Stories + Views
School Wars – the story so far…..
For the past month, I have been writing, speaking about and debating the issues that I cover in my new book School Wars.
In the process,I have learned some important things about the way the education debate in particular, and political debate in general, is shaping up in this country.
Let’s begin with the politics of silence. An odd place to start, you might think, given the discussion that education continually generates and the good coverage I have received for my book, at least on the left/liberal end of the spectrum. ( School Wars has yet to receive a substantive review from the Times, Mail or Telegraph stables.)
But the silence from the right is understandable given that a substantial part of School Wars - and the pro -comprehensive argument in general - convincingly vindicates the non selective principle. Our critics are perfectly well aware that no mainstream political party advocates a return to academic selection or expansion of the grammars. Dividing our children at puberty into winners and losers does not sit comfortably with the values of a democratic society, or not one that claims to be.
But my book, and the comprehensive movement in general, also takes a close look at the causes and consequences of the privatisation of education. Our schools are fast being removed from any meaningful local accountability and scrutiny and in the process are being handed to a range of third sector, charitable and private providers with the potential for profit making further down the line.
So advanced and so politicised is this agenda that comprehensives and community schools no longer even figure on the DFE website and according to recent press reports, many civil servants within the DfE were already unhappy about government policy as early as the autumn of 2010.
The new school providers are not only politically canny and occasionally brutal: they are also suffering from historical amnesia. The active collusion of the political right in denying a decent education to most lower income children, via the poorly resourced secondary modern system, seems now to have been entirely expunged from the historical record.
Yesterday I was aggressively heckled by a Westminster Tory councillor – or two – who appeared to claim that the progressive left was entirely culpable for the inadequate education of poorer children, and that privatisation is the only answer to the problem in the gap in achievement. Clearly, some people have forgotten the frequently appalling record of the Tories when last in government in terms of state education.
But it is the future, not the past, that now most concerns me. What these occasionally unpleasant encounters have brought home to me is just how paternal and closed the new educational and political cultures have become. I now understand what it must feel like to learn and work in some of these schools and how little genuine questioning or debate is allowed. There is a clear official line and you deviate from it at your peril.
The new academy culture may sometimes produce good GCSE results - as I acknowledged at a debate at the RSA yesterday – but many local authority/community comprehensives are doing very well, and have rapidly improved in recent years, often without the scary authoritarian edge of some of the new providers. On our side, we must remain committed to rigorous standards and the drive to improve genuine all round achievement but within more open, democratic and genuinely creative environments.
Meanwhile, serious questions hang over the governance, funding and learning culture in some academies and free schools and that borrow so heavily from the Charter school experiment in the USA.
The Charter school experiment shows where the privatisation agenda is heading if we are not careful. It is not a good example, on so many counts. Many of the schools succeed by cherry picking from among the aspirational poor; there are high rates of attrition within Charters; the most successful depend on large amounts of extra private funding; it is aggressively anti union. And yet, overall, the results picture for Charters is very mixed. Most important of all, as anti reform academic and activist Diane Ravitch points out so cogently, the entire project is doing fatal damage to public – state – education.
A few more observations. How much does the incredible hostility that greets the comprehensive argument, for instance, stem from a profound dislike among the-powers-that-be of socially mixed education? The privatisation plan will increase social and faith segregation in our cities and communities. Much of it is a plan for the separate education of poorer children. Most importantly of all, as I argue in my book, it leaves the overall educational landscape – so profoundly shaped by selection and wealth – untouched.
One sees this reflected in the more personal politics of public debates. While it is open season on those of us who support mixed comprehensives and send our own children there, critics of state education who choose private education for their children are considered untouchable, particularly by the media.
I am not interested in personally attacking anyone. But this does not seem to stop those, like Michael Gove – the current Secretary of State for Education no less – from launching unpleasant broadsides against campaigners like Fiona Millar and myself – and on grounds of social class and alleged professional privilege.
On one level, it’s a bloody cheek. Many of us have been campaigning for years to improve state education, certainly far longer than the current clutch of privatising edu-celebs. But on another level, the contempt of the right is simply odd. How warmly we would be welcomed into the right’s reforming fold if we sent our children to Westminster or Eton!
Another thought: now much does liberal left support for the free school/academy experiment – as expressed, for example, by a recent Guardian editorial - stem from a form of personal and collective guilt? After all, if you genuinely don’t consider comprehensives good enough for your own children and you don’t want to join the campaign to improve them, in part because you have chosen private education, then of course the quasi- private school feel of some of the new school providers must seem an attractive conscience-salving option to push for the less well off.
But I return, finally, to the puzzling question of why the government and its allies are so defensive? Could it be, as Francis Beckett suggests, that they believe they have won the academy/privatisation argument so decisively that they simply cannot brook any criticism of it? But that doesn’t make sense. The truly secure are always happy to debate.
If, in fact, they are not that confident, do they really hope to write off a growing movement of opposition to their policies by singling out a few individuals for attack? Who knows, perhaps some of those off piste e-mails might one day explain the wrong headed tactics of government and their allies in this regard?
Either way, the School Wars are here to stay for the foreseeable future. I will continue my travels around the country, more determined than ever to defend a properly accountable and local framework for our schools. Make no mistake. We are fighting for something important, in terms of our childrens’ education, their future as citizens, who urgently need to learn how to live and work together, and the very future of democracy itself.
Comments, replies and queries
Reply
Very interesting Melissa. One of the most things I find most fascinating is the point you make in your book about why there are such a profoundly different in attitudes towards the health service as opposed to our education service. Watching the passion with which many people are defending health as a “comprehensive” service, one can’t help wondering why there are so few people defending state schooling in the same way. Your analysis of the way in which comprehensive schools have been systematically demonised is spot on, though very depressing.
My own view is that ultimately the debate should not be about ownership but about accountability. It was disturbing to read the head of Mossbourne last weekend completely dismiss the need for a governing body which went beyond those already inside the tent. It is going to be extremely interesting to watch what happens when the current batch of parents and heads setting up new schools and academies come up against the next batch of equally passionate parents in the future if they are not happy with what they are getting. Will those parents just be told to get on their bikes and find or set up another school, or will there be any means left by which they can influence what happens in the school? Who will these schools belong to? The people who set them up, or the people whose children attend them? We are handing control of our schools over to a small minority of individuals who if not self-serving are certainly self-important without putting any onus on them whatsoever to create systems which will ensure accountability now and in the future.
Totally agree.
It is the lack of accountability that wins hand down in any public debate.
I have just done a radio interview about the Louth decision this week. The interviewer asked me what I hoped to achieve in the long run, bearing in mind the reality of the political situation in Lincolnshire.
I told him the truth. That we had already come much further in Louth than I thought that we ever would. And that whatever the end result, it would be a better one for people being able to express concerns and debate the issues in a real way. I also pointed out the fact that when you offer a proper public debate to someone who is pro-academy, they tend to cry off.
Their insecurity in the argument reveals the insincerity of the policy.
I agree with the points you make Melissa.
The direction of travel of the government on state education was clear to me by the start of this year.
The approach of bribing potential Free School parents, by promises of small classes and £30K private school facilities for no cost, was clear.
The strategy of offering Comprehensive Schools promises of £300K bonuses but only if they switched to Academies in year 1, was obviously going to bring results and it has. Headteachers will not have liked it, but they are pragmatic leaders and short of cash.
The bullying of schools working in the most challenging areas: make your schools like those in wealthy areas or we will close you down, has become clear. It is your fault and nothing to do with your intake. Take a kicking.
Making the EBacc the new league table target, after students have completed studies and taken the exams, in order to publicly humiliate schools, was a clear decision. At the same time tell schools they are free to enter students for any exams they choose.
Legislate that Academies and Free Schools do not have to follow the National Curriculum (like independent schools), but keep the National Curriculum for everyone else.
These strategies will disorientate opposition.
The constant downing of teachers and state schools by Mr Gove at every opportunity, whilst at the same time having the DfE website state that our teachers are the best ever, undermines and disheartens the teaching profession.
All this is a conscious strategy by the Secretary of State. It is like the campaigning approach of red-top newspapers who champion a cause. They know how to get their readers on board, even if the campaign is based on sheer prejudice and little or no evidence. The cronyism and undercover links to unelected organisations which are handed cash, to do the work that needs to be kept at a distance from government, are succeeding.
Mr Gove learnt his trade well when he was a journalist.
What has completely defeated me, is understanding what the Labour Party is doing about all of this. I believe they must share a lot of the blame for the Tory destruction of our state education system. They have not opposed these changes. I have honestly been wondering if they have been in agreement with Michael Gove’s plans. What must the general public be thinking? Huge fuss about not selling off a few trees. Nothing about secretly privatising our education system and removing local accountability for local schools.
At this moment I still don’t know where the Labour Party stand on these educational changes, which have effectively become irreversible. Do they agree with Mr Gove, or are they incompetent? Does anybody know? Is any UK political party opposed to this one man crusade of destruction?
SOMEONE GIVE IAN TAYLOR A MEDAL.
I totally agree. I am a Labour councillor. I am deeply ashamed of the position of the party in all of this. If Labour do not exist to oppose the privatisation of education, can someone tell me why we exist at all?
The comparison with the furore over forests is a an excellent one Ian -or think about how well supporters of fox-hunting organised themselves when that particular pastime was threatened.
One of the issues which,as an ex-head, I think is key is the attitude of most heads who, understandably , keep their heads below the parapet and ignore attacks on the system as a whole so long as their own school is untouched. I do think health professionals are much better at defending the NHS per se than we are at supporting state education.
I found Melissa’s comments on her book being ignored very interesting. Just before I had my own much more modest work published in 2007 a colleague said to me
‘If you really stick your neck out defending state education you’ll have to be prepared for some nasty reviews in the Mail,Telegraph etc.’
I replied that i would be delighted at any review but I thought it much more likely they would ignore it – which they duly did . (I have to admit the failure of the Observer to show the slightest interest did hurt rather).
A final thought . I do find it depressing that in the debates and discussions I have had on the topic over the past four years, there has been an assumption that if you support comprehensive education and believe that state schools are, in general, much better than portrayed in the media, you are branded an extreme left-winger; someone who probably takes his summer holidays in North Korea and keeps a photograph of Joe Stalin on the mantelpiece. Is this another reason why people are not speaking out?
“The truly secure are always happy to debate”. This quote hits the nail firmly on its head and seems to reflect a growing resistance to any calm or mature debate and therefore accountability. “I’m in charge and I’ll do exactly as I like” is hardly the mantra for a free society, a “free” school or a democracy. As Adrian has alluded, it is common to see anyone who challenges the right wing status quo belittled and humiliated by allegations that we’re all barmy conspiracy theorists. The overlaps and similarities with other areas of public service are all too commonplace. I recall an old car bumper sticker that read “If you can read this – you obviously went to school before Thatcher got in”. Although it made me laugh at the time I am somewhat tired and saddened that we are still fighting for a fundamental educational right for all of our children in the 21st century with the majority of those who might otherwise fight alongside us getting their information from News International and the Daily Mail. Great piece Melissa. Keep up the good work.
Is this website about improving state education or attacking to the Conservatives? Leave the politics out of it and you might win a few more people over.
JimC
I think you will find I just attacked Labour, as did many other contributors here. The sad fact is that you can’t leave politics out of education, because the politicians themselves won’t / can’t leave it alone.
No matter how much I / we wish they would.
I was referring to some of the articles published by the website not the comments section.
Maybe I should clarify my position on politics. I’m not suggesting that educators shouldn’t engage with politicians. What anyone interesting in education shouldn’t do is start positioning themselves on the left or right then attacking education policy partly because it is left or right wing. Rubbish policy is rubbish policy whichever side it comes and I really think the LSN would do better if they stopped making things about the left and the right.
Melissa please explain this quote, “My book, and the comprehensive movement in general, also takes a close look at the causes and consequences of the privatisation of education”.
In what way do free at the point of use schools, tax funded and open to all constitute privatisation? Do you mean the ability of academies to be sponsored?
Because of this Ben.
(You will need no more than a quick dictionary or a Google check to verify it)
“Privatisation (def) – Transfer (a business, industry, or service) from public to private ownership or control”
It does not matter whether you are looking at privatisation through a sponsor or a small academy trust. Private ownership is private ownership.
Well if you want to define:
public services;
using predominantly public funds from taxation;
with organisational structures controlled by law such as statute;
using land and buildings which are still mostly publicly owned;
as privatisation…seems like playing games really.
The land and buildings will not still be publicly owned once a school converts.
Privatisation is about ownership. All businesses, as these schools will become, are also subject to law and statute. That does not mean they are not privately owned.
Academies take schools out of community ownership and place them in the hands of sponsors or trusts.
This is nothing about splitting hairs and playing games.
It is a fundamental problem that goes with academy status.
How will ownership of land be transferred from community schools?
From:
http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/inthenews/a0077866/comment-from-the-department-on-academy-funding
“Community school land is owned by the LA and we anticipate that it will normally be leased to the academy trust on a 125 year lease for a peppercorn rent, as at present. But the Secretary of State will have the power to make a scheme to transfer the land to the academy trust freehold or leasehold if necessary (also as at present).”
Ben – I think you’ve answered your own question. In the paragraph you quoted it clearly says, “But the Secretary of State will have the power to make a scheme to transfer the land to the academy trust freehold…”.
The FAQ section to which you linked also says this:
“The intention is that the transfer will be on a 125-year lease from the LA as at present, but there may be special circumstances in individual cases. We hope that the terms of transfer will continue to be arrived at by negotiation, but, as at present, the Secretary of State will have the power to direct the transfer of public land if necessary.”
The New Schools Network together with Policy Exchange before the last election published a report. On page 9 it says: “At present academy sponsors are barred from making a profit. There is no legislative reason why profit should not be allowed (these schools are simply classified as independent schools).”
So, we have a situation where a large number of schools are being classified as “independent”, although this has been presented as being “independent of local authority control”. And we have a Secretary of State who has the power “to DIRECT (my caps) the transfer of public land if necessary”. At the same time we have a “third sector” organisation called Cornerstone, run by the ex-head of Partnerships for Schools (PfS), which is neither registered at Companies House or with the Charities Commission. Its sparse website, which contains no address, says: “Cornerstone works with local authorities across the UK. We acquire these surplus public sector property assets and use value generated to deliver services to the public that are a priority for local communities but unaffordable to the public purse. We work across all main sectors, including education, healthcare and leisure services.”
To whom is this organisation accountable? How does it intend to “acquire” public property? What role will government have in this acquisition? Who will have ownership of the acquired land? How much of the “value generated” will benefit the public and how much will go to investors?
Such concerns about ownership, privatisation, profit-making and so on are not “playing games”. They are serious questions which need answering.
http://www.cornerstoneassets.co.uk/Pages/WhatWeDo.aspx
Further questions concerning Cornerstone are raised here:
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/05/head-of-pfs-resigns-to-run-company-specialising-in-buying-and-refurbishing-public-sector-buildings-and-then-selling-them-back-should-we-be-concerned/
I think one problem with our political system is that there is a huge loss of “institutional memory” so things that worked are junked by a new government; the Literacy and Numeracy strategies were flawed but they did do some good and they were policies that an impact on EVERY child. The lessons learnt from them have been totally forgotten, junked, and replaced by a new dogma. Really we need a cross-party consensus on education and a long-term plan for improvement not this constant chopping and changing. If you look at a country like Norway which has always thought long-term, they haven’t suffered from the shambles we’ve encountered in this country; they invested their oil money wisely, spent prudently during the boom years and took a consensual approach towards things like education and health. Overall, I think we’re pretty poorly governed in this country.
Labour is much to blame for the present situation. It was Labour who began the academies programme. This makes it very difficult for Labour to criticise Coalition policy. An article in the TES written by Conor Ryan*, senior education adviser to David Blunkett and Tony Blair, gives Mr Ryan’s advice to Andy Burnham. Mr Burnham would do well to ignore it. Mr Ryan suggests that Labour promotes “free schools with purpose”. These are “alternative types of school – religious or curriculum – where there is a genuine demand.” So he wants more schools which will segregate children according to faith, and more schools offering “alternative” curricula – Steiner schools, perhaps? Mr Ryan wants the pupil premium “partly related to results” despite the OECD warning about the excessive emphasis on exam marks in England, and despite the Education Endowment Fund finding that many below-floor schools were doing a good job in difficult circumstances. These schools would be penalised if Mr Ryan’s advice were to be followed. And he wants Mr Burnham to recognise that “new school-led networks and academy chains can often deliver more effectively than councils”. So less democratic control, and more control by unaccountable academy chains which, as Mr Ryan recognises, aren’t always as effective as councils. And school-led networks will only flourish when the schools aren’t in competition for pupils.
Mr Burnham would do well to ditch the advisers and look carefully at evidence from the OECD which gives much sensible advice in “Reforming the English Education System” in Economic Surveys UK 2011, data in “Education at a Glance 2011” especially about inclusion, and “Viewing the UK Education System through the Prism of PISA”. He could also follow the debates which appear on this site and read Melissa Benn’s book.
*TES 23 September 2011, not available online at the time of writing.
I thought this was a revealing interview with Elizabeth Sidwell, the new Schools Commissioner. The fact that white working class pupils present many schools with a serious challenge when it comes to raising standards is hardly new. Most schools with mixed intakes have been trying to address this for the last decade. However Dr Sidwell does point out that a critical minority of sponsored academies are failing to improve. The numbers are probably broadly in line with schools in the maintained sector that struggle to find the answer to very disadvantaged and monocultural intakes. Her comments undermine the blind faith that Labour had and the Conservatives now have in the idea that giving schools either independence, or a sponsor, will automatically lead to the required and rapid improvements.
Fiona, I was also pleased to see the emphasis in Elizabeth Sidwell’s comments about the difficulty in engaging some white families with education. Especially pleased she mentioned coastal towns. Having worked in three authorities which had schools on the coast that really resonated with me. Apart from older generations often going in to work where they simply didn’t see the point of education – fishing,tourist related stuff etc – I know in Blackpool,for example where I worked many families in difficulty gravitated there because it was a place they had been happy for a time. Sorry,if that sounds patronising but I spoke to many families who came right out and said it . Colleagues had the same experience.
The continuing existence of selective education is an additional problem in the South East coastal towns. Children from some socio-economic backgrounds then get bunched together in certain schools, often with high proportions of SEN pupils, making the challenges even harder. Some have been re-built and re-badged as academies but in the end this doesn’t address the underlying issue ( that Melissa rightly identifies in her post) of our increasingly hierarchical, segregated education system. The governments current proposals re: free schools and academies simply distract attention from this. The fee paying and grammar schools must be delighted.
A very astute observation by Dr Sidwell about the deprivation in coastal towns and the correlation with underperformance at schools.
As you say Adrian, towns like Blackpool and Fleetwood epitomise this point. I know that 3 comprehensive schools in Hastings were put in special measures and have been destined for closure to be replaced by 2 academies. The sec moderns schools in the Thanet and Medway towns of Kent have some of the worst results in the country.
Well done comrades! Lets maintain the status quo and keep dropping down PISA rankings, stagnating and failing our children shall we? You say Melissa ‘much of it is a plan for the separate education of poorer children’. How does that square with your decision to privately tutor your own children thereby giving them an unfair advantage over these very same ‘poorer children’ whose parents can ill afford the cost of a private tutor? As a wise man once said ‘it is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.’
http://think-left.org/2011/09/15/consortia-not-free-schools-or-academies/
I am very concerned about the break up of LEAs, Academies, free schools and where this is leading. My suspicion is that Academies will cherry pick, vulnerable children will suffer, and we are on our way back to elitism in education – a two tier system.
Just sending off for Melissa’s book!
Melissa’s book is a very powerful indictment of the drift to privatisation and away from local planning of schooling. The practical impact of the disappearance of accountability is illustrated by the provision for one large outer city estate in Liverpool which is the size of many small towns. Two faith secondary schools, one FE college and three universities – but without an accountable local structure each does as it thinks fit. Without cross-sector collaboration there can be no concerted attempt to tackle the estate’s problems of poor attainment let alone a campaign to raise educational aspirations and to strengthen employment engagement with apprenticeships. There seems to be no room in government thinking for the local area dimension of their policies.
Having spent the last few weeks travelling around the country talking to people in different areas I think we are in a rather muddled, ambiguous and dangerous phase – here in England, anyway. Local authorities are being chipped away at – funds withdrawn, schools bribed or bossed into academy status, and a government pretty clearly only interested in the academy narrative, and not in those that remain within locally accountable structures albeit with diminishing resources. Of course, many of the schools that have chosen academy status – some of them fine, high achieving community schools, but often in well off areas – are very keen to continue collaborating with less well off schools, and I am sure they will. But what happens when they falter or find that the resources handed to them by academy status start to run out….. they are so many unanswered questions about current strategy. But Martin is right…. the end of local planning, however imperfect, is going to be a real problem. And privatisation is surely the end game. The behind the scenes development of big chains is going to be the story of the future. These bodies, often headed up by those who gained their expertise in the state sector ( look at Jon Coles who has left the DfE this week, to head up ULT) , will increasingly step in, to do the job that local authorities once did, but without local knowledge and with little meaningful accountability.
One final point – the Liam Fox story has proved useful in revealing the various links that current Coalition members have to overseas organisations, interested in a privatising agenda, including Michael Gove. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/16/lessons-atlantic-bridge-questioning?INTCMP=SRCH
Privatisation is the end game. This was made clear in a Policy Exchange report co-authored by the New Schools Network before the last election. “At present academy sponsors are barred from making a profit. There is no legislative reason why profit should not be allowed (these schools are simply classified as independent schools).” That is what has happened – academies and free schools are classed as independent.
Of course, there was no mention of this in the Conservative manifesto. Mr Gove has ruled out the profit motive “at the moment” but there has been a steady stream of policy documents (eg the one from the Adam Smith Institute discussed on this site) and media articles promoting profit-making in the state sector (see Economist link for a recent example).
Those in favour of profit-making companies running state services do not mention that the primary responsibility of any private company is to its shareholders. And the need to make money could be at the expense of the end user. This was the case with Cognita who own the Southbank International School in London where parents accused Cognita of “milking” the school for profit. Chris Woodhead, ex-Ofsted chief inspector, describes his investment in Cognita as pragmatic – the incentive to make money by selling “the wretched company” at some time in the future (TES 30 Sept 2011, not available on-line).
And as soon as investors sell the “wretched company” and take their profits, any future problems with the company can cause anxiety to those who receive the services as was demonstrated with the collapse of Southern Cross.
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/publications/publication.cgi?id=180
http://www.economist.com/node/18713451
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/04/right-wing-thinktank-says-there-is-no-evidence-to-suggest-that-for-profit-management-of-free-schools-compromises-standards-%e2%80%93-but-the-opposite-is-true/
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/04/a-reply-to-james-croft-author-of-%e2%80%9cprofit-making-free-schools%e2%80%9d-a-report-by-the-adam-smith-institute/
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/04/the-dangerous-liaison-between-free-schools-and-for-profit-making-organizations-is-landing-on-our-shores/
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/06/what-lessons-can-be-learned-from-the-collapse-of-southern-cross/