CASE Conference 5 October, 2024
Carl Parsons
(This text refers to the talk Dr Parsons gave during the CASE conference: Rebooting Education)
Our education system in England is in disarray – not so in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, note. The system in England is now many systems.
The national provision for the education of our young people, sub-contracted and outsourced for some eight million children, nearly eight per cent of our population. Nearly a million staff in schools, teachers and support staff, costing of £59bn.
This is BIG BUSINESS, once run by central government but delegated within a national framework to the 160 local authorities. Now a disaggregated, dismantled and chaotic collection of groupings and stand-alones which comprise our partially academised system.
At the start of 2023, of the total of around 2,400 trusts,1,250 were single academy trusts (SAT). And local authorities are still in business as well.
October 2023 figures show that 80% of secondary schools, 40% of primary schools and 44% of special schools are academies; Local Authorities look after the rest – and fulfil other requirement such as Special Needs, looked after children and school exclusions.
There was no need for this spectacularly fragmenting, undemocratic and destructive arrangement. No gain, No improvement in results, no improved turnaround, no particular enjoyment of the supposed greater freedom.
Look at Essex, a big authority, 560 schools, nearly three-quarters academies, but 98 providers actually 99 including the LA, and some of those MATs have schools in other local authority areas. 40 of these Trusts are Stand-Alone-Academies – some of the primary stand-alone academies are small - under 300 pupils. This is from CASE’s fragmentation tool, the link for which I will put in the chat: https://fragmentedschoolsystem.org.uk/
A small local authority like Barnet, a London borough, has 34 providers, including the LA, for its 134 schools, only seven of the providers are properly MATs ie two or more schools, and six of with only two schools in them (so, not much ‘multi’ about them!). These educate nearly half of Barnet’s pupils. The majority of Barnet pupils are, in fact, educated in Local authority schools.
The conclusions I draw from an overview of this semi-privatised arrangement are that it is wasteful, incoherent, chaotic with costs to ‘senior management’ of 2,000+ trusts replacing (or duplicating) the 160 LA Children’s Services Departments which continue in depleted form to educate nearly half England’s children. AND there are nine Regional Schools Directors.
What do we do? I suggest:
Return to the LA system, or something very much like it to reinvigorate a local democracy, in educational management.
Allow schools to return from Academy status to local authority care and control.
Ofsted-failed schools NOT directed automatically to academise, if
there’s an alternative local plan.
Cease the flow of schools from LA control to MATs – a saving of the legal fees which government currently pays to support this outward flow.
Only LAs able to open new schools and decide which schools close (falling numbers etc) to enable their place-planinng role.
Discontinue the Regional Schools Director roles (9 of them, employing 555 officials in 2022-23 at a projected cost of £34 million). LA boards can do this job.
Teacher education returned to the universities and close the organisations specifically set up (unnecessarily) to support Academies and Trusts – Institute for Teaching (annual budget £121M) and the Oak National Academy (annual cost of £3M.)
Secretary of State for Education, Act NOW.
CASE Fragmentation Tool https://fragmentedschoolsystem.org.uk/
"Fragmentation: The National Picture" – Carl Parsons, Emeritus Professor, Canterbury Christ Church University
"Systems Matter: Academy Management Costs" – John Galloway, Vice chair of CASE
No Significant Difference Between LEA and MAT Outcomes" – Rob Higham, UCL