School autonomy isn’t necessarily a bad idea, we just don’t know if it has any effect. A recent study claiming a positive effect of school autonomy is severely flawed.
If anyone thought that another scathing report by MPs into the Coalition’s academies policy might put its expansion on ice, the prime minister has quickly proved them wrong. In a speech laying out the…
It is not yet possible to tell whether the government’s flagship academies policy has been “a positive force for change” in the English education system. That’s the finding of a long-awaited report by…
Any review of 2014 in education must examine a Trojan Horse bearing “British values”. The scandal that broke in April centred on the investigation of 21 Birmingham schools suspected of being involved in…
Imagine a police officer pulls you over and tickets you for speeding. She tells you she measured you going 50.5 MPH in a 50 MPH zone. No, you reply, my speedometer shows that I was going exactly 49.5…
The debate about how to build a sound, sustainable system of governance for English schools out of the disarray that the coalition government will bequeath to its successor is gaining momentum. The present…
As part of its ongoing inquiry into academies and free schools, the Education Select Committee recently published a report that it had commissioned from Jean Scott and me on conflicts of interest in academies…
Recent inspections of schools run by academy chains have shown many of these schools to be failing. Yet Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, is still not allowed to regulate the very organisations that are…
Victorian Education Minister Martin Dixon seems convinced that the Victorian Competition and Efficiency Commission’s report, Making the Grade: Autonomy and Accountability in Victorian Schools, proves that…
All schools in England have a considerable and increasing degree of autonomy over their budgets. Academies have more autonomy than those state schools still under local authority control over how they…
Nearly 15 years after the first academies – state-funded schools with more autonomy – were introduced in England, there is still relatively little information about how the reforms have affected children…
It was early and still quiet as I meandered around the recent Academies Show in London. Jars of promotional pens and key chains were lined up, while two young people in smocks painted the words “innovation…
Federal education minister Christopher Pyne has announced a scheme to make Australian schools “more autonomous”. Amid the fanfare of the announcement there was little detail except the hope that by 2017…