Lord Shipley: Let’s keep local democracy in the running of our schools
3 min read
The Liberal Democrat communities spokesperson in the Lords writes about his question today in the House of Lords on: Democratic accountability of Regional Schools Commissioners.
Over the last five years, with the creation of academies and free schools, we have seen a dramatic change in the schools system. Some of it has been an improvement, some of it has not. The Department for Education has confirmed that of the 20 biggest academy chains, only three perform above the national average when assessed using added value. On the other hand, almost half of councils perform above the national average.
To counteract the failings of academies the Government appointed eight regional schools commissioners in England to hold academies to account. However, those in the role cover a wide geographic area and their role is not understood by the general public. Commissioners handle only academic standards of course and not matters of strategic planning, finance and safeguarding. Nevertheless, they are increasingly important and the trend is disturbing.
For example, a single person is now accountable for decisions affecting 257 secondary and primary academies in the north-east of England and Cumbria. As the Government continues down its path to an academy dominated schools system we could soon see a world in which a single person ends up with a huge degree of power over local educational provision.
Where does this leave parent governors and local education authorities? The answer is that they are an endangered species as the Government seeks to abolish their role and hand power to commissioners.
To whom is a commissioner accountable? Certainly not to parents, since PTA UK, the body representing parent-teacher associations, complained to the House of Commons Education Select Committee recently that just 10% of parents knew about regional schools commissioners, who are formally, of course, civil servants responsible directly to Whitehall.
This centralisation of our schools system is not good for local democracy, it is not good for local accountability and it certainly won’t be good for the future of our neighbourhoods and communities.
To make matters worse, the responsibilities of regional schools commissioners were expanded a short while ago. They are now responsible for assessing and improving the conversion of underperforming maintained schools into academies and deciding on their sponsors. In this, they are advised by a head teacher board of between six and eight people. Of those six or eight people, four are elected by academy heads. However, once those elections have been held, the regional schools commissioner has the power to appoint replacements on behalf of the Secretary of State and no further elections are required. In addition, these regional schools commissioners have a performance measure for their own performance on how many schools they convert to academies.
As an example of a centralising structure with inadequate local accountability and power residing in Whitehall, this is hard to better.
Local schools should be accountable to the local areas they are part of. It is to the council that parents go when there are issues that they wish to raise. Councils are the elected local bodies and they already have a responsibility for educational standards. Why, given their good record, are they being denied the power to do so in the case of academies?
It is time democracy returned to our schools before the planned blanket introduction of academies means it is too late.
The Lord Shipley OBE is the Liberal Democrat Lords Principal Spokesperson for Communities, Decentralisation and the Northern Powerhouse
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