When people criticise the reforms to state schools pioneered by the New Labour government there is often a refusal to acknowledge brute facts. The basic school leaving standard is just 5 GCSEs at A* to C including English and Maths. This is perhaps the least demanding yardstick for measuring whether a school is succeeding. In 1997, fewer than half of state comprehensives managed to achieve this for more than one in three of their 16-year-olds. There is no doubt that the old-fashioned comprehensive system was in dire need of reform.
Once this is acknowledged, the critic’s next step is to suggest that a simple injection of cash would have done the trick. But this is to ignore the underlying problems in way that many failing comprehensives are run. Most inherited a secondary modern ethos. School is a necessary evil. Pupils are discouraged from aiming high. Indiscipline in the classroom is rife, and this scares off good teachers. There is little opportunity for specialisation or extracurricular activity. Poor intake is an excuse for poor results.
Academies and free schools have done wonders to improve the situation. Instead of local authority bureaucracies, independent sponsors are responsible for governance and management. These sponsors have the vision and strength of will to take schools up to the highest standards. They develop an ethos for the school and have the freedom to be radically innovative. They give schools the self-esteem to become excellent in the state sector. The evidence in support of this is overwhelming. Hackney Downs comprehensive was labelled the worst school in London in the 1990s, and was eventually forced to close in 1995. In 2004 Mossbourne Academy was founded on the same site as an early pioneer of the academies programme. After just three years, more than 80 per cent of its students gained five or more GCSEs at A* to C. This put it in the top one per cent of schools nationally. According to the National Audit Office academies which opened in 2002 have more than trebled their GCSE scores since opening, and those which opened in the following three years have doubled their scores. Pupil truancy rates have fallen much quicker than average. Most indicative of all is the fact that, on average, academies attract two candidates per place, while the comprehensives they replaced were mostly undersubscribed.
Some object that sponsors are in it for themselves and do not really care about education. They are trying to make money, or teach our kids strange things. But the government decides whether a sponsor is in it for the right reasons and will do a good job. If the sponsor is doing a bad job or not teaching the national curriculum, Ofsted will say so. To claim that this is privatization by stealth is wrongheaded. Academies are not run for profit, nor do they compete for profit. They are run purely to provide a public service. They have the same rules about intake as state schools and they teach the national curriculum. Although the management is overseen by sponsors rather than LEAs, they are still accountable to the education secretary. More to the point, the evidence is clear: academies have massively improved standards in an incredibly short space of time. And they have done so without introducing selection or fees.
By themselves academies are not a panacea. There is no doubt that improving the quality of teaching is crucial and we need to increase the basic salary for teachers and expand Teach First. But the educational structures needed to change to give teachers a chance. Academies are so successful that the Tory frontbench has finally abandoned its commitment to selection at eleven and got behind the programme. It is true that Michael Gove is not doing nearly enough to ensure that academies fulfil their primary role of replacing failing comprehensives, but we must not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We should feel extremely proud of our reforms. I believe in state education. And that is precisely why I support academies. The old comprehensive system meant that almost anyone with the money to do so would try and get their children out of the state sector and into private schools. Now there is real hope that a rejuvenated state sector could successfully educate everyone together regardless of background – A ‘One Nation’ education system.
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Jonathan Metzer is a student and Progress member. He tweets @JonathanMetzer
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> secondary modern ethos…. School is a necessary evil. Pupils are
discouraged from aiming high. Indiscipline in the classroom is rife, and
this scares off good teachers Instead of local authority bureaucracies, independent sponsors are
responsible for governance and management. These sponsors have the
vision and strength of will to take schools up to the highest standards.<
Actually since John Major schools have been responsible for their governance and management with governors and the Head as CEO They get a budget, to spend on what they like, subject to audit can seek external money, and offer extra services. They can buy services wherever they like. Academies get the same money but plus the money that the LEA spend on planning and rescue to do whatever they need to do. ALL operate in a 'quasi market' which is partly about reputation, and partly on cost of attending, I know no evidence of 'informal selection practices'. There certainly used to be for grammar and 'desirable' schools. For academies the governance structure in many cases hardly exists. Ask to speak to a governor an see what happens.
If academies fail strenuous efforts are made to save them but the buck stop with the LEA ( See Ramsgate)
The rapid conversion into academies makes the responsibility for providing education which is an LEAs duty more difficult, but Gove does not want that burden since it would expose him to local controversy (shutting schools is a fraught business), Trying to open new ones without any money is also problem
I won't explain how to make money out of Academies. I might be sued or offered a reward I could not refuse.
“Instead of local authority bureaucracies, independent sponsors are responsible for governance and management” you mean replacing perants ,staff and local community members who on the whole made up governing bodies. Please explained how removing the ownership of schools from the local community empowers and engages those communities. The Tories use the same argument to replace the NHS with SERCO and Virgin
Jonathan
I’m not sure if you read these comments, indeed, I’m not sure if any Progress authors ever read them, but here goes.
You make a number of assertions which I do think deserve some closer examination.
“There is often a refusal to acknowledge brute facts…” – this whole paragraph assumes that all of the not inconsiderable improvements in “5 A*-C including English and Maths” from 1997 onwards derive solely from New Labour’s City Academy programme, which at the time covered a limited range of schools that were rebuilt up to excellent standards. A laudable act, but one which could have been done within the state sector, to similar effects. Any rebuild and reprovision results in increased effectiveness, I would like Mr Metzer and any of Progresses many Academy supporters to outline to my why the improvement derived from Academy status rather than anything else. I think the cat is out of the bag when Jonathan says “There is no doubt that the old-fashioned comprehensive system was in dire need of reform” – we are left in little doubt that Progress are not fans of comprehensive education, and Progress’s Chair, Lord Adonis, has gone on record as supporting selective education, and fair number of Progress supports have been lukewarm supporters of comprehensive education, at best.
When Jonathan makes the wide ranging assertion ” Most [comprehensives] inherited a secondary modern ethos” – I’m wondering where he gets this fact from – personal experience? The Daily Mail, perchance? The vast majority of secondaries have been comprehensive since the 1960s or 70s. Are we to understand that nothing has changed in these schools since then, something of an insult to the teaching profession and education management?
“Academies and free schools (which are simply academies without predecessor comprehensives) have done wonders to improve the situation” – on what basis, other than a prepicked list of a limited number of successful academies, does Mr Metzer make this assertion ? Certainly, as regards free schools, which the Party as a whole oppose (not that this sort of thing generally bothers Progress members) it really is too early to tell.
” Instead of local authority bureaucracies, independent sponsors are responsible for governance and management” – and introduce their own bureaucracies, religious fervour on occasion, as well as limited amounts of democracy and engagement with the local community.
” They develop an ethos for the school and have the freedom to be radically innovative” – they allow fringe religious groups state funding to propagate their views as well. As regards innovation, I would be considerably enlightened if you could list some of the ‘radical innovations’ and what they have done (supported by evidence) as to how this has improived school effectivess and performance.
“The evidence in support of this is overwhelming” – what evidence – please furnish me or any Party member with a comprehensive (sic) independent analysis of the effectiveness of academies.
I do wonder what Mr Metzer is doing in the Labour Party when he asserts ” …the government decides whether a sponsor is in it for the right reasons and will do a good job” – I and many thousands of others working in education and governing schools know that the government will give anyone with a shed, a piece of chalk and a mortar board a free school and scads of funding – Free School and Academies are an idelogical commitment to the Conservatives which has little or no empirical evidence to support their implementation.
“They have the same rules about intake as state schools and they teach the national curriculum”
Academies can select 10% of their pupils, and have tried a variety of ruses to get round fair admission processes.
“Although the management is overseen by sponsors rather than LEAs, they are still accountable to the Education secretary” – an ideologically bound Conservative Education Secretary who longs to reintroduce grammar schools, gowns and a 50s style education that benefited an elite few and condemned the vast amount of the populace to 2nd rate education. The oversight means that any faults will not be addressed effectively
“The old comprehensive system meant that almost anyone with the money to do so would try and get their children out of the state sector and into private schools” – please don’t judge the population by your own dubious neo-Conservative morals. This kind of editorialising belongs in the Daily Express, not a so called organ of the Labour Party.
The whole article could so easily have been written by a Liberal Democrat or One Nation Tory. We will not win elections with this type of politics, acting as cheerleaders for unproven ideology, and dismantling of structures that allow a democratic oversight of education.
Whenever did the “democratic oversight of eduction” bring anything other than coasting at best – failure mostly. Massive unemployment amongst black males in London – why?
Really – I must have dreamed all those successful LEA schools across the whole country.
Jonathan – I do hope that when you eventually write your thesis you will make sure that your assertions are accompanied by at least some sort of evidence. What knowledge do you have of the comprehensive system that you seem to despise so much? When all schools are academies what will you do with those that still fail? How will you deal with inadequate or fraudulent head teachers? What will you do when academies go bankrupt? More importantly how will you protect the children when these disasters happen, as they inevitably will?