The Education Funding Agency (EFA) is ultimately responsible for dealing with complaints about academies, so said Secretary of State, Michael Gove, in his
letter to the Education Select Committee. However, parents with complaints must follow the academy’s procedure for dealing with complaints. This procedure must comply with The Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2010. These rules state that the complaints procedure is not exhausted until parents have been through three stages:
1 An informal stage where the complaint could be resolved by, say, discussion with a senior member of staff;
2 A formal complaint stage where the complaint is put in writing, and
3 A hearing with a panel appointed by or on behalf of the proprietor.
The “proprietor” is not a misprint. It is the only word which describes the “ownership” of an academy. Mr Gove’s description of the complaints procedure for academies does not include anything about “charities”, “Trustees”, or “Governors”. The word is “proprietor”.
It is all too clear where the Government’s academy policy is leading – to a time when academies have a proprietor and when "the deconstruction of the education function within local authorities" offers a clear potential to "make a
substantial return to investors" (Zenna Atkins, ex-Ofsted chair, director of Wey Education). And we must remember the words of Sam Freedman, Mr Gove’s special advisor, who said as long ago as 2008 that when profit-making firms become involved in education, "
They are not interested for altruistic reasons. It's an investment."
Comments
All very alarmist and emotive, but it leaves out the simple fact that in each and every case the proprietor is a charitable trust, not some fat cat with a cigar and a homburg.
"My fellow animals. Do not be alarmed by the word "proprietor". It does not mean as it did in the days of Farmer Jones. No, Comrades, "proprietor" now has a more benevolent meaning - a charitable trust. Of course, if, in the future we pigs decide that proprietors can in fact be owners, do not be alarmed, the deconstruction of the education function can make a substantial return to investors while standards will rise until all animals are average. Although some animals, of course, will be more average than others."
Quite so. There is no doublespeak involved. The academy trust is the owner. Other schools are owned by foundation trusts, dioceses and local authorities. What's the difference? What's the big deal?
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/10/gove-is-in-favour-of-profi...
“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)." This statement is from a joint Policy Exchange/New Schools Network document published before the last election. The New Schools Network, as you will be aware, is the organisation given the Government contract to promote free schools.
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/pdfs/BLOCKING_THE_B...
We are seeing the same virus infecting our schools in England and Gove has deliberately sold our state school system so that the fantastically wealthy like the carpet man - forgotten his name - who has donated millions to the Tories can "own" schools. I think most communities like to feel that they are shareholders in their local schools and not grateful peasants allowed through the sanctum.
Gove's decision to follow a failed and corrupt American model is no mystery once you put his policies into the context of all the different ways the Tories are dismantling public services and handing them over for profit to their mates. Jeremy Hunt was caught red-handed trying to hand BSkyB over to the great philanthropist Rupert Murdoch. This would have had a disastrous impact on the BBC, a publicly funded body and one who has to hand over millions of its licence fee to the parastic Sky so that the latter can use its platform to transmit programmes that can be accessed without a Sky subscription. We can thank Margaret Thatcher for this, as it was the Heartless Lady herself who demanded the BBC pay Sky £10m a year.
Alarmist? Not really. What I also find really alarming about Gove is that he thought it helpful to tell us that the Culture Minister was a fab lambada dancer and that “If you ever want anyone to liven up your party by cutting the rug with dash and distinction… then Jeremy is the man to invite.” I can't think of anyone worse, with the possible exception of Shepherd's Market and Krug man Jeffrey Archer
The idea that our public institutions can be 'owned' lock, stock and barrel is a disgrace. It does nothing to improve them educationally and removes the public interest and involvement in them. Once they are 'owned' we cease to have any real say in what happens inside them even if we are footing the bill.
I think the alarm bells should already be ringing loud and clear and relentlessly because Michael Gove came into power with a mission to make people believe that shutting down the infrastructure of state education and the consultative bodies would 'improve professional freedom and therefore education'.
Now this was always blatantly untrue - what was needed to improve professional freedom and therefore education was very obviously a dual policy of reforming Ofsted to make it fit for purpose (which could have been rapidly done simply by obliging it to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act) and working to end narrow high stakes assessment for students up to the age of 14 and replace it with something far more effective and less constraining (which could easily have been done in the life of a parliament had he actually been interested in that agenda).
Given that
1. he clearly never had any interest in professional freedom
and
2. he has systematically pursued policies which were clearly going to compromise it rather than improve it,
3. he seems to have systematically and ruthlessly ensured anyone who was really interested in appropriate professional freedom was removed from their jobs
What were his motives?
Or was he just a gullible man with a tendency for hero worship who was sufficiently inexperienced in everything to become an unwitting puppet for News Corp/Pearson agenda?
As if customers had absolutely no say or influence in a market... *holds head in hands*.
Indeed - schools have to spend far to much time focusing on their obligations to Ofsted and this severely compromises their abilities to focus on what studetns need and want and what parents can offer. *wonders if Ricky is still lost in the fantasy world of belief that parents would rather move their children several times than improve things where they are and that Michael Gove is going to give everyone loads of school options.*
Well they don't in American charter schools. This is why a signifant number of them are being sued by states and the schools themselves. Which parent - sorry, "customer" - should resort to the stress and expense of court action when a local authority - or middle tier, which even Wilshaw has indicated may be necessary - should do the work? In Academies and Free Schools, the "customer" has very little say. They aren't even much represented on the governing board.
What do parents do if the school won't convene a "A hearing with a panel appointed by or on behalf of the proprietor" promptly at a time the parents can attend?
and what happens if they remain dissatisfied after the panel has responded?
The EFA "cannot review or overturn decisions about complaints made by Academies" so even if the parent's complaint is valid s/he will not get it overturned if the Academy considered the complaint "appropriately" ie went through the laid down procedures. Quite what happens if the Academy has treated a child unjustly is unclear.
I'm sure that parents who were persuaded that academy conversion was a good idea were not told that if they have a genuine complaint about how an academy dealt with their child they can't expect an unjust decision to be overturned if the academy follows the correct procedure.
http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/p/academiescomplaintsproc...
Each school will have to have a complaints procedure, and anyone unsatisfied with that has to go to DfE.
Academies and maintained schools will actually be in much the same position.
And can you link to information which says the Local Government Ombudsman will stop receiving complaints about such things as school transport, exclusions and some aspects of SEN? Or is it only the pilot scheme whereby the LGO handled complaints from certain LAs which ceases on 31 July 2012?
http://www.lgo.org.uk/schools/
Yes.
http://www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/strategy/laupdates/a0...
This raises further questions:
1 Which LAs are not covered by "most"?
2 What about complaints to LAs about school transport,exclusions and some aspects of SEN etc?
3 What about complaints concerning school staff employed by LAs?
4 Which authority/organisation deals with complaints about bullying or something the parent regards as unfair treatment which are not resolved at school level?
Does the Education Funding Agency know that it will be responsible for complaints about the curriculum, sex education and religious education? Or will parents take the instructions literally and write to the DfE? I can see the letter now: "Dear Mr Gove, I wish to complain about my son having to squash a banana into a condom..."
2. School transport is likely to remain with LAs on the basis that there has been no contra indication that this will revert to individual schools. Exclusions and SEN issues will become school complaints which when exhausted will be escalated to DFE.
3. School staff will probably be differentiated by the type of school. E.g.: Maintained schools remain a school/governors and thence LA domain whereas Academies and Free Schools will follow the internal procedure before escalating to the DFE
4. This is likely to follow the framework outlined at (3) above
As indicated in the quotation these issues will follow internal school procedures before escalation to DFE.
If you enjoy conspiracy theories may I further suggest that this is in line with the political goals of the Conservative Party (i.e. the emasculation/dismantling of Local Authority input/influence in the direct running of schools).
A potential response to the disgruntled parent may just go along the lines of:
Dear Disgruntled Parent, I was sorry to learn of your son's unhappy experience and have written to the school suggesting that in future greater care is taken to ensure that they either purchase bigger condoms or smaller bananas. I hope this will avoid any further difficulties or embarrassment for other pupils. Yours sincerely ...
;)
I guess the ones that were part of the LGO pilot you alluded to.
I can see the letter now: “Dear Mr Gove, I wish to complain about my son having to squash a banana into a condom…”
I dare say the SoS is well used to receiving even sillier letters than that from the AAA, the teacher unions and so on.
It surely is nonetheless reassuring that if the stages are followed there is the channel to take it outside of the school at the centre of the complaint and escalate it upwards.
The steps you outline are not that different to that operated outside teaching. For example, before taking a case to the Information Commisioners Office under either the Data Protection or Freedom of Information Acts one must (1) informally chase the recipient for a reply (2) lodge a formal complaint with the recipient (3) refer the matter to the ICO. Another example might be the legal profession where one must (1) raise an informal complaint with the solicitor involved (2) escalate it the the Head of Department (unless they were the solicitor at (1)) before (3) issuing a formal complaint to the firms internal customer relations department. If still unsatisfied you can then take the matter to the Legal Ombudsman (and thence to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority).
I hope this illustrates that education (academies and free schools) are not being treated (protected) favourably over other schools or other walks of life.
It's rather like the "any good education provider" mentioned in the Conservative Manifesto. How many people thought that could include profit-making firms? The LibDems didn't think so. However, by putting this in their manifesto Gove can say that people voted for it. Words can be very slippery.
http://media.conservatives.s3.amazonaws.com/manifesto/cpmanifesto2010_lo...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14781392
:)
And indeed, you are right, Labour's Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2003, which the new regs replace, used the term 'proprietor' throughout and in relation to complaints says:
...where the parents are not satisfied with the response to the complaint made in accordance with paragraph (e), makes provision for a hearing before a panel appointed by or on behalf of the proprietor ...
So not much change there!
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2012/03/deception-about-academies-...
The perception that certain Labour politicians were secretly in favour of profit-making schools appeared in the Policy Exchange/New Schools Network 2010 document, Blocking the Best. Two years before that another politician told the BBC Politics Show that while he approved of philanthropic organisations running schools he was not in favour of schools being run for money:
"The trouble with allowing companies to make a profit from providing schools is that it take money out of the education system, significant sums of money out."
This was not, however, a Labour politician. It was a Conservative one - and he's now Minister of State for Schools. I do hope he keeps repeating these words to his boss.
For me it falls into two parts: (1) reducing the public financial input by avoiding capital expenditure (or so they thought - PFI running costs are astronomical) (2) getting big business on their side (through sponsorship and the latent silver lining of making profits through running schools wholesale). In that regard the double standards and disingenuity of all political parties is laid bare. You can change the rhetoric and dress things up any way you like but the truth will always come out when the fruits are there for all to see.
I just hope that other contributors to this sight who appear to live life through rose tinted glasses and nostalgia can accept that the issue of schools for profit and false hopes pinned on Academies does not lie exclusively with the Coalition - their own beloved party has played more than its full part in the unfolding scenario.
One thing the Finns got absolutely spot on was keeping all political ideologies out of education.
Under New Labour, there were no Free Schools and no new grammar schools (satellite grammars are. for all intents and purposes, new grammars). Would Labour have demolished the role of local authorities in education? Unlikely - their Academies were still part of the local authority family. Would Labour have trasnformed the schools landscape by trying to turn every school into a free-standing Academy in a handful of years? Again, unlilkely.
All decisions affecting the country are political and ideology plays a bit part in politics. They are inseparable. The problem with Gove's ideology is that it is inflexible, propped up by his inner circle of advisers, the vast majortiy of whom are not, and have not been, educators. What is frightening is that he listens only to what he wants to hear. What he is hearing is the ideology of the American school reform movement, whose backers are billionaire philanthropists who have effectivecly paid for political influence. American education policy is driven, and influenced by, the very wealthy. And it has failed to raise the US beyond the average.
The Finns did not keep political ideology out of education. They decided back in the 1970s and 1980s that their ideal would be to close the inequality gap and they passed laws to achieve this and these laws paved the way for all Finnish children to have equal access to excellent state funded and maintained schools. If only Gove and the current incumbents at Number 10 had the same ideology of equality. Under the Tory-led Coalition, the unemployed are bussed in to work as stewards unpaid, and treated like animals, for profit-making companies whilst the monarchy and the Establishment spend three days reasserting the advantages of hereditary, financial and social privelege at a time when Cameron, Osborne and the rest of them have increased poverty, unemployment and the numbers of the disenfranchised.
From a personal perspective, and as I have said before on this forum and others, I believe that the goal of the converter academies and free schools is to emasculate/dismantle the input LAs have on education and restrict them monitoring and forecasting demographic trends and the like and the dimunition/breaking of teaching as a degree qualification profession, the restriction of teaching union power and last but by no means least a money saving exercise through lower salaries and reduced pension libaility. Irrespective of ones views on this, it is entirely in keeping with the long time held goal of the Conservative Party.
As for the Finns, their slow but inexorable and enviable educational revolution simply couldn't have happened without the political Right and Left deciding to stop pulling in different directions and agreeing to work together. Prior to that they too suffered the polemical seesaw / tug of war games over education. To do this they essentially set aside party politics and agreed that education was fundamental to the nations future and depoliticised it. Permit me to quote from a Finnish source:
"... equality in Finland does not mean the exact same education for all, it means equal access to excellent, individualized education. It is a system where the school is there for the student – not the other way around."
Sirkku Nikamaa-Berg,Educator at Work in Progress Teacher, English and Swedish Kasavuoren Koulu at Kasavuoren Koulu, Kauniainen (Linkedin 8 Jun 12)
"... Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or career politicians ... “Equality is the most important word in Finnish education. All political parties on the right and left agree on this,” said Olli Luukkainen, president of Finland’s powerful teachers union."
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Suc...
Like you, I am sick of all political parties using education to further their own ends. We've had the unedifying sight of Blair crowing over the 2000 PISA figure for the UK (despite having only been in office for 2 years) and then using deception to show how academies were better than any other type of school. Now we have Gove scarcely able to conceal his delight that the UK has "plummetted down the league table in ten years" even though the 2000 figures are flawed and the OECD has warned against using them for comparison. He knows about the OECD warning - he just ignores it. His endgame is, of course, opening the door so that private, profit-making firms can take over schools and run "branded" chains. In this he was helped along by the policies of Blair and Adonis as he never stops reminding us.
The CTCs were a Tory idea which didn't really take off. Only 13 were established. Of those 13, most converted to academy status under Labour. And most of them have an ability level skewed to the top end so aren't the all-ability schools they are meant to be. Doesn't stop Gove etc saying how wonderful most of the ex-CTCs are doing - they should do, if they've only got a tiny percentage of low attainers and a large proportion of high attainers.
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2012/03/deception-about-academies-...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/cash-for-honours-arrest-ma...
I'd say that's not so much a 'goal' as a fortunate side-effect.
Are you one of these anarchic libertarians who believes that everything will improve if nothing is democratically consulted or planned?
I'm afraid my perspective is different as I've seen the benefits coherent planning used to bring here and still brings in Scotland, I've seen the very hard work LAs still do in the toughest situations and I believe in professional empowerment through democracy rather then deprofessionalisation through dictatorship. I think having a complaints route which feeds into local democracy is essential.
I've also never met anyone who can coherently argue that dismantling local planning will do anything other than collapse with expensive consequences.
Would you try to do that please Ricky?
Or is your delight in destroying LAs just a gut instinct that it will be fun to do that?
However, make no mistake this is not an "fortunate side-effect". It has been a Conservative party goal for decades e.g. Thatcher tried and failed as did Major. I'm on the side of students and their education not party political ideologues from either the left or the right. All they do is use education as political play thing and it is way too important to be treated so shamefully and distainfully.
However I have a different position on history of Conservative policy. In expressing it it is not my intention to contradict your perspective, quite the opposite I am happy for you to expand on your views of history. I suspect my different perspective is simply a reflection on the variety of views which exist and have existed within the Conservative party.
I grew up among people who were at the heart of and deeply understood Thatcher's reforms. The people I knew did not see them as being absolute objectives in themselves but as policies which were relevant from getting Britain from today to tomorrow at the time when they were implemented.
So for example the fight with the trade unions was not intended to destroy the unions which are of course a functional aspect of democracy. It was about rebalancing power until good management had the ability to manage well. The view by those at the heart of these reforms was that that job was completely done - perhaps too well - but there is not a perfect balance point. 'Attacking the unions' was not their policy - reforming union law to make it possible for British industry to function was the objective and it was achieved. Clearly there are some idealists in the Conservative party who are hell-bent on the destroying the unions but I don't think they are representative of all conservatives. For example I comment extensively on John Redwood's blog and I see none of it there. Similarly the old guard of the Tories were quite vocal in expressing their concern regarding attacks made on the unions by specific groups of Conservatives during the strikes about pensions.
And similarly you have a split in thinking about privatisation. The same group who seem to be out to destroy the unions seem intent on privatising everything. But I lived among people who again saw privatisation as being a pragmatic thing driven by deeper ideals and contextual circumstances. In the 1980s getting British infrastructure functioning efficiently (or in some cases functioning at all) was a huge priority, as was cutting costs and raising capital. At that time that we had to a great extent lost our ability to effectively reform and modernise much our our state infrastructure within the pre-ICT state systems which were operating then so they had become undemocratic and unresponsive. Privatisation offered a solution to this for some services. However I was party to discussions which concluded that this thinking should not apply to schools and the NHS as they were operating differently. I was also lucky enough to be exposed to the thinking about the contradictions and problems of privatisation within the Conservative party then which did not, of course, become part of history and sadly seem not to be understood by the anarchic libertarians within the Conservative party who strangely seem to hold so much power.
Conservative policy should be about personal freedom and freedom of choice. Unfortunately Gove seems to have interpreted this in a very narrow way as being about the freedoms people have to choose between schools and to have totally ignored the reality that most people are actually more interested in having the freedom to impact positively on and interact constructively with their child's local school and that the effective mechanisms for them doing this are not those of them being allowed to start a different school. They are more complex. In particular those working in local schools need a significant degree of appropriate professional freedom if parental engagement is to flourish.
I don't disagree that New Labour were equally culpable for this scenario but think thats somehow irrelevant now and would support the idea of keeping political idealogy out of education but could not say how that would work in the UK. What I am sure of however is the term proprietor is alien to the concept of a good education in my mind. I once thought that we would send our older daughter, then an only child, to a local private girls school with great results however further investigation made me think otherwise. I could not deal with 'proprietors' on a daily basis and a system with limited accountability. For me the concept of a state education for all is still the ultimate goal. No proprietors here please- just experienced educators!
Snakes alive, what a dramatic reaction! Do you suffer similar chills when encountering proprietors in other contexts - as, say, a diner in a restaurant, a customer in a shop or a fare hailing a cab?
And remember that Cognita, the profit-making firm set up by ex-Ofsted chief inspector to run schools (he admitted he was motivated by the thought of cashing in when he sold the firm on), was accused of "milking" the Southbank International School for profit. Also in my original post I quote comments by Zenna Atkins (another ex-Ofsted person) and Sam Freedman (Gove spad) about how much money can be made out of education in England.
Remember, it's not altruism that drives private-firms to become involved in education, its an investment. But the collapse of Southern Cross should be a warning about what can happen when the care of vulnerable people is put in the hands of those whose primary purpose is to make money.
I think this is the aspect of proprietorship that is making roslyn's blood run cold.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/7471350.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/10/private-firm-profits-fre...
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/06/what-lessons-can-be-learne...
It would however be different if taxpayer funded state schools - maintained or independent academies or free schools - were handed over to private companies to run for profit (e.g. IES).
Cognita was initially interested in the free schools programme so could have been involved in state-funded schools. And IES has been awarded a contract to run Breckland Free School. IES claims that the British Government actively sought them out to run free schools in England (see second link below).
Remember, it's not altruism that motivates profit-making firms to become involved in education, it's an investment (Sam Freedman, Gove spad).
http://guidetoindependentschools.com/schools/view/413/Southbank-Internat...
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2012/01/dfe-denies-inviting-profit...
However, I am implacably opposed the IES example and would be equally opposed to Cognita or any other private company running any state school for profit. This closely followed by my hositility to PFI which duped the taxpayer with its long term costs.
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