‘So’ – Laura says – ‘I lost’.
A mix of sympathy, disappointment, frustration hit me all at once. The education tweeters among you might have guessed that I am talking about a recent David and Goliath battle between Michael Gove and my friend/blogger/journalist Laura McInerney.
In summary (you can read Laura’s full account here), Laura put in a freedom of information request to support her PhD research asking for free school application forms and the subsequent decision letters sent to applicants. Gove said no, Laura appealed, the information commissioner said yes, Gove said no again and so Laura had to take the request to a tribunal.
After fielding a team of 11 (yes, you read that right, 11 people against a single PhD researcher with no formal legal training) and arguing that Laura’s request was vexatious, Michael Gove managed to win the case and block the FoI request.
However, all was not lost! The judge ruled that due to the volume of redactions necessary to cover personal information strewn throughout the forms the request was unreasonable because of the cost burden it imposed on the Department for Education. However, the judgement also said if Laura had just asked for one applications and letter that would have been reasonable. Asking for the whole batch was not OK but individuals asking for one at a time should not face the same issue.
A small victory we thought – but it’s looking like we were wrong. An odd quirk within our legal system means that the judge’s decision in a first tier tribunal case is not binding. That is, another judge – at the same level – might decide differently and the government have taken it upon itself to find out. It now seems that the DfE are taking new FoI requests for single free school applications through to tribunal (despite the decision in Laura’s case). In the past month several people asking for individual applications or letters have been rejected, suggesting they are going to drag everyone through the same process – at a huge cost to the taxpayer.
Now, Laura is tough cookie. She is smart, and determined and was up for taking this on. The average member of the public, wanting to find out about the group given permission to open a new school across the road from their house may not have the same determination or expertise – faced with a tribunal they are likely to just give up. The result is free schools opening in people’s communities with no mechanism for local people to identify what the organisations applying to receive public money – their money – said they would do with it. That is, quite simply, outrageous.
While the battle rages on it is important that Tristram Hunt reflect on the implications for a Labour administration and that he set our stall out early. To build trust with the public it is essential that transparency is a core principle within our policymaking process – particularly when we are talking about commissioning schools and school places. On top of this we need to have a plan for the inevitable horrors we are likely to discover when looking through the results of a rushed process if Tristram and team walk into Sanctuary Buildings next May. If we are serious about putting powers in the hands of communities and creating a more democratic accountable government this needs to be high up the agenda on day one.
In short, we need to keep that particular story just how it is – it is in nobody’s interest for Goliath to win.
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Matthew Hood is a director of a national education charity and assistant head at a secondary school in Morecambe
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Photo: Conservatives