06 October 2006
Labour and the Conservatives are falling over themselves to come up with the best (make that the most vote-winning) idea for schools. Phil Revell examines the competing policies
All over the country teachers are holding their heads in their hands in despair as bright-eyed politicians lean towards the TV cameras announcing their latest schemes for schools. There is to be more freedom, more choice; standards will rise; children will lap up knowledge in shiny new classrooms; parents will glow with satisfaction.
Details are available in abundance. Funding will come direct from government. Sink schools will be replaced by independent schools or by city academies, depending on the spokesperson delivering the message. These new schools will succeed where others have failed because – well, because the politicians say so.
'Our energies shouldn't be going into this, we should be trying to ensure that all schools are good schools,' says Alan Stockley, head of the Landywood Primary in Staffordshire.
It's not that there is little of merit in the proposals. The despair comes from the knowledge of what happens when souped-up, go-faster policies hit the hard road of reality. Head teachers are still smarting from the funding debacle that plunged hundreds of them into the red last year.
That was going to be the year when real resources began to flow into schools, they had been told. The reality was a little different.
So educationalists listened to last week's policy announcements with a sceptical ear, hearing the thunk of policies that sound attractive in the studio but will prove a little tricky to implement on the ground.
Let's start with choice. Labour claims that choice arises out of the diverse range of schools. There are specialist schools in everything from the arts to mathematics, there are extended schools offering services to their communities and, soon, almost every area will have a city academy.
'There will be greater diversity of school types and greater choice for parents,' says Tony Blair. But where the prime minister sees diversity, others see a hierarchy, with well-funded city academies at the top and 'bog standard' comprehensives at the bottom.
The city academy programme began with Bexley's Business Academy two years ago. Academies are public-private partnerships, with sponsors contributing at least £1m in return for considerable control over governing body and senior management appointments.
The 200 new academies will be located in inner-city areas and are intended to replace failing schools. But there are doubts about their value for money and whether they really will address intractable problems.
They are certainly expensive. Estimates suggest that the first 17 cost more than £420m, two and a half times the budgeted cost. Expanding the programme will almost certainly take place at the expense of other budget headings and education ministers were opposed to the idea, as are head teachers.
'If 200 academies are built, the £5bn cost will use too much of available capital funds,' says John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association.
But Education Secretary Charles Clarke discovered that he was no better than Estelle Morris at facing down the Downing Street bandwagon – and the policy was forced through Cabinet after a lengthy row.
Quite where the choice comes in all of this is something of a puzzle. Academies are their own admissions authorities and, like the city technology colleges before them, are being deluged by applications from parents desperate to get their children into a well-resourced school. With just one academy in each area, the inevitable result will be a form of selection.
And that's the biggest weakness of Labour's entire education project. Blair claimed that the five-year plan was the 'most socially egalitarian vision any Labour government has ever espoused', and went on to repeat his promise not to end selection. But the current system is selection by postcode. In towns and cities, the wealthiest, pushiest parents are able to lever their children into the best schools. For everyone else, the system is a lottery.
Choice has been the keyword in Conservative Party policy for as long as anyone can remember. It is what led the party towards grant-maintained schools in the 1990s. But the weakness in the policy has always been the simple economic fact that choice can be exercised only in a market with spare capacity. To their credit, the Conservatives have been bold enough to jump that hurdle, promising 600,000 extra school places funded by a one-third increase in education grant. The result will be empty desks in many schools, a most un-Conservative concept, which shadow education secretary Tim Collins acknowledges will infuriate some Conservative sensibilities.
'If you have choice, you have to have empty desks,' he told Public Finance. 'The real waste of money is to have a system of stifling Treasury control over the number of places.'
The policy wonks in Smith Square have also ironed out the defects in the education vouchers scheme, a policy on the Tory wish list since the mid-1980s, when Sir Keith Joseph reluctantly decided that it made no sense whatsoever.
In the Mark 2 version, parents will be able to take the voucher – which, naturally, no-one is calling a voucher – and spend it at either a state school of their choice or an independent school. The difference lies in the small print. Parents will not be able to top up the voucher, and independent schools that accept voucher students will not be able to run a two-tier ship. 'We didn't want to recreate the assisted places scheme,' says Collins.
Right-wing pundits thought this was 'voucher lite', weak and feeble nonsense. It offered no possibility of middle-class parents using the state's cash to subsidise Crispin at Eton, and was therefore a waste of time. But it is closer to successful programmes run on the continent. In Sweden and the Netherlands, for example, Left-of-centre governments have happily allowed independent schools a large share of the state-funded education system. The unknown quantity is the extent to which independent schools have ambitions to involve themselves in the public sector.
'We are confident that we have pitched this at the right level,' says Collins, who believes that about 150 current independent schools would be interested in state funding.
More schools could be created, of course. Cue the entry of Global Education Management, a company that runs independent schools in the Middle East. It has ambitions to open 200 no-frills independent schools in the UK, and its costings place it exactly in the Tories' new voucher category. Doubts about the seriousness of its proposals are dispelled by the names of its advisers, which include former Ofsted chief inspector Mike Tomlinson and James Sabben Clare, ex-head of Winchester.
The wonky wheel on the Tory bus is the commitment to allow schools to control their admissions. Grant-maintained schools had this power and the result was a plethora of admissions arrangements. Parents had to make multiple applications and some schools played the system to deny places to the disadvantaged and the less able. 'If you follow the Tory policy to the letter, the effect would be catastrophic,' says Alan Stockley.
What would happen if parents were unable to find a place for their child? Collins has the answer. 'In the small number of cases where a child has been turned down by every school in an area, we will give the local authority the power to require a school to take a child,' he says.
In other words, the announcement of the death of the local education authority was somewhat premature. And this is mirrored in Labour's proposals. Despite loud noises from the Local Government Association, it is clear that both parties see a continued role for the LEA, but not as a funding authority. Whoever is in power in two years' time, the cash for schools will be ring-fenced to avoid what one head described as the 'money sticking to the sides of the funnel'.
The Conservatives would go furthest, with a national formula centrally distributed. But Labour is also determined to break away from the annual bickering about cuts. In future, school funding will be centrally determined. 'Local authorities will play a key part as champions of pupils and parents, setting a strategic vision for services in their area,' says Charles Clarke.
'This makes sense,' says Stockley. 'LEAs should have separate funding.'
The move towards a monitoring role has been flagged for some time. But some heads are concerned that the process may go too far.
'Autonomy is all well and good, but who has the strategic overview?' asks Hillary Bills, head of the Holyhead Primary School in Sandwell. Her school is suffering from falling numbers because of local housing redevelopment, and she thinks it is vital that local authorities have the freedom to react to local circumstances and offer financial support to schools.
'I have no control over that, it's housing policy,' she says. But both parties' proposed funding arrangements would limit Sandwell's options in her case.
Media coverage of the two parties' policy announcements made much of the similarities, but there are clear differences. No-one was surprised to read that the Conservative arrangements would allow for the reintroduction of selection at 11, but their policies on behaviour earned them a grudging nod of approval from head teachers' associations.
For Labour, the policy is more of the same. Teachers will be supported, there will be behaviour teams and mentors, appeals panels will be advised that reinstating thugs who have beaten up teachers or other pupils is not government policy.
But the Conservatives have gauged the feelings of schools far more accurately. Appeals panels will be disbanded and heads will be allowed to exclude children who flout the rules.
This has brought a weight of opprobrium down on Collins' head, with parents and children's groups demanding a right of appeal. He is unrepentant.
'Appeals undermine the authority of teachers,' he says. He points out that governors could act as a first court of appeal. But there's no movement on the central issue. If necessary, a future Conservative government would remove legal aid from parents who tried to take schools to court.
'Once you had one or two cases where a parent had lost and faced a very large bill, that would be a very healthy deterrent,' he says.
So who wins on radicalism? Conservative proposals for state-funded independent schools fail the test because the policy is a reworking of a long-held ambition. Labour ideas about a personalised curriculum appear radical, but few people seem to know what this would look like in practice.
The winning idea has to be Labour's moves towards clusters of schools working together: shared funding, area responsibility for teacher training or special needs. Now this is new. And it's radical because it chimes with what head teachers wanted to hear.
'It's an excellent idea,' says Stockley.
'Autonomy means isolation,' says Hillary Bills. 'Schools working together can have a real effect.'
Chris Gerry, head of Hugh Christie Technology College in Kent and an advocate of the policy of grouping schools together, says: 'Tesco does not have individual managers making decisions about whether to sell bread or milk. Groups of schools would be easier to run.'
But where are local authorities in this picture? Perhaps the LGA was right to be worried after all.
PFoct2006
