Heads’ union pushes for academies’ right to rejoin councils

A headteachers’ union is set to campaign for academies to be allowed to return to local authority oversight, warning schools are waiting “years” to be moved to new trusts.

A motion to the annual conference of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) this weekend will call for a change to the law that prevents academies from becoming community schools again.

It comes after the National Education Union passed a motion calling for the same change.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said last year it was something she was “open to considering”, but the proposal was not included in the government’s schools bill.

Paul Whiteman, the union’s general secretary, told Schools Week the “concept of schools having the power of movement when they’re not being served properly is a strong concept”.

The motion warns that every year, schools across the country “find themselves in the position that ‘nobody wants them’”.

They were often in areas of significant disadvantage and were deemed as needing to be re-brokered to another MAT, which could take years.

“Other schools, for a variety of reasons, find that having joined a MAT, it did not meet their needs or expectations and they regret going through with the process.

“Where school leaders are faced with these challenges, they should be able to approach their LA and discuss whether they could return to them.”

If passed, the union’s leadership will be instructed to lobby government to change the law.

‘Schools should have some choice’

Whiteman said a school should have “some choice” and say, “actually, your ethos as an academy chain doesn’t fit with our ethos, or actually, we don’t think you’re supporting us in the way that you should do.

“And therefore, the market inverts. The schools have the power in this market, rather than the big academy central offices having the power to lord it over the schools, for want of a better term.”

The practicalities of a return to council oversight – with capacity cut back as more schools convert – would be “part of the debate”.

There could also be problems over who would make any decision on behalf of a school, particularly as governors and staff are appointed by the trust it belongs to.

But Labour has faced criticism over its schools bill policies, such as taking away academy freedoms and ending the legal duty to academies failing schools.

Its curriculum and assessment review is also considering whether to scrap the English Baccalaureate.

Ignore ‘soft on standards’ critics

Whiteman called on the government not to “flinch in the face of those criticisms that you’ve gone soft on standards. Ignore them.

“You’re not going soft on standards. You’re just measuring standards in a different way. You have a majority that’s big enough to deal with that.

“You can see the [government’s] ambition for standards is very real, and will put our members to task. Our members aren’t scared of that. There’s no one more ambitious for higher rising standards than school leaders and teachers.”

But heads also wanted mechanisms that measured them fairly, that were proportionate and not dangerous to their health and safety.

Delegates will also debate a motion on Ofsted’s reforms, calling on the union leadership to “fully explore the legal and industrial options available … to protect the mental and physical health and wellbeing of school leaders and staff”.

The watchdog recently consulted on plans to judge schools with five grades across up to 11 judgment areas. Reforms followed a coroner’s ruling in 2023 that an inspection contributed to the suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry.

Fears over Ofsted reforms

Whiteman said there was “relief in the system” when the government scrapped single-phrase headline judgments.

But the fear had been replaced by the proposals so far. “The fear of our members is [inspections] get worse under the new proposals because there’s so much more to be inspected. It’s less clear where the lines of division are.

“If it goes through, my very real fear is we will suffer, if not the tragedy of a suicide, the tragedy of losing more and more school leaders and teachers.”

He said the union would await the outcome of the consultation and whether the reforms were changed, but “we might hit the measure of a trade dispute over their failure to change in the face of evidence”.

Delegates will also debate a motion on the school funding crisis, warning of the “detrimental effects on the health and well-being of school leaders and staff”.