Academies will offer real school choice - once the red tape is swept away

By Harry Phibbs
Last updated at 12:48 PM on 1st September 2010

So the summer, such as it was, is over. It's time to go back to school.

From this term pupils at another 96 schools will be heading to academies - including 32 new-style academies resulting from changes brought in by the new Government.

But that’s a modest number given that there are over 4,000 state secondary schools and nearly 22,000 state primary schools in the UK.

Education Secretary Michael Gove reads for Lia Thomas, left, and Chloe Teggart at the Cuckoo Hall Primary School in Edmonton, north east London

Listen and learn: Education Secretary Michael Gove has made a bright start, promising to liberate schools from the dead hand of local authority bureaucracy

The educational establishment, an alliance of the teacher unions, Councils wishing to defend their school empires, Quangocrats and Department of Education civil servants, seem to take encouragement that they will be able to thwart any change.

They hope that they will be able to retain centralised control to ensure progressive orthodoxies in the classroom are followed. They want to retain control of what our children are taught and how they are taught.

These people are convinced that they know best and therefore that the threat of parent power must be averted. Often they are uncomfortable about any reference to ‘bad schools’ or ‘bad teachers’ - and are most reluctant to support the closure of a school for having poor exam results or being half empty.

Yet they are all too keen for grammar schools, church schools or independent schools to shut down - it seems the more successful a school, the more they despise it. Even when a school remains non-selective and state-owned there is hostility when it gains Academy status - because of the modest degree of independence from bureaucratic conformity.

In the United States there is rather broader political consensus for school choice. President Barack Obama says: ‘Charter schools are public schools founded by parents, teachers, and civic or community organizations with broad leeway to innovate - schools I supported as a state legislator and United States Senator.’

In many ways the Free Schools being proposed here are similar to the Charter Schools in the US - as well as the Free Schools in Sweden, which have also now won bipartisan support.

The concern in Britain is that unlike the Swedish operators (and some US operators) of such schools, the British versions will not be allowed to make a profit. Unfortunately the regulatory burden of setting up such a school is immense. This makes it a daunting prospect for a plucky group of parents using the local church hall to start their own school. Some, I hope many, will persist. But for others their initial enthusiasm could all too easily be drowned in a sea of form filling.

It is argued that the absurdly prescriptive and politically correct School Admissions Code should apply to the free schools as it applies to everyone else. Very well - in that case why not sweep it away for all schools?

Education Secretary Michael Gove either needs to clear away the bureaucracy or allow in the companies who can cope with it by opening chains of schools and employing managers to ensure all the boxes are ticked. Ideally, of course, he should do both.

The current issue of The Spectator magazine has an article showing what strong opposition there will be. One headmistress in an inner city school who expressed interest in her school becoming an academy got a letter from a union official which read: ‘We are absolutely not seeking a conflict. Nonetheless [sic] we regard these proposals as a fundamental attack on state education and will, for the sake of our members and the children we teach, do everything we can to stop any school becoming an academy. And this includes industrial action and campaigning amongst the parents.’

A Labour amendment passed in the House of Lords required schools to hold ‘consultation’ before becoming academies. So the unions are demanding each schools provides, under Freedom of Information rules, details on what consultation they have undertaken.

Christine Blower

Choice: But Christine Blower of the NUT is wary of academy applications

Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, says that this amendment means that some ‘schools that planned to become Academies by September will no longer be able to do so.’

In Camden an attempt by University College London to open a school resulted in a legal challenge that the new school broke EU procurement rules. The challenge failed - but only after £65,000 had been spent.

Astonishingly the challenge was funded on Legal Aid using taxpayers’ money. UCL didn't buckle but would the same apply to others?

The Spectator report adds: ‘The formula - begin court action and claim legal aid - has been used in various other cases, the details of which can now be disclosed. Campaigners who tried to stop the creation of the St Mary Magdalene Academy in north London were given £20,000 of taxpayers’ money.

‘A judicial review challenge to a new academy in the Isle of Sheppey in Kent was given £12,500 of taxpayers’ money. One Rob MacDonald, a member of the Socialist party, secured an extraordinary £20,000 for his unsuccessful attempt to stop the failing Tamworth Manor School in Merton from becoming a City Academy. (Since its new ownership, the ratio of pupils winning five or more GCSEs has trebled to 95 per cent.)’

Another problem is finding premises for a new school. The New Schools Network wants a rule that when a local council closes a school, the building should remain for school use, thus allowing a Free School to be opened on the site.

They also want changes brought in to make change of use to a school building easier. ‘Some of the best prep schools are run out of what were just private houses,’ says Rachel Wolf of the New Schools Network. She also wants the government to deliver on their promise that planning delays at town hall level will be avoided by applications being fast-tracked by a National Planning Inspectorate.

Greater flexibility on rules for capital funding would also help. At present the Government provides capital funding upfront to own the building for the school. This is a big upfront cost and also makes for inflexibility for the school in terms of the number of pupils it can cater for.

But despite all these problems I remain optimistic. Rachel Wolf reckons that her organisation alone will help with 150 proposals for Free Schools over the next six months.

If the restrictions are removed then the school choice revolution will be delivered before the next election - and no future Government would dare to scupper it.

 

Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not debate this issue live on our message boards.

The comments below have been moderated in advance.

If this government had wanted to give the parents some choice they could have brought back grammar schools. What the 'academies' are about is pretending that it's not a quick way of privatizing education and allowing any rich people with whack job ideas about creationism or other daft ideas, to run a school.

If the government is going to blackmail schools into accepting their fate or die through lack of money, this is no different from the Labour party imposing the now discredited comprehensive system on us all those years ago. What a choice! The bottom line is that those who suffer, again, will be the children. Ordure is ordure, no matter how tightly you tie the sack.

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To carry on as we are would be a gross betrayal of future generations.

But, Harry, to carry on as we are is EXACTLY what Cameron advocated here in November 08 when he declared himself unwilling "to defend grammar schools to a room full of middle class parents concerned that their kids would end up in secondary modern schools" .
Under the present system , the "sharp elbowed" can afford to buy into the expensive catchment areas of the best comprehensive schools for their offspring, while the most able from less well off backgrounds are often wastefully condemned to their local "bog standard" comprehensives!
In response to my point that he was advocating the current selection by wealth system rather than selection by ability he limply stated that he wanted "all schools to be good schools" and that it was being negative to doubt if that was acheivable!
The acadamy system acknowledges the validity of those doubts, retain the status quo and his well off supporters still win!

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The prime objective of education is to ensure that each and every child achieves their maximum potential, whatever that may be. It is patently obvious that this objective is not being met.

Ever since Tony Crosland's spiteful and misguided class war in the late 60's politically motivated meddling in education has ensured dumbing down across the board and a drastic decline in social mobility. The left dominated establishment seem to want this to continue. Why ?

Some of Gove's ideas and detail may be flawed, but the underlying principal of removing bureaucratic and political interference from the day to day running of schools is absolutely spot on. To carry on as we are would be a gross betrayal of future generations.

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I really don't understand why the Courts are allowing continual test cases to be brought before them? It should only take one case and be done with.

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This morning on radio 4 I heard for the very first time some person who represented a private company re supplying advice and support to our State school system.....is this the start of privatisation by Tories but started first by Labour?

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No it wont .

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