Labour’s marketisation of school provision.
I was recently at a meeting where plans to build a new school to replace two local secondary schools were discussed, and thought I should bring to light an utter absurdity of Government education policy that came up in the meeting. Thanks to recent laws, councils now have less control over who runs schools in their areas, and all in the name of putting power in the hands of local communities.
If a council decides to open a new school it must open the process up to bidders: that could mean bids from groups wanting to run the school in different way; as parent-run school; a community school (i.e. council); a foundation school; an academy etc. Normally the council takes the decision about who wins the bid, but if the council is bidding this function is delegated to an outside adjudicator. In any case, the council must write to the Secretary of State to get permission just to enter the competition in the first place.
The result is that the council has very little control over who runs its local schools (as if having BSF and PFI forced down their throats wasn’t enough) . If a council decides it doesn’t want an academy (perhaps because it doesn’t want religious fundamentalists, or rich businessmen, dictating the curriculum or setting their own employment rules on teachers) then it cannot enter the competition or it would lose its power to say no to such a bidder. In the case of the new school I mentioned above: all of the local councillors: three Lib Dem and six Labour, are united in not wanting an academy. I’m pretty sure we’re all quite keen on the school being a community school too . Sadly, the only way a council can now build a school run by the council is to risk an adjudicator, possibly with no local knowledge, taking the decision to allow some rich fundamentalist nutter to open an academy instead (as happed in Sunderland).
The only other option open to the council for retention of a community school is to class the closing of the two schools and opening of a new one as a merger of the two schools. Sadly this is off the table because under TUPE the staff of one school would lose out big-time against the staff of the other.
And just why should councils have to ask permission to run a school in their own area?