Schools are to become less, not more independent from local authority control, we hear in Ruth Kelly’s latest announcement.
The new proposals which are unveiled today at the National Association of Schoolmasters and Women Teachers conference in Birmingham today set out a new system whereby even schools which are successful in terms of academic achievement will be subject to an ‘enforcement notice’. LEAs are to gain powers to issue warning notices and send ‘hit squads’ into schools deemed to be under performing in terms of progress. This is a response to OfSTED’s findings that one in four schools are ‘coasting’, providing an education that, in the words of former HMCI David Bell, is “nothing more than…mediocre.”
This enhanced role of the LEA, commentators are arguing, goes against Tony Blair’s White Paper proposals to ‘set schools’ free from LEA control – something which caused an uproar amongst Labour backbenchers. Misguidedly, these Labour rebels saw the role of the LEA as particularly supportive of deprived areas. Therefore to dilute the role of the LEA was to harm the worst-off the worst. However the targets imposed on LEAs by the government meant that this ‘support’ became distorted: far from aiding real learning in schools, it became necessary to push schools into artificially reaching LEA targets.
Thus although Blair did say that local authorities would be less in control of schools, he also said early on that they would become the ‘champions of standards’. In an educational climate where achieving higher standards is done through coercion, the hit squad approach is perfectly in line with this.