Forced academisation plans risk our schools' impetus to improve
Michael Bracey
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
One of the more effective school improvement strategies of the last five years has been the threat of forced academisation.
One of the more effective school improvement strategies of the last five years has been the threat of forced academisation.
Some schools face such a challenging set of difficult circumstances that they just give up. But for many others, it can galvanise them into much-needed action. The prospect of being forced to become an academy has the power to focus minds and lead to the development of a credible alternative plan to raise standards and a real commitment to delivering it.
Since the Academies Act was passed in 2010, the Department for Education has been able to intervene if a school is judged by Ofsted to be requiring “significant improvement” or if it is placed in “special measures” or for failing to comply with a warning notice.
But in reality, a far greater number of schools have been working hard to improve, first and foremost for the children, as well as to protect them from forced academisation. Schools and local authorities know full well that “requires improvement” is not acceptable and that being judged “good” or better is the only thing that currently gives a school the right to choose to remain as a maintained school or convert to becoming an academy on their own terms.
It did look like the stakes were about to be raised once again, with schools soon eligible for Department for Education intervention if deemed to be “coasting” for failing to reach a stretching new set of progress targets, which were designed to challenge those schools not doing enough to push every pupil to reach their potential. Then, rather out of the blue, the government last month published a white paper.
Educational Excellence Everywhere is ambitious, optimistic and promises action to address critical issues such as teacher recruitment and training and the further development of the school-led system through investment in teaching schools and national leaders of education.
Particularly welcome are measures designed to support those head teachers who take on a school in challenging circumstances through the proposed introduction of an improvement period, which would extend the time before Ofsted arrives to re-inspect to up to three years.
But the overwhelming majority of the attention given to the white paper was to the eye-catchingly controversial proposal that “by the end of 2020, all remaining maintained schools will be academies or in the process of conversion”.
The use of word “remaining” does make it sound like there are a few hundred left. In actual fact, at the beginning of the current academic year, around 86 per cent of all state-funded primary schools in England were still maintained by a local authority. In the secondary sector the figure is lower, at 45 per cent, but is still significant.
Under the proposals, these schools – the majority of them already judged by Ofsted as “good” or “outstanding” – will have no choice in the matter. In effect they will be forced to change status even if they do not want to go through the process of establishing themselves as academies and joining a multi-academy trust.
And there is a risk that those schools judged to be requiring improvement or about to be classed by the government as coasting just give up the fight, waiting to become academised and rescued by a sponsor with the local authority washing its hands of the problem.
It’s likely that many governors and senior school leaders would question the point of investing a huge amount of time and effort into school improvement if you are about to be taken over and, quite possibly, replaced.
As the white paper makes its way towards becoming a bill and being formally presented to parliament, it seems unlikely that this policy centrepiece will change.
The Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has already said quite defiantly that there is “no reverse gear when it comes to our education reforms”.
The reforms are underpinned by the principle of “supported autonomy”, which according to the white paper means “aligning funding, control, responsibility and accountability in one place, as close to the front line as possible, and ensuring that institutions can collaborate and access the support they need to set them up for success”.
Nevertheless, while there is much to commend in Educational Excellence Everywhere, can we be sure that further structural change will deliver an improvement in young people’s attainment? We know that academisation alone is not a magic bullet.
The current system, full of creative tension between maintained schools, academies, local authorities and the government is helping to drive up educational standards, which as the government acknowledges in the white paper, have never been higher. We should think carefully before replacing it.
Michael Bracey is corporate director for people at Milton Keynes Council