The Closing of Options

A few years ago OfStEd downgraded our super parish infants school from 'good' to 'satisfactory' (a category that no longer exists) after a particularly brutal and insensitive inspection that left teachers in tears. The school turned that around very quickly and the next set of inspectors were much more reasonable. The governors' meeting immediately after that downgrading, angry though it was, wasn't as depressing as the one we had the day the Government announced that all schools are to be forced to move to academy status. In the first case, we could do something about it; this time, we can't. 

The governors and the staff are dead set against the school becoming an academy. We have never seen the advantages. When devised, academy status was explained as a mechanism enabling troubled schools to be freed of institutional shackles and to innovate to bring about improvement; early academies were showered with extra money and incentives by the DofE. Not surprisingly, becoming academies seemed to work for those schools. Presumably the Government expected such improvement to prompt every school to opt out of local government 'control' (not that councils have really 'controlled' schools in any detail since the 1980s), but they refused. Governing bodies voted against doing so, as did polls of parents. I understand that about half of secondary schools have become academies, some bonding together in Multi-Academy Trusts to reach the pupil numbers - 1500 to 2000, says the DofE - needed to make such groupings viable. But very, very few schools in the primary sector have. As the number of academies have increased, correspondingly the data suggesting that academy status actually brings any benefit have weakened and weakened.

The arms-length relationship between our infants school and the County Council operating since 1988 has worked very well for us and we see no reason to change it. Some of what the County used to do - training, human resources, IT support - is now supplied by a firm called Babcock 4S, itself a subsidiary of Babcock International, a huge consultancy company founded as long ago as 1900. Babcock 4S's only two shareholders are a holding company which is itself part of Babcock (80%) and Surrey County Council (20%); we get on well enough with Babcock although it's difficult to see why it's any better, or more value-efficient, at providing these services than the Council itself would be. Now Babcock's charges are rocketing as it tries to recoup some of the money lost by schools disappearing from the Surrey system.

Two of our governors attended a meeting a few days ago, led by a great proponent of academy status who was chairing a MAT. He described himself as a convert to academies, but when asked why he changed his mind said disarmingly that he couldn't remember! He was unable to bring any arguments to bear on why any school should opt for academy status, merely stating, 'This is going to happen so it's basically a matter of picking who you're going to work with or they'll be picked for you.' When asked about how a school like ours would be represented in a MAT he said 'You won't be. You've got 150 pupils; you won't even get a representative on the board of trustees. Not every school can be represented or it won't work. You'll just have to do as you're told.' How are trusts to find these trustees, who will be responsible for budgets of millions, up to 2000 pupils, 15 or so sites, and hundreds of staff? 'They'll be volunteers.' Will they? Who's going to volunteer to do that? Will MATs not end up employing trustees - directors, perhaps we ought to call them - as well as the people who actually run the schools?

This is all proposed on the grounds of improving school standards, but one could just as easily read it as a means of syphoning off more public money into the pockets of private businesses and individuals. I know what I think, and how depressing it is to live in Britain now. Well, England, anyway.

Today there is another announcement: that governing bodies will not have to include parents, on the grounds that the Government wants to ensure 'skills' are represented on them rather than sectional interests. Of course parents don't know anything about the education of their children, do they?