Blair (correctly IMO) believes that the quality of schooling matters. For all the hype about more getting more GCSEs, a recent series of independent reports (many linked above here) have called into question just how much has been achieved after nearly nine years of Blair governance. Something has to be seen to be done to remedy the failings and someone other than Blair’s government has to be blamed.

Local councils are selected as fall guys – rightly so in some cases. Several further education / sixth form colleges have been or are the subject of major fraud investigations. Neighbourhood cultures may also be at fault – the Orwell syndrome is real enough in places. Hence: liberate schools from local council control so good/popular schools can expand and/or take over the management of poorly performing schools – which reportedly include almost a quarter of all secondary schools and affect c. a million children. Create management mechanisms so business or universities or faith and other communities can take over school management or help to start new schools.

No one knows for sure how all this is going to work out but then there aren’t any alternative coherent proposals out there for reforming the system to ensure good schools except the prescription: appoint good headteachers – and no one knows of a magic recipe for ensuring that. Big salaries for headteachers may help.

We’ve known for decades that local government is patchy and fundamentally unsound to the extent that so much of its funding comes from central government through grants instead of by local taxes. But the only sharp ideas around for reform are regional assemblies (more remote local government, more paid politicians and more to spend on local administration) or to substitute local income tax for local property taxes. The worry about the last is that the Treasury – for sound reasons – just doesn’t trust some councils not to be daft. There is a well-tried political recipe: gradually hike local taxes until the pips start squeaking but blame it all on central government and demand additional funding to deal with the fall out – some local electorates will buy this and go on voting the same party back in. Some will even persistently and wittingly vote back demonstrably corrupt or incompetent councils! The fact is that most folks see local government as boring so they don’t turn out to vote. There is usually no prospect of being elected to a council except as party sponsored candidates.

PS London includes some of the poorest districts in the country as well as some of the most affluent.

“The UK’s top five areas for growth in high-earning residents are all outside the South East, a survey has found.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3871857.stm

But as for trust schools, as a mechanism for taking over failing schools and importing “good management” into them, I’m sure you will excuse my doubts when I ask how it will be possible to spread one good set of managers and teachers etc over 2 schools, where they were running one well beforehand. You see, this is getting back to managerialism. before we know whats happened, they’ll be introducing ISO 9001 into schools, which would be quite entertaining, and also lead to a large increase in paperwork.

I know The Scotsman had an article recently on how councils were keeping some of the gvt cash to themselves rather than distributing it to schools, but as I have already mentioned above, I have extreme distrust of any reforms which will strengthen the gvt position by cutting out local authorities. The best solution to my mind would be more along the lines of making local authorities more accountable to people, rather than taking them out the loop altogether. Weakening local authorities would have a further effect of reducing local planning and ability to deal with changes in population and so on. It all makes me think that Blair does want to privatise things. Of course, this would immediately lead to an increase in schooling costs, but Blair et al would rather not talk about that.

As for the contrinutions London taxpayers make to the UK, I have no doubt at all about it. But it is the capital, and for obvious economic reasons is the hub of the country. So they should stop moaning about subsidising the rest of us. Otherwise we’ll charge them every time they leave London. ;)

Harry, perhaps I need to explain something about developments in Britain nowadays. All that habitual academic stuff about “evidence-based policy” is now considered definitely old fashioned among those of the Blairite ascendancy. A new star in the firmament is one, Louise Casey, an elevated civil servant appointed to serve as Blair’s Respect co-ordinator (or Czar for the initiated) in the Cabinet Office and charged with the task of enforcing the government’s agenda on anti-social behaviour. Hence:

“Blair sided with Casey against Clarke when she criticised ‘evidence-based’ policy built on statistics, recently telling the home secretary at a private meeting that he needed ‘a sense of conviction’ about the antisocial behaviour agenda.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1763916,00.html

Try her after-dinner speech last year for more enlightenment:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/whitehall/story/0,9061,1522714,00.html

State secondary schools receive roughly £3000 per pupil per annum.

The average total costs rises to £5800 per annum when all central and local authority support services are included.

Will independeent state schools be able to have access to the total £5800?

Is this issue being discussed anywhere?

“The education secretary is proposing that money for schools in England should be allocated directly to them instead of to local education authorities. The move would go a long way towards ending the annual row over whether or not councils pass on to schools the money ministers intend them to have. . . ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/education/2000/unions_2000/773064.stm

As that meant the DfES – the ministry – having to deal directly with literally thousands of schools – and incur the extra administrative costs of doing so – presumably, there were substantive rational grounds for the minister’s proposal. I am certainly aware of long standing allegations by schools in some education areas that their respective education authorities divert additional funds intended for schools. However, the “usual suspects” among councils aren’t necessarily culpable – some very “leftist” London boroughs are big spenders on schooling, not necessarily to evident beneficial effect in respect of school exam results but then those councils often face very challenging circumstances.

It tends to be overlooked that, according to census returns, over forty per cent of ethnic minorities in Britain live in London. And also that London taxpayers are estimated to make a net contribution to the national exchquer in the range of £11 billion to £19 billion a year – citations available. Britain’s annual net annual contribution to the EU is mere chickenfeed compared with the net annual contribution London taxpayers make to the rest of the UK.

It is inherently difficult to prove that some local education authorities have intentionally maintained low schooling standards to boost support for Labour although I do have instances in mind and based not just on personal perceptions.

Local councils are placed to exercise control and influence over schooling in their jurisdictions in many ways – in spending decisions, through appointing headteachers and governors and whether the councils seek to lean against the perennial cultural influences reported in Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), which are recognisably still prevalent in places – eg look to the links cited above on stay-on rates in education at 17 in which Britain is nearly bottom of the OECD league table for all Blair’s rhetoric about education and Gordon Brown stumping around about the “knowledge-based economy”.

By contrast, I have sometimes talked with committed Labour voters on council estates who approved of 11+ selection because they knew that was the one route by which their kith and kin could escape the otherwise pervasive influence of the neighbourhood culture. Why do you suppose that some Labour controlled councils preserved local grammar schools for as long as they could?

The fact is that in a few places the second person singular (“tha” interchangeably for thou, thee, thy, thine) survives in local dialects when that syntax has long since become extinct elsewhere. Richard Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy (1957) predicted that as national media, especially television, gained in ascendancy regional variations in dialects and cultures would become homogenised. In fact, regional dialects and cultures have proved remarkably resilient over the nearly fifty years since.

Do you have evidence that this has happened on any scale? I’ve not heard anyone suggesting it (and I know people who keep an eagle eye out for that sort of thing). A great deal of spending is statutorily fixed, and teachers unions play a certain watchdog role.

bob b: “in others because the councils have long since appreciated that over time poor schooling is apt to enhance support for Labour in local elections”.

I have no particular disinclination to believe this, but again, evidence would be welcome.

In a particular sense, yes. Try this account of Blair’s motivation for creating “trust schools” by Mike Baker, the BBC’s widely respected education correspondent:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4679314.stm

As Mike Baker assesses the situation: “For the prime minister, the schools White Paper is all about overcoming complacency and tackling under-performance in a large minority of schools. He wants a mechanism to ensure good schools, and outside bodies, can forcibly take over the running of poor schools. This mechanism is trust status.”

At the very least, entrail reading suggests that Blair has recognised the extent of failings in the present schooling system. Existing administrative structures for schooling cannot remain unreformed given the documented evidence of failings.

Some local councils have manifestly failed in their responsibilities, in some cases through sheer incompetence, in others because the councils have long since appreciated that over time poor schooling is apt to enhance support for Labour in local elections. Prescott, the deputy prime minister, has a bit of a problem: he is the secretary of state with responsibility for local government. He represents a constituency in Hull, which has been rated by the Audit Commission as among the worst performing councils in the country and Hull usually comes at or near the bottom of the league table for education authorities in England.

It is to the credit of Blair that he was and is prepared to address the issue. Recall that Blunkett as education minister started to pay additional funding directly to schools instead of through the regular route via local councils, in their capacity as local education authorities, for redistribution to schools – a case of poacher turned gamekeeper if ever there was. Why did Blunkett and then Charles Clarke, as education minister, do that? Because they knew that otherwise some councils would divert the additional funds intended for schools to other purposes thereby thwarting the government’s intentions.

As for subtext, there is plenty. Nearly everyone has been through school, and many people have their own children going to school, and so their own interests and such.

Exactly but getting there all at about the same time is challenging when almost a quarter of secondary schools have been officially deemed “poorly performing”.

Meanwhile, parents who can will try to optimise situations for their children – no surprise there. Even (Labour) MPs try to ensure their children go to the better schools – citations available.

My impression is that there’s much subtext in the public debate. Beneath the resounding cliches of government rhetoric there are undeclared intentions motivating the creation of schools based on implicit modelling of the downstream outcomes of competition between schools. Under the proposed reforms, trust schools will come to have more autonomy over admissions, exclusions, selection of governors, and curriculum within the parameters of the national curriculum.

The public debate IMO is failing to acknowledge some important realities of present strategic controls and influence that local education authorities (LEAs) have over schools in their jurisdictions. It is naive to suppose that the controls and influence of LEAs are necessarily benign and independent of partisan objectives. For that matter, it is naive to suppose that the democratic model works in practice in local administration. In many places, local election are typically decided on turnouts of 30% (+/- 5%) and political control over local councils never changes even when there is persuasive or conclusive evidence of corruption. That’s democracy.

Just to get a realistic flavour of actual events on the ground, in one place I know of it is being claimed that one of the new (and relatively independent) Blairite city academies is using school exclusions to achieve academic selection. This presently turns on the case of a 15 year-old who is being excluded after being caught smoking for the third time, all according to due process explicitly prescribed in the published rules of the academy. By this means, the school will selectively exclude less able (or terminally stupid) pupils. The logic is impeccable.

Some 20 to 30 thousand pupils are emerging from schools at 16 without any qualifications at all. A succession of surveys has reported that c. 20% of school leavers aged 16 have literacy and numeracy problems. The National Audit Office recently reported that almost a quarter of secondary schools in England are performing poorly. We are almost at the bottom of the OECD league table in the percentage of 17 year-olds engaged in full-time education or training.

Taken all together, that does not add up to a well-functioning school system – and nor does it convincing suggest that leaving existing administrative structure fundamentally unchanged is going to remedy the failings.

If you break down local authority control, indeed remove it as much as possible, and set up schools each with their own management team, responsible directly to the government by means of targets and inspections, you have the basis for a more itnerventionist approach by said gvt whenever things done go quite right.

You also theoretically have more potential for things like Intelligent design to get into the classroom, unless you specifically mandate against them in a very restrictive and prescriptive set of national teaching guidelines. Which then kind of destroys local autonomy a bit, doesnt it?
Plus, with each school on its own, that will remove the larger bargaining power of the schools to buy textbooks and teaching materials generally, since obviously the local authority could buy in bulk and reduce the costs. Or the newly liberated headteachers will splash out on unnecessary materials and waste money.

Daniel—thanks, that’s all very useful (as usual). There are several hidden premises in the hidden argument; including that the changed system will be at least as well suited to identifying good managers as the old system. The answer to rob’s question has to be that somehow the new framework will allocated good managers better to management tasks (though I’d add that the government is also investing reducing the barriers to entry for managers with previous experience in other industries, with the idea that this will increase the supply of ptoentially good managers).

I didn’t mean to imply that the old LEAs were worse than whatever we are evolving toward, just that they were not as great as some of the critics sometime seem to assume. The worse you think they are likely to become (say, because you think the quality of local government civil servants is in decline because the Tories managed to undermine the public service ethos which sent people with high abilities and a social consience into that kind of work) the more you will be inclined to support the claim. I have no direct evidence on this, but there’s a whole generation of public servants whose professional formation was influenced by Beveridge and Buttskellism retiring right now, and their successors were formed professionally under Thatcher. Anyway, I was trying to articulate the case as best I could to promote the discussion I think is worth having.

James—I thought about whether to identify the country in question, and decided not to, on the grounds that Brits would immediately recognise it, and others might not be harmed by being drawn in. If CT can’t be Reithian, who can?

Let’s take a jaundiced view of the case, OK? On the one had, we have a set of officials who hage lied about the benefits of these programs in that past, whose interests are clearly served by making a case for “damage”, and who are now asking us to take their claims on faith. On the other hand, we have other unnamed individuals whose interests are not served by their claims, and who aren’t being served by their disclosures.

I’m willing to be open-minded zbout the possibility of damage—but given the number of lies we’ve gotten about that so far, I’m demanding real evidence. Negroponte has plenty of time to find a “damaged asset” and demonstrate the damage.