What the white paper didn’t say

Education Uncovered has carried a string of articles, this week and last, about Monday’s schools white paper.

Of course this coverage, and much detail elsewhere, has focused on what was actually in this document.

But it seems useful to set out what was not in it, in seeking to understand that this is a policy field where a host of different scenarios are possible. The following is just a brief list.

The white paper did not:

-Transfer the control of schools’ admissions policies from academy trusts to local authorities. This had been an important suggestion in a paper published in February by Sam Freedman, who of course was Michael Gove’s adviser at the time the academies policy was introduced at scale. Freedman’s document acknowledged detailed weaknesses within the policy, while backing a move to an all-MAT structure, and the thrust of his arguments within it seems similar to that of the white paper.