Headteacher boards in “opening themselves up to views of local communities –sort of” shocker

It was a simple sub-heading, tacked on to the bottom of a few seemingly dry agenda papers for upcoming meetings. But it was enough to make your correspondent’s jaw drop.

Apparently there are now “Ways communities can get involved” in the shadowy deliberations of the government’s Headteacher Boards (HTBs).

As keen readers of this website will need no reminding, since 2014 these part-elected, part-appointed groupings of up to eight people have been presiding over schools’ futures behind closed doors, principally by deciding which academy trusts institutions should be handed to.

This dubious system, established under Michael Gove as education secretary, is part of the Regional Schools Commissioner (RSC) set-up. This itself has been highly controversial, parents often complaining of a feeling that the RSCs are remote figures with little sense of answerability to communities when things go wrong.   

So the fact that four of the eight HTBs have a message under the heading “Ways communities can get involved” in agenda papers for upcoming meetings is likely to be greeted with ironic cheers by local campaigns which have been fighting to open up the system for years.

The message on the agenda papers appears to be an attempt to give communities a slightly more formal route to register their views on an academy decision when it is flagged up as forthcoming in the agenda paper.

It says: “To have your views considered by the HTB before a final decision is made you can:

• “Email [an email address which is given for each of the four RSCs; see below]” by a date in advance of the meeting.

The remainder of the message does look a tad tokenistic/oddly set-out, however.

It states: “In your email you should include:

• Your relationship to the school
• Your views on the proposal to transfer X trust to Y trust
• If you have any alternative proposals
• Any other comments on the school’s future”.

This is odd, as transferring schools between trusts is only one type of decision considered by the HTBs/RSCs. They can also decide on significant structural changes for schools, such as the addition  or removal of a sixth form, and, most significantly often for parent campaigns, whether a school becomes an academy at all (ie where there is no “X trust” to transfer to).

Does this mean that community views are only being sought in cases of transfers? I would doubt that was the intention behind this message, but that is the implication.

The message concludes: “You will not usually get an individual response to your email but your views may be represented at the headteacher board meeting.”

May? While some will see this as incremental progress towards a greater sense that decision-making does need to be connected to those on the end of the decisions, critics are likely to view it as summing up all that is wrong with the current set-up.

For there will be no way of knowing if any view registered has had any impact whatsoever on decisions, given that these meetings remain in private. It strikes me as another element of the strangely paternalistic nature of this system, with communities not actually getting a chance to view whether their concerns have had any impact, and again decision-makers getting to avoid any sense of formal answerability.   

I guess it is possible that future minutes of meetings might give at least some sense of local perspectives being formally considered. But the minutes themselves remain very brief, and have only been dragged out of the Department for Education in their current state following years of complaints by local communities and journalists.

Among the ways that communities still cannot “get involved” in this process, they remain barred from meetings, and do not even have the routine right to background discussion papers which must be being shown to those making the decisions. There also appears no formal duty of Regional Schools Commissioners, who are civil servants answerable only to national politicians, to announce their decisions to those on the end of them, perhaps through letters to parents.

The fact that half of these HTBs now have this standardised message on their latest agendas, and half do not, suggests again a system which may be lacking in coherence. And all of the HTBs have now gone at least three months, and several meetings, since the last set of minutes were published for meetings at which decisions were taken.

Is the above verdict harsh, during this Covid-19 crisis? Well these meetings are continuing (see below), with schools’ futures still subject to them, so it seems fair to go on with the critique.

Overall, this is a system which, as a mechanism for interacting with those profoundly affected by decisions, remains inadequate.

Nevertheless, it seems right for this website to encourage those affected by decisions to take up this opportunity to register their views. The emails in regions which have flagged up this route do not seem to follow a common pattern, so in the future it looks like readers should email, in relation to regions whose agendas do feature this message:

-RSC.SESL@education.gov.uk (“South-East and South London” RSC/HTB region);

-LWY.RSC@education.gov.uk (“Lancashire and West Yorkshire”)

-REPRESENTATION.RSC-EENEL@education.gov.uk (“East of England and North East London”);

-EMH.RSC@education.gov.uk (“East Midlands and Humber”).

It should, however, be noted that the deadline has now passed for submission of those emails for the next round of meetings.

The HTB agendas are now also routinely flagging up a less specific “submit a question” possibility, whereby, “if you have any questions about this draft agenda,” you can send a question, within five days of the next meeting.

Are academy orders now being approved again?

-Has the academisation process been kick-started in full in recent weeks, despite Covid-19, with academy orders now being issued by Regional Schools Commissioners?

As Education Uncovered has reported, some academy conversions themselves have continued throughout the crisis, with the Department for Education having argued that schools which were already in the process of converting needed the “clarity and certainty” of having the project complete.

However, it appears that at one stage the decision has been that the government will not start the process of new conversions during the crisis, by approving fresh academy orders.

As a Regional Schools Commissioner recently put it in a letter replying to a governing body in the case of one school* which has contentiously sought to convert, “As you will be aware, the greatest issue currently facing the nation and the school system is Covid-19, therefore our efforts are focussed primarily on supporting the education sector and no academy orders will be issued at this time.”

But the HTB agenda papers, published on the DfE’s website, show that HTB meetings appear to have had only a brief pause, from mid/late-March to, in most regions, mid-May. It appears that, at these more recent meetings, HTBs have been discussing and recommending the making of academy orders, even if it is for the RSC him or herself to actually approve the orders.

One HTB held what looks like a brief meeting, at which items up for discussion included “sponsor options” for two schools and “sponsor approval” for a free school, as long ago as April 30^th.

Has this process re-started, then? It would be interesting if this were the case, given the current huge logistical crisis facing schools, with ministers of course yesterday u-turning on plans for all primary pupils to be in classrooms by the end of term, and with the DfE also seeming to have bungled another logistical challenge, in the release of laptops for pupils needing them.

I shall ask the DfE what the latest situation is on academy orders.

*Steyning Grammar School, whose controversial and complex plans alongside its move to academise I may feature in the coming days.