The myths of autonomy

John Freeman
Monday, February 20, 2012

Every age needs its own narratives to describe its institutions. The NHS, for example, has been seen as ‘a public health service free at the point of delivery’. And the education system was described for many years as ‘a national education system, locally delivered’. The fact that these are both simplistic and rather out-of-date misses the point, which is that these are enduring ways of describing a complex reality. When there is too obvious a clash between the reality and the accepted narrative, trouble erupts. Andrew Lansley is finding just that at present, and so is Michael Gove. The primary narrative that Michael Gove has been promoting, with rather more success than Andrew Lansley, has been of ‘autonomous institutions’, that is, academies and free schools working free from the dead hand of bureaucratic state control. The central part of the narrative is that increased autonomy will, by itself, enable schools to improve faster, to meet the needs of their communities, and to become more accountable. But this autonomy narrative describes a mythical world, and it is worth exploring the myths in order to develop a proper critique both of the narrative, and of the policies being developed to deliver the narrative.

The first myth of autonomy is that schools maintained by local authorities operate under that dead hand of bureaucracy. They might have done in the past – for example, I can recall, as a young teacher in the early 1970s, Birmingham City Council deciding that all secondary schools needed a third deputy head. But in 1988 Local Management of Schools was introduced, and, admittedly not all at once, local authorities stepped back from the direct management of schools. By the time I became an education director in 2001 there was almost no involvement in school management beyond holding schools to account for standards and operational efficiency, and providing support when things went wrong. So we made sure that schools operated within their budgets, provided a policy framework for such matters as human resources, and ensured that we intervened ‘in inverse proportion to success’ – that is, when a school failed an Ofsted inspection, or there was a major audit problem, for example. But it was all fairly low key, and the myth of the ‘dead hand’ was just that.

The second myth of autonomy is that academies and free schools have much more autonomy than local authority schools. There are some technical changes that academies can make, for example to terms and conditions of staff, and they don’t have to follow the national curriculum. But all schools operate in a competitive market for staff, and within their budget, so flexibility is inevitably limited. And if the national curriculum really does describe the basic minimum entitlement for young people, it is difficult to see why an academy would not start from there. I have been reading all the success stories from new academies and free schools and trying to identify the things they are doing that make them so special. I have not been able to identify anything significant that could not be done by a local authority school. This is confirmed by my conversations with headteachers of local authority schools and academies – when asked why they are considering conversion, or why they converted, the answer is always simple – they hope or expect they will receive more money, both capital and revenue. Not a single headteacher has been able to describe something that academies can do that will make a real difference. The academy financial advantage has been reducing over time. When all schools are academies, it seems obvious that they will be no better off, unless the education budget increases. And functions carried out by local authorities will still need to carried out by some agency.

The third myth is that the freedoms of autonomy bring with them a rapid and sustained improvement in standards, and this is evidenced by some of the early academies that rose from the ashes of failing or failed local authority schools – Mossbourne Academy is a good example. But it is difficult to disentangle the effects of other changes from that of autonomous governance. New leadership, new buildings, new staff, and changed admissions arrangements all have an effect that is outside of governance. And there just has not been time for the new ‘convertor academies’ to demonstrate the case in either direction. But we do have a proper controlled experiment, not designed as such, but nevertheless a clear and fair comparison, and that is further education. The outcomes of this experiment do not bode well for all the new academies. In 1992 all further education colleges were incorporated as independent bodies, with the only interactions with the state being through the inspection regime, the performance management regime, and the funding arrangements. So we have two decades of experience, and the messages are deeply uncomfortable for the Secretary of State and all those who continue to assert that autonomy will, of itself, drive up standards. In 2011, after nearly 20 years of the benefits of autonomy, the Chief Inspector’s annual report said that only 70% of the 376 colleges had been judged as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ at their last inspection. This compares with 70% of secondary schools – exactly the same number! And in the 20 years leading up to this, around 80 colleges have closed completely though merger, with most mergers forced through financial or other educational failure. At best, autonomy is not a straightforward recipe for guaranteeing success, and at worst autonomy can be argued to have had little impact on college success.

The fourth myth is that autonomy reduces bureaucracy. Try saying this to a college principal – but stand well back first. The Individual Learner Record, which every college has to complete for every student, is a massive undertaking which requires its own quango – The Information Authority – and a 265 page document just to describe. The Young People’s Learning Agency guidance to academies on accounting standards extends to 76 pages, and the financial returns themselves are even longer. I have spoken to several academy principals who yearn for the old days of a light touch local authority – the emphasis being on ‘local’ not ‘Coventry’.

So if increased autonomy is a myth, and the benefits of autonomy are questionable, why is the Secretary of State wasting his time in pushing through systemic change? You’ll have to ask him, and watch the developing picture, but one analysis I have heard is that individual autonomous academies will, one by one, find it all too onerous and ask to be taken over by one of the academy chains, leading to an effective privatisation of provision.

The myths of autonomy

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