Fragments of imagination

As the momentum grows towards a more fragmented education service, mixing academy chains, standalone academies, a handful of Free schools, community, voluntary aided and all other species, the obsession with structures and process has amost completely overwhelmed the all-important sense of purpose. The introduction of market forces has coincided with opportunities for the larger egos of education to dominate discussion, producing an oppressive and almost bullying climate which brooks no opposition. It will be interesting to see if the party conference season manages to produce some measured reflection on this revolution, in the same way that there has been an increasingly vocal and considered debate around new structures for health provision.

The values of engagement with communities, other providers, partners in learning all matter enormously. It's painful to witness the huge amount of energy, resources and time which are being drained by this ideologically driven approach to reforming structures, while the loss of collaboration, partnership and the abandonment of core educational principles are all too easy to see. Learning is the purpose for which the process of delivery should be designed; no learning ever takes place without some form of interaction or interactive experience and yet the drive is towards ever-more insular institutions or a franchise approach to learning, which gives little recognition to the role of the community, the child or young person. The likelihood of failure over time will increase as the arrogant culture of greater independence in learning provision is promoted more and more strongly. The diminishing pool of commitment, from communities, education leaders, good staff and above all disaffected children and young people is a tragedy unfolding, despite the rare and inspiring examples of some outstanding practice that have survived this tsunami of reform.

While the erosion of traditional forms of local authority and local accountability may well be irreversible now, a quietly-growing group of co-operative Trust schools has been emerging, with a firm commitment to democratic accountability and partnership working on a national level. At the same time and often in a well-co-ordinated approach, schools are responding by re-creating the best elements of local authority support and provision for themselves. This at least represents an intelligent proposition in response to the breakdown in national educational cohesion, but also represents what will be seen in time as being an expensive lesson in history.