England’s school system has changed beyond recognition. The accountability around it hasn’t kept up. Most children now attend academies or schools within multi-academy trusts, with decisions affecting education split between trusts, councils, regional directors and central government. Parents still ask a simple question: who is responsible for education in my area? There isn’t a good answer. This isn’t a criticism of any single organisation. It’s what happens when a system evolves fast and accountability doesn’t move with it. Nobody designed this gap – it opened gradually as responsibility scattered across an increasingly crowded landscape. At this point it serves nobody – not trusts, not councils, not regional directors, and certainly not children and parents trying to work out who to ask. The answer is to bring these strands together around a single point of statutory accountability for place: a chief education officer at local government level. This isn’t about recreating the old education departments. Before 2004, councils had a chief education officer because they ran almost every school directly. That world is gone, and nobody is trying to bring it back. The case now is narrower. Every place needs a statutory professional who can give an independent overview of education, advise elected members and MPs, speak up for children and parents, and account for the quality and sufficiency of provision across the whole area, whoever happens to run the school down the road. Independent voice matters If anything, the more autonomous schools become, the more an independent voice rooted in place matters, not less. With more than 2,000 academy trusts to manage, regional Department for Education discussions have become practically impossible. By contrast, anchoring strategy within the 153 chief education officers provides a clean line of sight on local issues and challenges. This role would add to democratic accountability rather than claw back control, and it would sit alongside existing governance rather than compete with it. Some will say directors of children’s services (DSCs) already do this job. In practice their brief has grown hugely over the past two decades – social care, safeguarding, SEND, early help, the reform of social work and family support. All of these rightly demand serious attention. That’s not a knock on today’s DCSs. It’s just that education has, inevitably, become one priority among several, rather than the main one. Most councils respond by appointing an experienced director or assistant director of education. These posts vary by authority and by what each council decides it needs. What they don’t have is the statutory standing, independence or recognised public authority that used to come with the chief education officer title – not through any fault of the people in post, but because nobody built the role to carry that weight. Gap at post-16 This is where place matters most. Large multi-academy trusts educate hundreds of thousands of pupils and control significant public money, and they’re governed properly within their own structures. But governing an institution isn’t the same as leading a place. Nobody currently holds the whole picture for a local area, spotting emerging risk, joining up provision, speaking with authority on behalf of every child in it regardless of which school they attend. The same gap shows up at the post-16 transition. Alan Milburn’s interim review on young people and work paints a stark picture of the NEET crisis and an FE landscape he describes as fragmented with patchy local coordination. His recommendations point toward place-based solutions and greater local or devolved leadership across post-16 provision. A chief education officer with a remit running from early years through to the post-16 transition is well placed to do exactly that, pulling schools, colleges and local employers into one conversation instead of leaving each to operate in its own silo. Regional directors do important work, but they answer upward to central government, not outward to a place. They can’t give communities the local leadership or democratic connection they need. School sufficiency, attendance, exclusions, inclusion, support for vulnerable learners all need leadership rooted in a place and accountable to it, not leadership that drops in from outside. Failing to keep up There’s also a timing argument. The statutory guidance covering directors of children’s services and lead members hasn’t been substantially revised since 2012. Since then, academisation has accelerated, MATs have come to dominate, SEND pressures have intensified, and government has leaned harder into place-based partnership as a principle of public service reform. The framework hasn’t kept pace with the system it’s meant to govern – or with where government itself now wants to go. A modern chief education officer wouldn’t run schools or direct trusts. The job would be strategic leadership across a place. This could include independent advice, honest challenge, and a clear point of accountability that the public can find, working alongside trusts, colleges and the DCS, not against them. Every child deserves someone whose job, by statute, is to ask one question on their behalf: is this system actually working for the children here? That voice is needed more than ever in a landscape this fragmented. A chief education officer built around place, bringing the system together rather than splitting it further, fits naturally with where the government already wants to take devolution.