“You couldn’t make it up!" This is how education policy works, 2018-style

Norwich,where Justine Greening spoke about social mobility this week

As a snapshot of the state of education policymaking in 2018, it may be hard to beat.

This week, the former education secretary Justine Greening was in Norwich promoting what looks a relatively minor scheme to try to improve, in the face of much evidence of it refusing to budge, “social mobility”.

Called the “Social Mobility Pledge,” the idea is, as the Eastern Daily Press put it as it reported Greening’s visit, that “companies pledge to partner with schools and colleges, provide access to apprenticeships and work experience, and use inclusive approaches to recruitment.”

Greening hopes it will link up with her own “opportunity areas” initiative, which she launched when in charge of schools, back in 2016, with Norwich one of the first six areas to benefit.

So far, so fair enough.

The only problem was that the visit came hard on the heels of another development, this time with a decidedly less government-favourable ring to it, and with the portents for possible future social mobility problems likely to be widely seen as far graver.

For only the previous day, Conservative-controlled Norfolk county council had proposed closing 46 out of 53 children’s centres in the county. The move came after the council agreed, in February, to halve its budgets for children’s centres from £10 to £5m.

The EDP reported that more than 5,500 people had signed a petition against the plans, but Monday’s news appear to confirm this austerity-flavoured proposal is going ahead.

Dr Ed Maxfield, Liberal Democrat spokesman for children’s services, reportedly said: “We found out last week that councils around the country are cutting back on spending on programmes for those most in need and this is leading to more spending on emergency support. If we keep eroding core services we are only storing up problems further down the line.”

Set against such a development, Greening’s overall “social mobility” plans may seem insignificant. The £60m fund, for example, announced in 2016, represented only around a thousandth of the overall budget for schools in England, and not much more than the DfE reportedly shelled out for a single free school sixth form in central London in 2014.

Controversial academy setting

The venue for Greening’s Norwich intervention was also arousing a disbelieving reaction from one long-term watcher and critic of Norfolk’s DfE-related goings-on.

For Greening was speaking, at the invitation of Chloe Smith, Tory MP for a part of Norwich but not this particular constituency, at the Hewett school. This is run by the Inspiration Trust.

As close readers of this website and my Guardian diary column will remember, this is an academy which was taken over in the face of huge community protests by the chain set up by the academies minister, a Tory donor and businessman.

Emma Corlett, a Labour councillor on Norwich city council, told Education Uncovered: “You couldn’t make this up! Chloe Smith intrudes on [Labour MP] Clive Lewis’s constituency to take Justine Greening to visit the Hewett, to talk about social mobility, just after Norfolk announces 46 out of 53 children’s centres are closing.”

The Hewett seems to have continued its struggle for pupils since Inspiration’s takeover. As well as being a school, the trust’s “curriculum centre” – where it is building a “knowledge-rich” teaching offer led by Christine Counsell, who currently seems very influential at Ofsted - is also housed next to the Hewett site.

The Norwich Opportunity Area Partnership Board, set up following Greening’s 2016 social mobility drive, is chaired by Tim Coulson, the former Regional Schools Commissioner who himself has close links with Inspiration: he is currently chair of governors at one of their schools.

Again, as an insight into education policymaking in this era of austerity, academisation and endless close links between the key players, could this little episode be topped?

Performance bonus listed in advert for academy leader

The high salaries for academy chief executives – and the very occasional leader within the maintained sector – have long provoked a hunch that performance bonuses may be playing a part.

In other words, the notion is that those at the top are getting incentivised for, say, raising schools’ exam results – on the published government indicators – a chain’s academies doing well in Ofsted reports or even the trust taking on more schools.

However, it is rare – maybe I haven’t been looking hard enough… – to see mention of a bonus in writing.

It was interesting, then, for Education Uncovered to have sight of an advert for an academy leader which does indeed do this.

For the Harris Federation, which seems to keep advertising staff at both Schools Week and the Times Educational Supplement very busy, has an advert for a principal at Harris Primary Academy Kenley on the website of the latter.

This states that the post will come with a “substantial and generous salary based on experience and expertise + discretionary performance bonus”, plus the usual “private medical insurance+pension scheme (TPS)+relocation allowance+additional Harris benefits”.  

One ex-Harris teacher queried the notion of a bonus, in a system where all worked hard and amid concerns that, if it were to be linked to test results might come with the risk of side-effects, with schools concentrating very close attention on data indicators and test preparation. It is certainly an interesting debate.

Harris Primary Academy Kenley is another school which went to an academy chain in the face of a community protest, this one back in 2013.

Tough gig for new National Schools Commissioner?

Finally, to what degree is the Department for Education on the back foot about its academies policy? Well this observer suspects, I think in line with the general view in education, that the answer is “very much so,” but sometimes I wonder if I am too close to developments on the ground to be able to know for sure.

However, a glimpse of the subject matter at an outing for Dominic Herrington in his new role as the DfE’s “Interim National Schools Commissioner,” seems to confirm the answer above.

The event is a conference being run by Westminster Education Forum, about which an email arrived this week even though the event does not happen until April.

Herrington is the key speaker. The event will be “an opportunity to examine how the accountability of MATs can be improved – particularly in leadership and financial practice,” the email announces.

It adds: “Further areas for discussion include:

-The next steps for improving the conversion process for schools entering into a MAT, following concerns regarding the potential effects on schools, including staff pensions and salaries; and

-How effective leadership of MATs can be further developed, whilst ensuring appropriate accountability measures are in place to provide a suitable model for the successful running of MATs[my bold].”

The organisers, then, do not seem especially worried about reminding Herrington that the current national academies debate includes fundamental concerns about the way the policy operates.