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.