Some organisations have fought hard to stem the outward flow of schools from local authority control to academy status, either as stand-alone academies or joining a multi-academy trust (MAT). The hope is that the new administration will acknowledge the absurdity of a national system which is managed by 2,500 trusts as well as all the original 151 local authorities. As yet, the new team comprising the Department of Education has shown little inclination to effect the big change that some have lobbied for. Note that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have not gone down the quasi-privatisation road.
The Education Ministers, Bridget Phillipson (Education Secretary), Catherine McKinnell (School Standards), Anneliese Dodds (women and equalities), Jacqui Smith, (House of Lords - Higher and Further Education), Stephen Morgan (Early Education) and Janet Daby (Children and Families) have variously been courted by the semi-privatised MAT system and a number of reviews appear to have drawn their membership disproportionately from personnel in the academy sector. They each, and collectively, should come to the view that this is not an arrangement that can be tolerated with its potential for chaos and waste. Fundamentally, leaving education to the dismantled, undemocratic, dispersed state is inimical to Labour values of state responsibility for universal state services. The fragmentation* tool allows anyone to see for any LA or constituency the number of providers of education
While we await and new regulatory system across the country there are some easy, small steps.
1. Cease the £25,000 academy conversion support grant to a school converting to academy status.
2. Financial help to bail out academies and MATs to end.
3. Allow schools in the academy sector to revert to local authority control.
4. Allow only Local Authorities to open new schools, on the basis of their analysis of need and to have the deciding voice on school closures, in line with their place-planning responsibility.
5. Suspend the use of ‘academy orders’ for schools that have failed an Ofsted inspection if an alternative plan to addressing the school’s problems is presented by the LA or local schools.
6. Remove the Regional Schools Director role; powers they currently have to revert to the local authority in which the school is located.
7. Cap the salaries of senior executives in academies and MATs.
These steps, easily implemented, would be a start.
* CASE Fragmentation Tool https://fragmentedschoolsystem.org.uk/ Use it and be shocked
And this https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/plans-new-mats-risk-collapse-after-funding-cut
Well, No.1 has been done.