General Discussion

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…

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.

[This text was originally publishes in CASEnotes #100]

In March of this year, the shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said that school pupils must “learn to challenge” media narratives. Speaking at the annual conference of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Phillipson said, “Our young people need, more than ever before, to be questioning, critical, discerning.” Besides cultivating a mature citizenry, critical thinking skills become even more important in the modern economy, one which continues to shift away from manufacturing and manual labour and towards services and tech. Indeed, it is a familiar truism that schools must educate their learners for jobs that do not yet exist. Still, I cannot fathom many teachers today would claim that they are teaching critical thinking skills effectively. How could they, when teachers themselves are no longer active agents in the content that they are “delivering”?

With the expansion of academisation and…

This text was authored by Michael Pyke and can be found in its entirety in CASEnotes 100. Eighty years on from the great 1944 Education Act and with an election imminent, it seems appropriate for this hundredth edition of CASEnotes to begin by taking stock of our education system. What has changed for the better since 1944? What has changed for the worse? What has not changed at all? Here are just a few things that come to mind. No doubt readers will be able to think of more...

LITTLE OR NO CHANGE

The social structure of the education system continues to reflect and reinforce the existing social hierarchy. The rich still educate their children separately from those of everyone else in a system that focuses lavish resources upon the already advantaged and promotes them through a powerful network of social contacts into elite positions in society. Meanwhile the marketisation of…

Place  planning is a statutory duty of local authorities. Quite simply it means managing the number of school places within its area, both ensuring that there are sufficient for the number of children locally, and reducing them as populations change. Since the 2012 Education Act this has become considerably harder as responsibility for opening schools now sits with Regional Commissioners, and these can only be free schools or academies, no more local authority maintained schools. Similarly, councils can’t close academies. Only the Department for Education can, through Regional Commissioners.

Councils have responsibilities without the powers to fulfil them.

In December last year Hackney council decided to close or merge six of its primary schools due to falling rolls, even though not all of these schools were in the places most affected by falling numbers. They just couldn’t touch the academies, even though they too were affected.

And in August this…