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| Me, hard at work at my office desk. |
I am regularly asked by parents and colleagues what I think will happen to our school if there is a change of government in 2015. I have had more than one set of parents tell me that they will change a lifetime's habit and never vote Labour or Lib Dem again, after the local parties collaborated to try to prevent us from opening last autumn.
So it was with keen interest that I have been reading all the briefing going on around Stephen Twigg's announcements on Labour education policy, where he tried to clarify what a Labour government would do if it came to power.
In this post I am going to just focus on one key part of the speech - where he announced the "end" of free schools and their replacement with "parent Academies". He said:
"Labour’s vision for creating new schools is... Where priority is given to setting up new schools where they are needed most, particularly in areas with a shortage of places."
I'm really concerned by this: how does one actually define where new schools are needed most?
Basic need for school places? Not good enough. Surplus places may exist because parents may feel that they are not appropriate or of sufficient quality for their children. This was certainly a key driver behind the support for Bedford Free School.
And if we place a "basic need" requirement for new schools then existing schools fearing a new rival could easily collude to create "spare" places by raising their PANs (Published Admissions Numbers), and so keep alternative and innovative providers out of their area. Don't believe me? It would happen.
So do we only open schools where Local Authorities want them? This is an even worse idea. If LAs have a say in whether or not parent Academies went ahead, as has been briefed elsewhere, then we are back to the days of managed-supply, when councils controlled the provision of school places.
We had that until 2010 and this led to a class-divided school system, with the poorest stuck in failing schools propped up by councils, and a shortage of places across the country.
I have always argued that, aside from their freedom to innovate, the most important aspect of the free school policy is that even where they don't yet exist, they could... and that this alone could be enough to keep existing schools on their toes and be even more attentive to the needs of the children they serve.
After all, if they don't keep their communities happy, then they will find a new school opening up on their doorstep. (In our case, quite literally: our school is on the doorstep of the Council's HQ.)
A final point: Academies without free schools would be a big mistake.
You know how we all grumble about the higher energy prices we face these days? A big part of this is because after privatisation successive governments allowed lots of smaller energy companies to be bought, up and down the supply chain, and they increased regulation on the remaining firms, preventing new entrants, removing competition, and allowing the market to be carved out between the big players.
Well, if we remove free schools from the mix, then we would face once more a situation where empires could be carved out between existing schools and Academy chains.
Free schools in the final analysis are about creating a sector where new providers can emerge if the needs of children aren't met. They provide a safety valve on our school system that hasn't existed before. Tony Blair knew this. Lord Adonis, architect of New Labour's original Academy programme knows this. I want to believe that Stephen Twigg & the rest of Labour know this too - they fiddle with free schools at their peril.
The bottom line is that Labour and the teaching unions are implacably opposed to the notion that parents should have as much choice as possible for their kids, and indeed, that parents know better than teachers what is best for their kids. All the spoilt little brat tantrums coming from the NUT and the ghastly woman in charge of the NUT boil down to this - we want control of your kids, and we will go to any lengths to retain this power.
ReplyDeleteGood luck. Free schools are great. Go Gove.
I think the teacher unions are pretty much as you describe them - they are not run for the interests of children, but for their members (or what the union leadership claim is the interests of their members - the two are quite different!). However, they are becoming increasingly irrelevant as they have put themselves on the wrong side of too many of the debates in recent years and lost credibility as a result.
ReplyDeleteI think all 3 main parties now accept some form of parental-choice set-up(nationally - locally it varies, and not necessarily along a blue/red-yellow split you might expect).
The current Gove-rnment have moved the centre ground. The question is whether they have a) moved it enough to ensure any future government stays around the current position and b) whether they now have the nerve to break the remaining Whitehall levers of control to genuinely give state schools freedom regardless of changes in government.