Councils best placed to link schools with national policy

With more changes to the structure of the education system in the offing, I've been thinking about what I would do if I were in charge - an idle daydream, of course, but it seemed important to think how I might tackle the wicked issues as well as the more obvious problems, without drifting off into "I told you it would all end in tears" or "It's all been tried before".

Before I give my take on the general characteristics of an education system that genuinely would work for everyone, I'll illustrate changes over the last five years through three examples, two positive and one negative. Michael Gove saw that the Admissions Code was over-complex and very largely incomprehensible to parents (and often, I fear, to education professionals), so he simplified it - though a proper debate with the people who had to make it work would have improved the outcome. He also introduced, in a 2010 white paper, the concept of local authorities being "champions for children and families", which I have always seen as a powerful approach. Unfortunately, he was of the view that this "champion" role required a structural split between local authorities and schools, so he worked energetically towards academisation. The negative, then, is that academisation has failed to lead to the hoped-for improvement in educational outcomes, while leading to many problems.