </p>
<p>This includes Ofsted – our education should rely less on data from the schools inspectorate. There have already been some timely reductions in inspection requirements for good schools and they have earned our trust. More are to come. The white paper proposed, for example, that schools with new heads or those implementing improvement plans will face no inspections for three years. </p>
<p>All of this goes some of the way towards achieving what the head of a MAT said to me recently: that we should be “avoiding quick fixes”. Instead, how all schools – including good and outstanding ones – address inequity must be our key focus.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Riddell has received funding from the British Academy.</span></em></p>Dealing with inequality should be the main priority.Richard Riddell, Senior lecturer, Education Studies, Bath Spa UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/581792016-04-28T11:31:04Z2016-04-28T11:31:04ZFuture of religious education under threat from drive to make all schools academies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120375/original/image-20160427-30967-p620eo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The rules for schools could change. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Skalny/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Religious education is no stranger to controversy. Determining which religions should be studied, and how and why, is often a fraught process, particularly where the teaching of certain religious beliefs over others is concerned, or if children are being indoctrinated into a particular faith. </p>
<p>Despite the importance of making sure young people today have a good level of <a href="https://theconversation.com/schools-need-to-do-more-to-improve-childrens-religious-literacy-51926">religious literacy</a>, the recent Department for Education white paper, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/educational-excellence-everywhere">Educational Excellence Everywhere</a>, makes no reference to religious education (RE). But its proposal that every school in England should become an academy by 2022 has important ramifications for the subject. </p>
<p>Since 1944, local education authorities (LEAs) have been required to produce agreed syllabuses for RE in state-maintained schools without a religious affiliation. These are agreed unanimously by representatives of different religious persuasions, alongside teacher associations and the LEA. Since 1988, LEAs have also been required to establish Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education (SACRE) to advise the local authority on matters connected with RE.</p>
<p>But academies and free schools, whether with a religious affiliation or not, do not currently have to follow an LEA-agreed syllabus for RE. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many such schools are continuing to do so, even though there is no statutory requirement. It is possible, however, for other schools to exploit the available freedom and develop their own syllabuses. In such cases, we would not know what aims, methods and content for RE each school is selecting for its lessons. This presents a risk.</p>
<p>The white paper calls for the establishment of a clearly defined role for local government in education more generally, but says nothing about RE. This is a glaring omission.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120377/original/image-20160427-30982-10ax2lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/120377/original/image-20160427-30982-10ax2lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120377/original/image-20160427-30982-10ax2lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120377/original/image-20160427-30982-10ax2lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120377/original/image-20160427-30982-10ax2lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120377/original/image-20160427-30982-10ax2lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/120377/original/image-20160427-30982-10ax2lv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Still at the centre of British life?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John D F/www.flickr.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>Religious powerbroking</h2>
<p>For more than 150 years, the position of religion in publicly-funded schools has been a matter of profound controversy – so much so that a dual system of church and state schools emerged. When the 1902 Education Act created LEAs and gave them responsibility for funding church schools through local rates, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Shifting_Alliances.html?id=F-qeAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">it met with opposition</a> from non-conformists and secularists. This was vociferous enough to dissuade the government from attempting significant educational reform for the next 40 years.</p>
<p>Later, in the period between the two world wars, when LEAs sought to establish secondary schools, they met with opposition from Anglicans who were <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Church_and_state_in_English_education_18.html?id=yCY1kJyWZBUC&redir_esc=y">worried about</a> the RE that secondary school pupils would receive. In certain areas of the country, the support of Anglicans was obtained once they had been given the opportunity – alongside non-conformists, teachers and local councillors – to determine the RE syllabus provided in LEA primary and secondary schools. So locally agreed syllabuses emerged as a political means of managing religious sectarianism to enable educational reform to occur.</p>
<p>This was never more appreciated than in World War II, when the population <a href="https://www.routledge.com/products/9780754666929">became galvanised</a> around a vision of social, educational and spiritual progress. It was in <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10036/16633">this context</a> – in fear of communism, fascism and Nazism abroad – that daily collective worship and weekly RE lessons were made statutory in LEA schools in the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/7-8/31/contents/enacted">1944 Education Act</a>. </p>
<p>A lot has changed since that act was passed. England <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0046760X.2011.620013#.VyDqRD-PBWc">has experienced</a> religious pluralisation and a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0046760X.2012.761733#.VyHKqj-PBWc">de-Christianisation of society</a>. At the same time, there has been a centralisation of educational policy, devolution of powers to schools and the establishment of non-Christian faith schools.</p>
<p>But there have also been continuities in the form of the established Church and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10770425/David-Cameron-says-Christians-should-be-more-evangelical.html">political rhetoric</a> around “Christian Britain”. Nor has religious controversy disappeared, especially around the powder keg of religion in schools – as the allegations over extremist teaching at schools in Birmingham in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/trojan-horse">Trojan Horse affair</a> illustrated. So it is still vital that politicians negotiate religious differences with caution and careful consideration.</p>
<h2>Risk of alienating faith groups</h2>
<p>If agreed syllabuses and SACRE are now to be replaced by a new statutory structure for determining the RE curriculum, then those responsible for planning these new arrangements will have to show the same political nous and fervour as the architects of the 1944 Education Act. If no such statutory structures are put in place – to provide checks and balances for the RE curriculum – then there is a risk that individual schools might ignite religious controversy in the way they teach the subject. </p>
<p>Even if religious groups no longer continue to have a statutory voice in determining the RE curriculum, it is probably wise to develop a new local or national mechanism. Through this, religious and other communities with a vested interest in the subject could enter into dialogue with those with responsibility for determining the subject’s aims, methods and content. </p>
<p>The alternative is to disenfranchise and marginalise faith communities, creating less mutual understanding and more disagreement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58179/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Freathy has received funding from a variety of organisations: The British Academy; History of Education Society (UK); Esmée Fairbairn Foundation; Culham St Gabriel’s Trust; Westhill Endowment Trust; Bible Society England and Wales; All Saints Educational Trust; Hockerill Educational Trust; Sarum St Michael Educational Charity; and The Challenger Trust.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen G. Parker has received funding from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, Westhill Endowment Trust, St. Peter's Saltley Trust, Culham St Gabriel's Trust. </span></em></p>Local education authorities have mediated the RE syllabus for decades. Now, there might be a free-for-all.Rob Freathy, Associate Dean for Postgraduate Research and Deputy Director of the University of Exeter Doctoral College, University of ExeterStephen G. Parker, Professor of the History of Religion and Education, University of WorcesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/583802016-04-27T09:38:02Z2016-04-27T09:38:02ZWhat the U-turn on academies means for Conservative education policy<p>The secretary of state for education, Nicky Morgan, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/next-steps-to-spread-educational-excellence-everywhere-announced">has backed down</a> on plans to force all schools in England to become academies by 2022, outlined in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-raft-of-education-reforms-mean-for-englands-schools-56383">recent education white paper</a>. </p>
<p>Morgan said the government had “listened to feedback from MPs, teachers, school leaders and parents” and concluded “that it is not necessary to bring legislation to bring about blanket conversion of all schools to achieve this goal.” </p>
<p>These are testing times for the government’s education policy and the furore caused by the plans among Conservative supporters and party members is likely to have long-lasting repercussions. </p>
<p>Despite politicians’ claims to the contrary, education policy has rarely been based or even informed by evidence. Many have expressed concerns about the <a href="https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/IMPB02/IMPB02.pdf">lack of clear evidence</a> that forcing schools, especially primaries, to become academies will have a positive impact on children’s learning. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.local.gov.uk/web/guest/media-releases/-/journal_content/56/10180/7799763/NEWS">A recent report sponsored by the Local Government Association</a> suggested that many local authority schools outperform academies. This prompted a remarkably ill-tempered response <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/25/local-authority-schools-outperform-academies-research-suggests">from the Department for Education</a>, which suggested that they are feeling the pressure. </p>
<p>Others have <a href="http://schoolsweek.co.uk/its-all-about-the-money-the-real-reason-behind-forced-academisation/">speculated about why the government has persisted</a> with such an unpopular and controversial policy. </p>
<h2>Unprecedented criticism from within</h2>
<p>Conservative school policies since the Thatcher administrations of the 1980s have had a number of familiar strands. <a href="https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/education-policy/book235688">Among the most consistent</a> have been increasing competition between schools, increasing choice for parents and students, and decreasing the power of local authorities, even in the face of popular opposition.</p>
<p>But it is difficult to think of education policies which have engendered the kind of grassroots revolt among Conservative supporters that the forced academisation plan has brought about. </p>
<p>John Patten, John Major’s education secretary between 1992 and 1994, described himself as “having tried to restore power to the centre, wresting it back from Local Education Authorities and redistributing it to schools”. He did this through the grant-maintained school policy, which was in many ways <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-10824069">the forerunner of the current academy programme</a>. </p>
<p>That government did not come anywhere near meeting his target of making all schools grant-maintained by 1997. The introduction of a voucher scheme, which the Conservative party had regarded as unworkable in the 1980s, suffered a similar fate when it was <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/councils-pressure-ministers-to-drop-nursery-voucher-scheme-1357165.html">controversially applied to nurseries</a> in 1996 in the form of vouchers for parents of four-year-olds to use in providers of their choice. </p>
<p>Although some councils rebelled against the voucher scheme, both policies largely retained party support even as the Major government declined. The election of the New Labour government in 1997 <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/456398.stm">ended both initiatives</a>. </p>
<h2>Implications for Tory education policy</h2>
<p>Conservative education policies since 2010 have explicitly shifted power from local authorities to the political centre while at the same time portraying this as supporting localism and increasing school autonomy. This has been <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/04/we-need-directors-schools-standards-make-academies-work-all">widely criticised by opponents for some time</a>. </p>
<p>The difference now is that for the first time it is Conservative MPs and councillors who are finding it <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/23/tory-mps-call-for-academies-plan-dropped-from-queens-speech">impossible to reconcile “one size fits all” academisation</a> with the rhetoric of increased choice and what Nick Gibb, the schools minister, has called “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2016/04/25/academies-plan-could-see-tory-defeat-as-opposition-grows/">devolution in its purest form</a>”. </p>
<p>When Nicky Morgan replaced Michael Gove as secretary of state for education in 2014, it was widely reported that her task was to <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2014/09/without-michael-gove-the-tories-have-no-moral-mission-on-education/">neutralise his “toxic legacy”</a>. At the same time, she continued to implement and extend key policies such as converting schools to academies and tackling so-called “<a href="https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/about-us/news-events/news/2015/05/comment-what-is-a-coasting-school/">coasting schools</a>”. </p>
<p>The crisis over academies has taken place against a backdrop of the government’s scrapping of <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/reception-baseline-comparability-study-published">baseline testing</a> for reception children and the National Audit Office’s criticism of the Department for Education’s “<a href="https://www.nao.org.uk/report/comptroller-and-auditor-generals-report-on-the-department-for-educations-financial-statements-2014-15/">inability to provide a clear view of academy trusts’ spending</a>”.</p>
<p>Amid <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36127447">reports</a> that some local authorities may be allowed to get involved in running multi-academy trusts – Morgan <a href="http://schoolsweek.co.uk/morgan-dodges-academies-u-turn-questions/">told parliament</a> on April 25 that it would be “talented officers” rather than authorities themselves that are involved. But this has not stopped questions from Conservative councillors and supporters about why lots of government money is being spent on complex structural alterations which result in little change. </p>
<p>Academisation has been the central tenet of recent Conservative school policy. Once it begins to be questioned, the foundations of Conservative education policy for over 30 years may start to crumble. In February 2015, David Cameron spoke characteristically intemperately of “<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11383017/Massive-expansion-of-academy-programme-to-be-announced-by-Prime-Minister.html">waging an all-out war on mediocrity</a>” in schools. As the policy failures mount up, he may now be regretting his choice of language.</p>
<p>_This article was updated on May 7 to reflect the fact that the government has backed down on plans to force all schools to become academies. _</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58380/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Jopling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Plans to turn all schools into academies by 2022 have caused a crisis within the party.Michael Jopling, Professor in Education, Department of Education and Lifelong Learning, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/572922016-04-08T13:17:18Z2016-04-08T13:17:18ZTrue cost of plan to turn all schools into academies remains opaque<p>In its recently published <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/educational-excellence-everywhere">white paper on education</a>, the government wants to ensure that “discredited ideas unsupported by firm evidence are not promoted”. Yet the Conservatives – who like to think of themselves as “the party of choice” – plan to force all schools to become academies by 2022. The secretary of state for education, Nicky Morgan <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/nicky-morgan-no-reverse-gear-academisation">said</a> the academies policy has “no reverse gear”. </p>
<p>This has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/26/national-union-of-teachers-backs-ballot-on-strike-action-brighton">invoked a strike ballot</a> by the National Union of Teachers, condemnation by Labour and even some <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/24/conservative-councillors-angry-academy-plans-nicky-morgan">Conservative councillors</a>. </p>
<p>Over the last five years, <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2016-03-16/31449/">the direct cost</a> to the Department for Education (DfE) of conversions to academy status has been about £320m for 4,897 schools – about £66,000 per school. </p>
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<p>With 16,800 schools, including special schools and pupil referral units, to be converted to academy status – the <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/news/73401/labour-claims-academies-plan-will-cost-%C2%A313bn">Labour party estimates</a> that the total conversion cost to the DfE will be £1.1bn, plus another £200m for estimated legal costs for local authorities. The government <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/education-35945542">contests these figures</a> and claims that around £600m has been allocated for academy conversion and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-way-schools-are-funded-in-england-is-ripe-for-reform-heres-why-55909">new formula</a> for allocating schools funding – but it is unclear exactly how the money is to be split between these two items. </p>
<h2>Thousands of conversions</h2>
<p>By March 2016, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-academies-and-academy-projects-in-development">DfE data showed</a> that 2,949 primaries (17% of total state-funded schools) and 2,007 secondaries were academies – so the Labour Party’s scaling up of the future direct costs of converting the remainder is a useful estimate. But it is only a ballpark figure. </p>
<p>There <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2015">are</a> 16,766 primaries and 3,381 secondaries in England so there are many more primaries to convert. Many primaries are small – hence they cannot be stand-alone academies – and they will have to become part of existing multi-academy trusts. This means the cost of conversion per school could be lower than previously thought.</p>
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<p>Yet the costs are likely to be on-going rather than one-off. And there are potential hidden costs – time taken up by teachers, governors and local authorities in the conversion process, and then adapting to the “new rules” that come with academy status. </p>
<p>The pace of change may exacerbate these hidden costs. Even in that bastion of free enterprise, competition and innovation, the United States, <a href="http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/09/17/7-key-facts-about-charter-school-quality">only about 6%</a> of the school population are in “charter schools”, a form of academy, 25 years after their introduction. </p>
<p>When you look at the details of conversion, monitoring standards, funding and accountability of academies – the costs of running the system look certain to be high. This will involve the DfE funding arrangements and dealing with appeals against academies and failing schools. In 2015, the Education Select Committee <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmeduc/258/258.pdf">recommended</a> that more support is also needed for <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/schools-commissioners-group">Regional Schools Commissioners</a>, who are now charged with overseeing academies. </p>
<p>Multi-layered responsibility and oversight invite difficulties and PR disasters – particularly when it comes to accountability to parents of primary school children. Transparency and accountability are the antidote, but this costs money. In the US, the monitoring regime for charter schools is more open and stringent (contracts are for three to five years rather than seven in the UK) – partly because conversion has been voluntary or new schools have been established as charters. </p>
<h2>Is it worth the cost?</h2>
<p>All might be well if the switch to academies produced clear cut, positive results across all pupils, which outweighed the transition costs and any higher running and monitoring costs to the state.</p>
<p>The “gold standard” of analysing the success of schools that have been given more autonomy has come from the US by way of a coin flip. <a href="http://users.nber.org/%7Eschools/charterschoolseval/how_NYC_charter_schools_affect_achievement_sept2009">Studies</a> using entry via a lottery mean that students at US academy-type schools, known as charters, can be “randomly matched” with state-maintained schools – so researchers can compare “apples with apples”. </p>
<p>In the UK, we don’t have admission by lottery and so researchers compare pupils who voluntarily choose to go to academies or free schools with pupils who go to state-maintained schools. It’s of course possible that the children at academies may do better or improve faster, simply because they start with higher academic attainment levels, better home environments, better neighbourhoods, greater motivation and maybe, better academic genes. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/app.5.4.1">Entry-lottery studies</a> are the best method of ensuring that some of the unobserved differences between academy and state-maintained pupils, which may be the cause of future pupil performance, are not wrongly attributed to the change to academy status.</p>
<p>This is the weakness in the white paper’s analysis – the methodology is often not comparing apples with pears, but apples with elephants.</p>
<p>In the UK, there are plenty of unanswered questions about the effectiveness of academies. For example, we don’t know yet whether giving schools more autonomy helps disadvantaged minority pupils – or “average” or “exceptional” pupils. Nor do we know what truly causes improvements in a school’s results – better teachers, higher salaries, longer academic year, support from other schools or children’s services, or conversion to another set of administrative structures. </p>
<p>What is clear is that the evidence does not support rushing through the forced conversion of all schools into the academy structure by 2022 and that the costs of the policy are still far from clear.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57292/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Cuthbertson is an ordinary member of the Labour Party </span></em></p>The government’s plans could come with many hidden costs.Keith Cuthbertson, Professor of Finance, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/567002016-03-23T13:56:12Z2016-03-23T13:56:12ZWhy it is a huge mistake to get rid of parent governors on school boards<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/116183/original/image-20160323-28187-973w1f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Parents: not just for helping with homework. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ZouZou/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In what circumstances can you judge that a parent is “not good enough”? Apparently when they are a school governor. In its latest set of reforms in education, the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/educational-excellence-everywhere">government plans</a> to scrap mandatory elected parent representation on school governing boards, so ending a democratic form of governance that has been in place since the late 1970s. </p>
<p>With this move, the government has gravely misunderstood not only what elected parents contribute to school governance, but also the legitimacy and credibility their involvement lends to the process of governing schools. The fact that parents are democratically elected onto boards epitomises the principles underlying a democratic system of education. </p>
<p>Parents were first brought onto governing bodies of schools after <a href="http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/taylor/">the 1977 Taylor report</a>. This looked to transform school governance <a href="http://anemlophi.com/xytos.pdf">by ensuring</a> that the public interest in schools was represented by local education authorities, staff, parents and the community who would “share as partners in promoting the success of that school, in all its life and work, and its good relationships with parents and the wider community”.</p>
<p>Yet with breathtaking arrogance, the government’s new <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/educational-excellence-everywhere">white paper</a> dismisses the role of elected parents as “tokenistic” and their role as purely “symbolic”. It looks to relegate them to something that sounds like a school-level cheerleader, who must now spend their time “focusing on understanding and championing the needs of pupils, parents and the wider local community.” <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/educational-excellence-everywhere">Stating that the real work</a> – of holding school leadership and management to account – will be done by “professionals”. </p>
<p>The proposals to remove the requirement to have elected parent governors on boards risks alienating the very communities whose interests the board purports to represent. It is a grave error of judgement on the part of the government.</p>
<h2>The role of parent governors</h2>
<p>Defining what elected parents do for a board is not easy, but then it isn’t easy to define what any individual board member does. They act as a whole board and <a href="http://ema.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/1741143215587306v1.pdf?ijkey=ftwNxPU6ZLuMPnu&keytype=finite">are judged as such</a>.</p>
<p>Anyone with any experience of governance will attest to the power and value of the lay question – commonly asked by individuals with an interest in the subject but not necessarily expertise. This was a point raised by many who gave evidence <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-committee/inquiries/parliament-2010/the-role-of-school-governing-bodies/">to the 2014 parliamentary investigation</a> into school governing.</p>
<p>In addition, experience both within and outside the education sector indicate that “professionals” do not necessarily <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2015/jun/14/my-bad-experience-as-a-charity-chief-made-me-a-better-trustee">readily convert their skills into good governance</a> as the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/16/bbc-alan-yentob-kids-company">recent furore over the Kids Club charity</a>, and other, similar scandals have proved.</p>
<p>The “symbolic” element of any governance role, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7Fyefq5LV8sC&source=gbs_navlinks_s">is important too</a>. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2016/jan/14/sir-phillip-dilley-resignation-public-sector-chair-environment-agency">public outcry</a> caused by the chair of the Environment Agency’s absence during the recent floods powerfully illustrated just how core symbolic presence is to the task of governance. </p>
<p>When parents were first introduced onto governing bodies they brought much to the table – local knowledge, awareness of issues bubbling up within communities. Sometimes this has been dismissed as “over interest in their own kids’ stuff”. But is it? I imagine headteachers could provide plenty of examples of how issues that bubble up anecdotally as part of parents’ unique interest in the school community have proved invaluable and useful in articulating and defining a broader and more generalised problem.</p>
<h2>Hard to quantify</h2>
<p>But it is that indefinable quality that really doesn’t sit well with policy makers. That tacit knowledge that can’t be pinned down and is damn near impossible to evaluate, that is what elected parents bring to the table. Parents are not there because they are accountants, lawyers or HR professionals in their day jobs, but because they are interested in the school and eager to learn about this system <a href="http://www.policypress.co.uk/display.asp?K=9781447326021">that was for so long</a> considered a “secret garden” and hidden from public scrutiny. </p>
<p>As any teacher will tell you: a student that is keen to learn will ask the most searching of questions. Parent governors often ask questions that some professionals will never think to ask, either out of “professional respect” for an individual’s office – particularly if they share the same professional field – or because they are afraid that the question may seem at worst too basic, or at best undermining.</p>
<p>A constant mantra of “putting parents first” infuses the new white paper. But it rings hollow in terms of the substance of proposals. For example, the paper insists that the growth of multi-academy trusts “will improve the quality of governance”, but offers little indication as to how.</p>
<p>Parents themselves do not appear to be buying into the rhetoric, believing that professionalised boards will be too far removed from the communities they purport to represent. This was illustrated recently by some of the responses <a href="http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/guest_posts/2595153-Guest-post-Nicky-Morgan-Why-academisation-is-best-for-our-schools">to a recent guest post by Nicky Morgan</a> on the Mumsnet website. One remarked that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Academisation puts power in the hands of an executive head and a corporate board and that is IT … Our governors have all been removed in favour of the new executive board. Who have never even visited the village.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By removing elected parents from boards, the government not only removes a vital source of knowledge and democratic representation from the public service of education, they also remove a powerful symbol of community; one that lends both credibility and legitimacy to the board and its decisions. In so doing they risk the wholesale alienation of the very parents they frame as central to their education policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline Baxter is affiliated as a member of the council of BELMAS, an independent voice supporting quality education through effective leadership and management. </span></em></p>The government has gravely misunderstood what parents contribute to school governance.Jacqueline Baxter, Lecturer in Public Policy and Management , The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/561122016-03-21T13:54:55Z2016-03-21T13:54:55ZGoverning academies regionally may be the way to iron out inequalities in schools<p>Parents and teachers are still coming to terms with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-raft-of-education-reforms-mean-for-englands-schools-56383">series of structural reforms to education</a>, the most radical of which – as announced by George Osborne in his budget speech – will be to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508193/HMT_Budget_2016_Web_Accessible.pdf">transform all UK secondary schools to academies</a> by 2022. </p>
<p>As the dust settles, I think that the system that eventually emerges might provide a more consistent context for addressing the inherent inequalities in English children’s attainment than the dying <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-obituary-farewell-to-your-local-education-authority-56387">local authority-supervised system</a> system it replaces.</p>
<p>Osborne’s announcement was swiftly followed by the first government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508550/Educational_excellence_everywhere__print_ready_.pdf">white paper</a> on education for six years: Educational Excellence Everywhere. Among other things, it sets out the organisational arrangements for English schools the government expects to be complete by the end of this parliament. </p>
<p>All this had been precipitated a few weeks earlier by a <a href="https://consult.education.gov.uk/funding-policy-unit/schools-national-funding-formula">consultation document</a> on a new national schools funding formula in which the government said: “we expect local authorities to step back from running school improvement (for any schools) from the end of the 2016/17 academic year”. </p>
<p>These are big changes, but they are not unexpected. In <a href="http://www.ucl-ioe-press.com/books/schools-and-schooling/equity-trust-and-the-self-improving-schools-system/">a new book</a>, I have argued they can easily be traced back to the <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmeduski/633/633.pdf">third education white paper</a> of the Labour government in 2006 – and arguably even further back to a 1995 Conservative letter to local education authorities. </p>
<h2>The push for self-improvement</h2>
<p>These reforms are not merely a creation of the Conservative (or coalition) governments. For more than ten years, “system leaders” – accredited national, local and specialist leaders of education drawn from high-performing schools – have been steadily replacing staff formerly employed by local authorities to provide support to schools. These schools are either those identified as being in difficulty by failing to meet an ever-widening net of expectations, or those that just want to improve their offer to some or all of their children, even if already considered “good” or “better” by the schools inspectorate Ofsted.</p>
<p>As a consequence, many headteachers I interviewed no longer find local authority (LA) staff who understand their work and can be helpful to them – <a href="https://theconversation.com/failing-academy-chains-highlight-hole-at-heart-of-education-policy-23954">local authorities have been hollowed out</a>. So although most headteachers bear no antagonism to their LA, many have just moved on mentally: they do not look to the local authority for anything now. A fundamental shift in attitudes has taken place.</p>
<p>Rapidly increasing academisation of schools since 2010 – now to be completed under this government – accelerated this shift. So did the stringent budget cuts <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-cuts-to-local-councils-will-affect-you-51622">imposed on local authorities</a> from 2010, that are set to continue. But I also found a dramatic and irreversible decline in regard for local democracy in nearly everyone interviewed, whatever their professional role or background. </p>
<p>LAs have not helped themselves: moves to cabinet and now mayoral government have reduced the great public deliberative processes that were a strength of the English system for 100 years. Some council “vision” documents still show elaborate flow diagrams whereby schools implement council priorities. Even the Local Government Association has <a href="http://www.local.gov.uk/publications/-/journal_content/56/10180/4047947/PUBLICATION">openly spoken</a> of the crisis in democracy. </p>
<p>The rapid pace of academisation is not the whole story. The system emerging from the now dying local authority one is being supervised by eight <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/schools-commissioners-group/about/our-governance">Regional Schools Commissioners</a> (RSCs), appointed in 2014. </p>
<p>I interviewed two of them before they took up their posts. They were hugely impressive: measured, focused practically on how schools realistically improve, and driven by a moral commitment, particularly to disadvantaged students. They are supported by <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmeduc/401/40108.htm">Headteacher Advisory Boards</a> – part-elected and part-appointed – all of whom have time built into their working weeks to support the commissioners. </p>
<p>Together, their role has been to intervene into academies and free schools in difficulty and help develop system leaders. This is now being extended to all schools, including those currently maintained by local authorities, and they will oversee the transition to a fully academised system. Currently there are eight RSCs responsible to the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/people/david-carter">National Schools Commissioner</a> (David Carter), though the government has not ruled out there being more in the future.</p>
<h2>Signs of progress</h2>
<p>But there is a wider story of developing school partnerships I came across in my research. In some places – often originally provided with start-up funding by their local authorities – thriving school partnerships are engaging in rich development activities, using system leaders. </p>
<p>One partnership in the West Midlands, for example, provides rotating half termly “learning walks” whereby senior staff can hear about a particular innovation in a school and then spend time in classrooms seeing it in action. A teaching school alliance elsewhere, which I came across in my research, has amalgamated its professional development programme with one formerly provided by the local authority and now runs it from a local university. And some of these partnerships are already becoming the first port of call for development queries from their schools. </p>
<p>But this is uneven. In some parts of the country, the largest number of academies <a href="http://shura.shu.ac.uk/9318/1/Simkins_-_school_restructuring_in_England_-_final.pdf">are free-standing</a> – neither being in chains nor having any established partnerships of their own – leading to uncertainty. And the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-arent-all-academy-chains-boosting-results-for-their-poorest-students-45132">variable quality</a> of academy chains has been well-documented. Secondary schools generally do not yet have one consistent set of partnership relationships through which they can focus all their improvement work – an idea <a href="http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/15804/1/a-self-improving-school-system-towards-maturity.pdf">advocated by</a> the education scholar David Hargreaves. All of this is still developing.</p>
<p>Democratic it ain’t though, and schools-led not yet. Nevertheless, with a focus on inequality in outcomes for children – essential in England – the system now in development could prove more reliable and consistent than the old one, though of <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmeduc/401/401.pdf">course not yet</a>. </p>
<p>And the story of local authorities’ other responsibilities towards schools is not yet finished with this white paper. I argue for new ones for some, including supporting local communities – especially in deprived areas – to articulate their own visions for their future development involving their local academies. The LA story has just reached another staging post. It’s time to move on.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56112/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Riddell has received research funding previously from the British Academy. </span></em></p>It will take time, but a education system governed by Regional Schools Commissioners might not be more reliable.Richard Riddell, Senior lecturer, Education Studies, Bath Spa UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/563832016-03-18T12:01:34Z2016-03-18T12:01:34ZExplainer: what raft of education reforms mean for England’s schools<p>The Conservatives show no sign of slowing down the pace of education reform in England and made a flurry of new announcements on changes to the school system. After the headlines about George Osborne’s budget announcement that all schools must be on track <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35815023">to becoming an academy by 2022</a>, more detail on this and a raft of other reforms have been published by Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508447/Educational_Excellence_Everywhere.pdf">in a new white paper</a>. </p>
<p>The key principles of these changes is to increase schools’ autonomy to make their own decisions, and focus on the quality of education by monitoring the outcomes of pupils. </p>
<p>By transforming all schools in England into academies, the Conservatives aim to totally transform schools by the time the next election comes along – finally taking <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-obituary-farewell-to-your-local-education-authority-56387">local authorities out of running schools</a> altogether. The majority (61%) of secondary schools <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35815023">are already academies</a> – 2,075 out of 3,381. But the picture in primary is quite different – only around 15% of primary schools are currently academies. Converting all of them will be a huge task, not least for the Department for Education in managing the process. </p>
<p>The academies policy also creates a big challenge of governance. It’s unclear whether we can find enough high quality governors to run all our schools well. One way of solving this problem might be to get schools to join together in multi-academy trusts (MATs), otherwise known as academy chains. The white paper suggests that “most schools will join or form MATs”. </p>
<p>But this will only partially solve the problem. While some academy chains such as Harris or ARK have been highly effective, <a href="http://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Chain-Effects-2015.pdf">others have had major issues</a> in terms of quality of performance. </p>
<p>The white paper suggests a strong role for the eight existing Regional Schools Commissioners in monitoring the quality of academy chains and intervening where necessary. In addition, measures have been proposed to increase the role of parents, who will be allowed to petition to have a school moved to another chain. </p>
<p>There will also finally be the publication of accountability and performance measures for MATs, something <a href="https://theconversation.com/schools-dont-operate-in-a-vacuum-so-why-inspect-them-as-if-they-do-33693">that was overdue</a> in a system in which they play such a central role. </p>
<h2>Too much, too soon?</h2>
<p>All this is happening at a time when the overall evidence on whether academies have an overall positive effect on standards is mixed. The first generation of academies, the so-called “sponsored” academies set up in disadvantaged, primarily inner-city areas to take over from struggling schools, have shown <a href="https://theconversation.com/first-wave-of-academy-schools-created-under-labour-boosted-grades-39665">positive effects</a> on attainment. The picture <a href="http://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/IMPB02/IMPB02.pdf">is less clear</a> for the more recent “converter” academies, successful schools that could convert to academy status. </p>
<p>Full academisation of English schools also marks the end of the National Curriculum, a flagship policy of a previous Conservative government, as academies can set their own. In practise, however, the exam and accountability system – including performance measures such as the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/english-baccalaureate-ebacc">English Baccalaureate</a> – leaves government with a strong lever to direct what schools teach.</p>
<p>Osborne also announced additional funding for a quarter of secondary schools to extend their school day. This can be a useful strategy to improve attainment in particular for disadvantaged students. But as with academisation, the evidence is mixed: it is what schools do with the extra time that really counts. In particular, activities <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/extending-school-time/;%20http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED461695">need to be academically focused</a>, but sufficiently attractive to make sure students actually attend them.</p>
<h2>Closing the gap</h2>
<p>The schools inspectorate Ofsted recently <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/a-nation-divided">identified a gap in school standards</a> between the north and south of England, with the former under-performing. In response to this, the government announced a strategy, partly copied from the successful <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/184093/DFE-RR215.pdf">London Challenge</a>, to improve them. The model is based on outstanding schools and leaders supporting their less successful neighbours. </p>
<p>There is evidence that this strategy can be successful, but <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09243453.2013.840319#abstract">it doesn’t work in all cases</a>. Some critics have claimed that the success of the London Challenge was not down to the strategy at all, but to changes in demographics, such as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-why-do-students-in-london-do-better-at-school-34090">growing number</a> of non-white British working class pupils. Others have pointed to the additional funding received for each pupil by London schools. </p>
<h2>Teacher training revamp</h2>
<p>The white paper proposes to further increase the proportion of teacher training offered by schools rather than universities. The “best” universities will still offer teacher training, often in “centres of excellence” based on their “world-leading research and subject expertise”. This suggests that difficult times may be coming for those universities that provide teacher training that does not fit the criteria. </p>
<p>Schools are also to be given an increased role in accrediting new teachers. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/qualified-teacher-status-qts">The current system</a> will be scrapped and replaced by “accreditation based on a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom, as judged by great schools”. Headteachers will play a key role. </p>
<p>The existing school-led teacher training system has come in for a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/jan/19/school-direct-is-choking-university-teacher-training-courses">lot of criticism</a>, but in reality there is no real evidence of its effectiveness or otherwise. In part, this is because the impact of teacher training on student outcomes <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272710001696">is hard to measure</a>. Still, the government’s emphasis on improving teachers’ subject knowledge and ensuring the content of their initial training is based on evidence is welcome, and will hopefully debunk some of the myths and poor practices that <a href="http://swcarpentry.github.io/instructor-training/papers/de-bruyckere-urban-myths-2015.pdf">still crop up in education</a>. </p>
<h2>Fairer funding</h2>
<p>The final major reform that will have a large impact in many schools is the change to the school funding formula. The government has set aside £500m to ensure that 90% of schools are funded under the new “fair funding” formula by 2020 to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-way-schools-are-funded-in-england-is-ripe-for-reform-heres-why-55909">eliminate current discrepancies</a> in per pupil funding around the country. </p>
<iframe src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/PlKiN/1/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>The new formula simplifies funding by using four levers: a basic amount per pupil, a payment based on additional needs such as low prior attainment, school costs (the extra costs for serving rural communities), and area costs (more funding will go to areas with higher costs). </p>
<p>This is likely to decrease some of the differences in funding between schools in different areas. What is fair is of course in the eye of the beholder and those schools and areas losing out under the new formula will no doubt quickly point out any inequities the new system may contain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56383/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Muijs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Unpacked: academy ramp-up, new teacher qualifications and school funding formula.Daniel Muijs, Director of Research and Deputy Head of Southampton Education School, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/563872016-03-17T10:57:08Z2016-03-17T10:57:08ZAn obituary: farewell to your Local Education Authority<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/115358/original/image-20160316-30231-fric7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Where to from here?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monkey Business Images/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>By announcing that all schools will be <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35815023">expected to become academies</a>, George Osborne has foretold the death of local authority involvement in education.</p>
<p>Born on December 18 1902, Local Education Authorities (LEAs) will likely have their life support switched off sometime in 2022, by which time all schools will be expected to be on course to becoming academies. The local authorities will leave behind a number of precious local services, their future somewhat uncertain.</p>
<p>Despite their long life, LEAs have not been universally popular, making a number of enemies: the late <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/local-government-network/2013/apr/09/local-government-margaret-thatcher-war-politics">Margaret Thatcher</a> and former education secretary Keith Joseph, to name but two. Between them they <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/apr/05/inner-london-education-authority">killed off the Inner LEA</a>, but the behemoth that was the remainder of the local education authorities remained. </p>
<p>The death of local education authorities then seemed inevitable after they lost many of their powers of control over schools with the 1988 Education Reform Act. For many years since, their role has largely been one of scrutiny and support, but for some this will be very badly missed. </p>
<p>This time, the Conservatives intend to deliver a fatal blow. But there are five ways that schools and children will lose out from the demise of local authority control of education. </p>
<h2>1. A local champion for vulnerable children</h2>
<p>Local authorities <a href="http://www.fulloflifekc.com/information-service/disability-law.php">must currently engage with parents</a> and schools to ensure that the right provision for every child is available locally. Ensuring the specific needs of every child are met is hugely complex and even <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-26439576">local authorities struggle to meet their responsibilities at times.</a> </p>
<p>As education is fragmented, there will be concerns over how parents will be able to negotiate the minefield that is school admissions, with each academy or trust being its own admissions body. </p>
<p>Legally, local authorities have the responsibility to provide a school place for every child. If every school is an academy, local authorities or councils will have no power to require schools to expand their intake or take on any child. Already, LEAs are warning that <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35671570">finding school places for all is becoming “undeliverable”.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.lgo.org.uk/publications/fact-sheets/complaints-about-special-educational-needs/">Currently, parents can take a local authority to a tribunal</a> if they feel the needs of their child are not being met. It’s unclear how this will work if the local authority in effect ceases to exist. </p>
<h2>2. A local vision for schools</h2>
<p>With the demise of LEAs, many schools will be run by multi-academy trusts (MATs) – chains of academies run by the same sponsors. Many trusts operate a number of schools, sometimes in different local authority areas. Some may know more about the local community than others. </p>
<p>The only answer the Department for Education has for under-performing academies or trusts is <a href="http://schoolsweek.co.uk/academies-swap-trusts-in-emerging-transfer-market/">the transfer of schools from one trust to another</a>. This is likely to increase, alongside the incorporation of standalone academies into existing and new trusts. </p>
<p>The governance of academy chains has been questioned, most recently by the current head of schools inspectorate Ofsted, Michael Wilshaw, who <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35775458">highlighted several underperforming MATs</a>. </p>
<p>Ultimately, it is likely to be the vision of the trust, not the community, that schools will adopt – and parents will have to live with it.</p>
<h2>3. Local forum for school improvement</h2>
<p>School improvement arises from the efforts of people, not structures. A structural change will not deliver long-term sustained improvement in itself. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.local.gov.uk/documents/10180/11463/L13-718+CfPs+LGA+Education+v5.pdf/14435b0b-65cf-4699-9c84-e52083357a07">Local authorities have provided a platform</a> for a range of collaborations between heads, teachers, various schools and local and national services. Admittedly, some authorities are better at this than others, but the setting up of a free market competitive model for school governance where academy trusts actively compete rather than collaborate cannot be a good model for mutual improvement.</p>
<h2>4. Loss of essential services to schools</h2>
<p>Local authorities provide many services to schools, from the vetting of contracts and human resources management, to payroll services and delivering expertise in commissioning, tendering and procurement. They also provide many support services from school transport and peripatetic music teachers, to anti-bullying advice and educational psychology services. </p>
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<span class="caption">Pens poised for new contracts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Smiltena/www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<p>With academies funded directly by central government, local authorities will lose much of their funding as a result of the push to academise. This may well put some of these services at risk or increase their cost. If they are large enough, some MATs may be able to replicate the cost savings of local authorities by clubbing together and contracting such services. But small rural schools who depend on services offered by the council may struggle to afford them.</p>
<h2>5. Learning from the past</h2>
<p>The Conservatives have learned from Labour’s failure in the 1960s to completely eradicate grammar schools. The process of ending selection was resisted by some, most notably Kent, and the law never changed to ban or force grammar schools to close – it just prevented the opening of new ones. </p>
<p>They also learned from their own failure in the 1980s and 90s to abolish local authorities and establish more independence for some schools under what was called the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/40/part/I/chapter/IV">grant maintained programme.</a> Following Labour’s landslide election victory in 1997, a new act was passed in 1998 that reversed the grant maintained status of schools. </p>
<p>Putting these laments for the demise of the LEA aside, the evidence that academies are the best model <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-arent-all-academy-chains-boosting-results-for-their-poorest-students-45132">for school improvement is severely lacking</a>, especially for the poorest students. Research suggests that underperforming schools actually <a href="http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2016/03/forcing-schools-to-become-academies-will-mean-more-inadequate-schools-and-worse-results">improve much faster under local authority supervision.</a></p>
<p>What the future holds for local authorities and education is extremely uncertain. The devil will be in the detail of the government’s planned legislation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/56387/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Five ways children will lose out by forcing all schools to become academies.James Williams, Lecturer in Science Education, Sussex School of Education and Social Work, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.