Keep education local, by Melissa Benn

It will come as no surprise to many in the educational world that questions are being asked about the £500,000 of public money granted to the New Schools Network, a group set up by a former adviser to Michael Gove.

Inquiries pursued under the Freedom of Information Act by the Other Taxpayer's Alliance and MPs have revealed that no other organisation was asked to tender for this important contract.  So much for the merits of market competition and accountability, the tests ruthlessly applied to pistol-whipped public services.

However the real story about the New Schools  Network is not financial but political. Government support for it is part of a frequently disingenuous war now being fought over the future of our school system, in which a seductive language of cultural radicalism and a powerful invective against educational inequality will increasingly be used to promote a fragmented and multi-tiered system of education. Existing state provision is in effect being undermined.

There are two crucial elements. The first is the relentless knocking of the comprehensive inheritance; the rational administrative reform introduced in this country from the 50s onwards that sought to end the pernicious and deeply unpopular grammar-secondary modern divide.The New Schools Network plays right into this; its website, for instance, features videos shot in close-up of agonised parents desperately seeking alternatives to their failing local school – although only a tiny percentage of the nation’s schools are now deemed to be failing. Many parents, particularly in urban areas, are being encouraged to panic unnecessarily – as David Woods, London’s chief schools adviser, pointed out so trenchantly earlier this year.

But the second key element is the praise heaped upon a kind of local school that does not yet exist, in particular the Swedish free school or the US zero tolerance 'Knowledge is Power' charter model. A flying visit to London this week by Arne Duncan, Obama's education secretary, will provide yet another bout of favourable publicity for the charter movement, but little for its critics – including those who argue convincingly that such schools do not always deliver and often intensify social and ethnic segregation. Duncan will almost certainly make his remarks, side by side with Gove, when the two men tour Hackney's Mossbourne Academy on Wednesday: ironically, one of the big educational successes of New Labour.

Actually, the people who really need active support from Gove are the heads and teachers at thousands of local schools that already do a good, often  outstanding, job, not just in educating our children but in holding together many disparate local communities.

Hence the founding of the Local Schools Network, a national campaign group that will support local schools and facilitate debate about the pressing  issues that affect them daily. GIven Gove's generous and unqualified support for the New Schools Network, we will be urgently seeking a meeting with the education secretary this week to discuss how he and his government might wish to support us in our presumed common goal of further improving the nation’s schools.