New legislation always carries the inevitable risk of unintended consequences. Even good legislation that makes positive change happen overall can have knock-on effects that then need fresh attention. The schools bill working its way through parliament, however, is not good legislation.
Scanning back over reform of the past thirty years or so, some things have worked out really well. Notably, the introduction of more independent models in the form of academies and free schools has driven innovation and made the sector more restless.
Restlessness is good; it breeds forward movement. Due in part to there being a competitive edge, we have sharpened our focus on pedagogy and curriculum. No one who has worked in schools over the past couple of decades can deny it.
Freedoms also bring flexibility – essential when each school’s circumstances are slightly different. When we allow decisions to be made as locally as possible (known in governance theory as subsidiarity), we enable schools to be responsive to their communities and agile in managing their own particular risks and challenges.
Furthermore, at a macro level, diversity is always good. With uniformity, we become stagnant and very susceptible to risks. If we are all dependent on one model and that model proves faulty or becomes out of date faster than we can evolve, we have made a mess of things indeed.
So we have gained much from moving away from a centrally-controlled approach. Even though a proportion of schools remain under the auspices of their local authority, the sector as a whole has enjoyed a spicing up and it has been exciting to be part of it.
Undoubtedly, some things also went a bit wrong. In particular, financial controls were not tight enough in the early academy trust era.
I picked up a re-brokered Bright Tribe school just before Covid hit. Being part of a poorly governed trust had not done the school any favours. But these are bygone days.
These reforms will just pull us back into the mud
Some things also still need addressing, not least current stratospheric levels of executive pay.
And new problems have emerged too, partly as a direct result of legislation, but also because of the cross winds of societal change.
The erosion of local authority capacity as schools have been absorbed into trusts has weakened them just as the burden and complexity of their universal responsibilities have increased. Safeguarding is weightier than ever and SEND services and systems are struggling to keep up.
But this could not have been predicted in the early noughties, and it is really important not to conflate unintended consequences with the proven success of going in a certain direction. It makes no sense to hit the reverse button just because difficulties arise.
For this reason alone, Labour’s schools bill is extremely frustrating. All schools – academies or otherwise – will now be bound by the national pay and conditions framework and required to follow the national curriculum. These are retrograde steps.
The overriding drive back to an ‘all schools must’ approach, with micromanagement going as far as numbering items of school uniform, is going to be stifling.
Yes, the system has become bi–partite and this incoherency is less than ideal. It’s very annoying for us working in LA schools when we hit some historical restrictions, particularly around pay and recruitment. We are often told ‘no you can’t do that’ even when the action would solve a problem, benefit our pupils, and we know the academy down the road is doing precisely that.
What we need is the reinforcement of what is working well and more targeted and strategic thinking around how we can enable all schools to benefit from the best bits. What we are getting instead is something that will just pull us back into the mud.
It is a clear mishandling of the current state of things, and will arrest innovation and improvement.
I’m getting my red pen out and this bill doesn’t even get ‘good try’. I say, take it away and do it again.
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