Andrew Adonis’ recently published book, Education, Education, Education: Reforming England’s Schools, is a must-read for anyone interested in education or how to drive through public service reform.
The book is partly the story of how the policy of academies was not just devised, but also delivered. It is worth reflecting on what it tells us about the rationale for Labour’s academy programme and to test this against current policy. For Labour, academies’ first aim was to improve the performance of the schools with the lowest standards – schools which Andrew identifies as ‘secondary modern comprehensives’. The ambition was to transform the whole system, but to focus first on the young people who most needed the benefits of reform.
A key element of Labour’s academy solution was to bring in extra capacity and external drive through sponsorship. Schools became ‘independent’ from what many school leaders saw as the ‘dead hand’ of local authority control. However, the success of the early academies is not just about independence, it is about governance – and in particular, it is mainly about a strong external sponsor providing direction and accountability. Andrew expresses his frustration that this objective could be seen as rightwing. Why wouldn’t we want the most successful entrepreneurs, the most prestigious charitable foundations, the specialism and academic excellence of universities and the experience of successful schools and headteachers harnessed for the benefit of all pupils, not just those in public schools or Oxbridge colleges?
The ‘cream’ of the private school system and the most academic grammar schools have always taken for granted the support and sponsorship of rich and influential people and interests through their governors, their alumni and the foundations which support them. To demand the same for the comprehensive schools educating the young people who most need the additional support is a wholly progressive demand and the success of the academy programme and the transformation of schools which it achieved is one that Labour members should be proud to claim as their own.
However, this raises an important issue about whether the current growth of academies which are largely ‘converter’ academies will achieve the same impact. They have ‘independence’ from local authorities, but is this enough to ensure the accountability and drive that has transformed many ‘sponsored’ academies? I support the ability of schools which are already performing well to be able to become academies, but this is not as great a reform as that of bringing in an external sponsor to hold the school to account for delivery, to inject new ideas and specialism and to widen the base of those working for the best standards in our state schools. In its academy programme, this government has settled for quantity rather than quality of school reform.
Andrew argues that the lowest-performing 650 comprehensive schools should all become ‘sponsored’ academies. But his book also identifies the problem with delivering this. He describes the enormous personal effort he put into matchmaking the first academies and sponsors. Where will this drive come from with a government which seems to have lost the focus on tackling underperformance which was at the heart of the Labour government’s reform programme?
Step in local authorities! Freed from their bureaucratic role in ‘managing’ schools, local authorities can now play the role of champion of parents and children and broker of the relationships with external partners and sponsors for school governance and improvement. This is a real opportunity for the Labour councillors around the country who care passionately about the quality of the education provided in the communities they serve. Let’s identify those – universities, business leaders, philanthropists – who haven’t yet stepped up to the mark to support the education of future generations, inspire them with what could be achieved and matchmake them with the schools which need their sponsorship. Labour policy, Labour values, Labour action!
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Jacqui Smith is former home secretary, writes the Monday Politics column for Progress, and tweets @smithjj62
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Education, Education, Education is published by Biteback Publishing
Sponsored academies. The numbers do not add up Ms Smith. Labour got roughly 200 up and running while in office and the coalition have added another 300 +/- in just over two years. The coalition is indeed still focussed on finding sponsors for the weakest schools
Labour were right to “demand the same for the comprehensive schools educating the young people who most need the additional support is a wholly progressive demand”. But let’s be clear that the improvement under Labour was across all schools and not just for academies.
The DfE school-by-school data, released earlier this year, showed improvement across all previously under-performing schools. Take the academies that achieved under 35% (for 5 GCSEs including English and Maths) back in 2008 and you found an 18.6% average improvement in the three years to 2011. Pretty impressive. But take the non-academies that were under 35% in 2008 and you find a 19.1% improvement to 2011.
Whether you analyse by prior achievement, levels of deprivation, how long established, the 2011 data gives the same result – compare with similar schools and non-academies do as well as academies.
So let’s celebrate the Labour achievement in Hackney in transforming education, partly through academies. But let’s also celebrate the Labour achievement in next door Tower Hamlets – transforming their education without academies. And let’s recognise the vital local authority role in those boroughs and in most (if not all) areas that have seen their schools improve.
Six hundred fifty– now where have I heard THAT number before? Perhaps each MP should be held responsible for the least-well-performing school in his/her constituency? You may have mistaken certain MP’s for someone who gives a good damn.
Unfortunately not only has Andrew Adonis got it badly wrong but so has Jacqui. It seems that national politicians in the labour party have forgotten about local democracy and the role of Councils. The evidence for academies is not substantial as the other commentators have stated so i will not add to it . The problem is that Labour has no idea about how to deal with education improvement and certainly does not understand the relationship between wealth inequality education inequality and health inequality. I fully understand that ideology rather than fact has a large part to play in national politics but a little understanding from those who actually are in power in Councils might help Labour regain power nationally. Unfortunately these kind of views will ensure that we continue to get a Conservative Government with right wing policies that will only increase inequality. The failure to understand the governance issue and the impact on schools that are only accountable to the Civil Service smacks of a one size fits all alongwith the belief that local authorities are incapable , that the market sorts everything.
On the point of academies ‘not understanding local democracy’, that is exactly what academies overcome. It empowers those teachers, people and organisations involved with the school to take control of it. An excellent LEA can indeed do a good job of their schools, and anyone previously excellent in an LEA could find themselves on an academy’s governance. But the truth is they largely aren’t. I trust those who work in and run schools day-in-day-out, and exceptional leaders in business and social enterprise more than a councillor or Whitehall employee who may well have not stepped in a school since they graduated from their own.
On the point of 200 (267, rather) academies being set up under Labour, and 300 in the past two years by the Coalition – a great number of those were arranged under the last govt. A new school doesn’t crop up over night, and Labour had a commitment to 400 in its manifesto. But we should celebrate that the government have continued our policy, if we really are about improving education.
Benjamiin, The notion that Local Authorities have a dead hand over schools is part of the myth that has been developed to make the case for Government control. Governing bodies of schools have been “free ‘ for a very long time. The issue is the strategic role that needs to be performed regarding school places, tackling issues like obesity – joined up work on gangs overcoming partial advice about post 16 provision that is in the best interests of the student. I could go on but the record is that schools need to be required to cooperate. There is no need for academies. As for the criticism about councillors not understanding schools, many others do not either. I am on 4 Governing bodies and except for the middle class secondary school we struggle to get others. Academies are not the solution but the problem as school improvement is not just about the school much wider
The local democracy argument is spurious I’m afraid (and i speak from bitter parental experience & as a politico observing education north and south of the border.) If Local Councils employ teachers then they have an inherent conflict of interest. It’s absurd that those who work in schools have a faceless boss who sits in an office miles away. Your loyalty as somebody who works in a school, in whatever capacity should be to that institution – not to a bureaucracy. A school is the ultimate social enterprise. Now, if LA’s were to be reinvented as guarantors of the public interest/of standards and
of planning local provision – with all schools autonomous – that would be truly democratic.