Reinforcing the schools revolution

John Dobson

The Govt is dangling extra cash for schools to convert early. Having recently considered Academy status for the school at which I am a Governor, my research showed that those schools with an urgent need for cash (to retain staff or repair rooves) were converting. The Freedoms were attractive but the money was the key factor in encouraging an early decission. I would be interested to hear from others on this point.

Andy Leeds

Good luck to Michael Gove. He should take the 'war' to the teaching unions. Smash their power and you will improve schools.

Simon Stephenson.

Very good, Fraser.

Now, your next three questions are:-

1. How can this system be gamed so as to look after the interests of the providers in preference to those of the recipients?

2. What needs to be put in place to prevent this from happening, and to deliver the message, whatever the providers may dream up with to feather their own nests, that the authorities insistence on keeping one step ahead will already have negated?

3. How aware is political authority of the need to approach the development in this way, and what can I do to enhance this awareness?

2trueblue

Finally, the law suits. Brown should be brought to book.

paul rivers

Fraser, I have been doing work for an academy group as a consultant for a number of months, but am a banker by profession. Why I agree it is good news I do not see it as the holy grail primarily because
1. Many of the conversions are really about maximising funding and not much more.
2.Many governing bodies and Heads are far from qualified or enlightened to make the radical changes sometimes needed.
3. Most school are too chicken to restructure staff other than in a financial crisis. 75% of school costs are wages but in many cases it is not all well spent. Teaching Assistants has been among the largest growing ares of employment in the whole UK economy, but there is no evidence that have improved education attainment on the whole

I agree with your conclusion that the sector needs much more private sector involvement to bring about the changes

TomTom

Teachers are on strike at Darwen Vale today...reading the Lancashire Telegraph comments makes one wonder in what other working environment would employees be expected to suffer abuse and management neglect ?

Where is the Duty of Care to Staff ? What does Gove expect done here ? He wants teachers given powers but in this school they are denied support by highly paid administrators.

This school is not unique but it is central to what Gove says he is trying to deal with - it is where the rubber meets the road !

How about this comment: "The rules change on a daily basis, most of them in favour of the pupils"
from a former teacher on the Lancashire telegraph site.

Steve

@John,

Yes it was definately about the money.

When we worked out that our local authority was taking 11.5% of our school budget and providing services that we now contract out for 2%, some serious questions were raised.

In addition with a school budget where 95% consists of fixed costs like teacher and LSA salaries, having that extra is 8% is a massive increase in the school budget.

You should convert ASAP.

JohnOfEnfield

Slightly O/T but Brown's disappearing act since he gave up the chance to form a coalition is amazing.

Is he so ashamed of his "achievements"?

I am (ashamed of his "achievements that is!).

Adam

I hope the Unions do sue in the lead up to the next election. That will be hugely damaging to Labour.

Perry

" . . priorities change. More money can be spent on tuition, and less on HD-ready whiteboards"

Oh happy, happy, day!

Ian Walker

I guess there's a bit of a 'means to an end' about this. The political goal is to smash the LEAs and the teaching unions, both of which are massive obstacles to the improvement of education in this country.

Unfortunately, that means that there will be a few new Academies where the current poor management sees the extra funding, but doesn't see the opportunity to reform. I guess that in pretty short order, these people will be found out - if you're not capable of effectively running an education programme, you're probably unlikely to be any better when the extra responsibility comes along, and there will be no coat tails to hide behind.

old fogey

Will it come down, then, to a question of how prepared Cameron, or whoever, is to take on the leftish judiciary; surely one day this group must be contained.

JohnPage

So we want localism in planning except when the council blocks something we want, when we favour central fiat?

(Most of) the success stories you mention were of new managements. The schools revolution hasn't taken off yet.

perdix

Yes, Labour started the "Academy" schools but they were based on the Conservative programme of "City Technology Colleges".

John Montague

Terrific achievement by Gove.

“If teachers are given the power to teach, to set the curriculum, to pay staff what they like and (yes) to sack whom they like, then the results are extraordinary and immediate.”

So how is the latter to be achieved? Can you tell us, do the Harris schools have very different terms and conditions of employment ? Can employees be sacked simply for poor performance rather than gross misbehaviour, and is there something in their contract which means they do not have recourse to employment tribunals?

Michael

I have always assumed that teaching 'assistants' were only there because the teaching profession has knowingly removed all disciplinary sanctions against badly behaved pupils. They used not to be necessary.

normanc

Praise where it is due, Gove seems to be doing a good job quietly and efficiently.

Hopefully the 'not for profit' line will be dropped when it is politically possible.

It must have been seen as too risky to do everything at once.

Andy

Crikey.

You mean schools, freed from central interference actually do better?

Surely not!

Might it work with other organisations?

startledcod

@ John Dobson. "(to retain staff or repair rooves)", "an early decission". Not many out of ten for you Mr Dobson, I hope the Governors of other schools are better at sums than you are at spelling.

Governors have a huge role to play and not just in approving roof repairs, they need to be ready to assist in rooting out poor teachers and changing a poor head. They also need to resist huge pay rises.

Mr L

The school I am involved with cannot apply for academy status at present because priority is being given to schools which are either very good or very bad. However, at least the LEA concerned is planning against the day when it will no longer be in control, which suggests a reasonable degree of pragmatism.

sw mcdain

"The teaching unions know they are facing an existential crisis. If Gove’s trajectory continues, they will have lost control of English state education within four years. "

Can someone explain what about the current state school non-academy sector structually allows control by the unions and what is special about the new academies which make the unions less powerful?

Thanks - sw mcd.

Ian Walker

sw mcd - most LEA's are also teaching union controlled, either directly or via the Unison proxy. They look after their own, which is why in the last 40 years a total of 6 teachers have actually been sacked for incompetence.

Academies are outside LEA control, so the only union influence is the local branch. And careful staff selection can limit that as well......

strapworld

But one fact has not been exposed. The absolutely disgraceful state of the teaching of British History by Eton College.

Field Marshall Cameron, the poorly educated Prime Minister, needs to go back to a comprehensive. He will certainly have a lot of time on his hands after the coming general election.

Charles Barry

This article was going so well until ... "and reversed a decline which started with Crosland’s war on Grammars in 1965"!

What absolute tosh! Fortunately, there's a speccy blog post right around the corner to set things straight.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6846438/grammar-schools-arent-an-answer-to-the-social-mobility-problem.thtml

John Montague

@ Ian Walker

Does your 6 fired for incompetence in 40 years cover the independent sector as well? I have a horrible feeling it might. Even if it doesn't, the figure wouldn't shift much.

Staff (de)selection on the basis of union membership is unlikely to be relevant. As I've said before, Eton, Winchester, etc. have exactly the same problem getting rid of a poorly performing member of staff – they just shunt them sideways, a luxury few establishments can afford.

I'm not sure why this is – after all, academic tenure is not part of the secondary education contract, is it?

So sw mcdain's question still stands, I think.

michael crockett

When, oh when will the government realise that exactly the same applies to the NHS. I spent two days in a hospital ward a few years back, and there was a retired theatre nurse in the same small ward. Her view was that morale in almost all hospitals is rock bottom. She did not know why, but I do. There is no leadership at the top management level of the hospitals, because they are prevented by the pen pushers from leading. Back to the top heavy bureaucracy introduced and encouraged by the late unlamented labour psychos.

daniel maris

I think this article is the triumph of form over function. Renaming schools academies doesn't improve educational outcomes.

Fraser Nelson ignores some of the key structural factors preventing educational attainment:

1. Mass immigration with poor integration of immigration communities and patriarchal family systems. In London we have over a 100 languages being spoken in some parts of the school system.

2. Spread of single parenting, leading to poverty and social problems. Single parenting reinforces an anti-academic culture.

3. Spread of entertainment culture.

4. Decline in school discipline.

5. Lack of economic opportunities for a large proportion of young people.

MDM

It is a simplistically appealing idea to view Local Authorities as the monolithic stifflers of school creativity.

The truth is that Local Authorities have not run schools for some time - not since Local Management of Schools was introduced. Few schools have felt constrained or restricted by LAs except in so far as LAs themselves have been required to administer/impose a variety of central government initiatives and programmes. e.g. National Strategies, National Curriculum, National Challenge which were not the invention of local authorities.

There is an irony in that the latest Central initiative LAs are required to enforce and promote is the academy programme itself. Yet again LAs are required to drive a central government agenda in respect of schools, although in this case the agenda is - as one respondent clearly identified - the abolition of the LAs.

I was talking to a head today - newly converted to academy - who has bought back financial support from the LA to help with the far more complex and unhelpful financial arrangements that academy status now requires of his finance team. For the time being at least, there has been an increase in financial bureaucracy not a reduction. He is enjoying the curricular freedom that he now has, and has decided to drop ICT, but that was not a restriction the LA placed on him ever - it was a central government restriction in terms of the designated National Curriculum.

Surely the abolition of the DfE is the logical way to give schools increased freedoms ?! Since that is where all constraints on schools have been - and continue to be - ultimately derived from.

The evidence for the success of academies is far less clear cut than Mr Gove constantly implies through, for example, some rather selective interpretation of the chief inspectors' report. There are some spectacular academy failures and the overall marginal success rate of academies (in terms of ofsted outcomes or even improved exam outcomes) over other schools represents poor value for money given the huges sums that were invested in them.

The good progress made by schools supported in National Challenge by LAs has been more cost effective, albeit not without its share of controversy.

Free markets, competition, they all have their place. But parents can not change their schools as quickly or as easily as they change their energy suppliers. Improving schools is a complex process which requires money and expertise and schools and LAs have been delivering on it already.

For example, Mr Gove has set a new floor standard of 35% of students to get 5A*-C including English and Maths. Before he had even set the standard, schools were making huge strides towards meeting it. In 2009 437 schools fell short of the as yet un-nanounced standard, by 2010 without any impact or influence from Mr Gove that number had better than halved to 216.

Academies as presented by this government represent an instinctive free market ideology backed up by some cherry picked evidence, rather than a coherent school improvement strategy.

michael crockett

Perhaps MDM would like to make clear from what position he is mounting a weaselly attack on Gove and the Tories. I suspect that cherry picking is not totally absent from his lefty figures. Gove, and his master Cameron, are not aiming for the "abolition of LA'S". In my view, it is completely illogical to attack the tories for their education efforts, while defending the bureaucrats that all right thinking people know have ridiculously self important ideas of their own status. Seems to me that they have "Power(and money) without responsibility" for the dumbing down effects of their own activities, or lack of activities as he claims. I suspect a hidden agenda here. Maybe he works for the teachers TU, or maybe a LA.

MaryPoppins

" If teachers are given the power to teach, to set the curriculum, to pay staff what they like and (yes) to sack whom they like, then the results are extraordinary and immediate."

Well I never......... How bleeding obvious!

Andrew Fletcher

I'm instinctively pro the new labour / Gove education agenda but there is something about the breathless hyperbole of this article that makes me deeply suspicious
Could we please have a "calmer" mire considered / analytical piece on the subject at some point

John Bowman

Next dot he same thing for the NHS - end the State monopoly.

MikeF

A socialist once boasted to me about how in his role as a school governor derived from his elected position as a town councillor he had participated in the selection of a new headmaster. He was quite open about the fact that his vote had been purely on the grounds of who he and his fellow Labour Party members on the selection panel perceived through the nuances of the answers to their questions shared their political affiliation. The quality of the education likely to be provided to the students in consequence simply was not a factor. Anything that reduces the possibility of such instances occuring elsewhere is to be welcomed and supported.

paul macey

Mr Nelson where is your journalistic ability ?..you are so one eyed that facts and balance are thrown out of the window and you act like a performing seal to anything the Government throws your way!! Comparing this governments plan for academies with Labour's is so totally bogus you should be ashamed. The Education minister has witheld monies from schools with one hand and with the other tempted them down the academy route with cash incentives . Lets see how the schools fare once these incentives dry up and how people like you squeal when the removal of safeguards cause children pain. And as for Toby Young being a pioneer!! Good grief!!
Gove is no revolutionary .. certainly not for the greater good anyway..its one thing to force schools into being academies but something completely different to make postive change for the better..
Maybe if you spent less time hobknobbing with the likes of Cameron you would be a more credible journalist.

seb

Just before we get too excited about academies, might one pose the more important question that concerns learning? How does escape from local authority control make any difference to the low levels of literacy and numeracy children achieve by the time they're old enough for secondary school?

The answer is that it plainly doesn't make the least bit of difference. Children are already, in many cases it would seem, beyond help by the age of twelve. They can't read faster than a smart five-year-old and they can't spell for toffee. Most can barely write without making scads of basic errors and most regard school merely as a place where they've been allowed by well-intentioned but imbecile adults to chat to other children all day. On top of this, the darlings have all been told they are special, unique, wonderful and talented and can expect to succeed without hard work. The bright children find lessons stultifying because, yes, the lessons are stultifying. The less bright children are often feral - dole queue fodder or magistrates' court habitués of the future.

So let's go over this argument again. The complete failure of our schools to educate primary school children to the levels you'd expect of seven-year-old in a civilised nation will be remedied by having them go to academies rather than comprehensives when they leave primary school. No. It isn't even going to begin to make any difference.

bob atkinson

Mao Zedong "Let a thousand flowers bloom" seems appropriate. To achieve educational reform the widest range of providers should be encouraged: both religious and profit making.
I will only believe there has been a real success when schools fail: that is Government, Academy, Public and Private schools. The government should have plans for handling failed schools so when they occur pupils suffer a minimum disruption.
Maybe it is obvious but a school's success cannot be measured by government, it has to be judged by families. For example this may mean an all girl Muslim school with a strong Koranic influence and minor academic and minimal sporting success - and why not - who has more genuine interest in children than their parents?