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.

In his paper, Freedman writes: “Local authorities are…responsible for co-ordinating admissions for parents for both schools maintained by them and academies, but each academy trust is its own admissions authority, and can set different rules as long as they comply with the admissions code.”

MATs could set rules which in effect favoured their interests, Freedman suggests. Catchment areas could be “tweaked” to exclude poorer areas, for example, or trusts could use “fair banding” tests which selected a nationally-representative intake, in areas where the population was not “nationally representative”. Or could set out that a trust’s own primaries acted as feeder schools for its secondaries.

Freedman wrote: “To ensure there is no unfairness in access, local authorities should…be given control over admissions. The vast majority of academy trusts abide by both the spirit and letter of the admissions code. But there is no reason to give any the opportunity not to. There is no plausible educational benefit in a trust having its own admissions policy.”

Yet the DfE is not going down this route. The white paper states: “Trusts will continue to act as their own admissions authorities and will be expected to act inclusively, providing the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children with the opportunity to attend the best schools. We will bring the requirement for trusts to follow the admission code onto a statutory footing.”

The white paper does state that the DfE “will consult on a new backstop power for local authorities to direct trusts to admit children.” But it is clear that it is not going to attempt the much more radical change proposed by Freedman.

-Provide any great new set of levers by which single academy trusts might be moved into multi-academy trusts.

Of course arguably the centrepoint of the white paper is its idea that all state-funded schools in England should be at least in the process of joining a MAT by 2030. As well as implying academisation, of course, for the more than half of schools which currently remain with their local authorities, this would mean the many institutions now run as single academy trusts (SATs) would have to combine with others.

But, if the SATs choose not to, what is there to force them? The white paper seems not to offer many mechanisms. It is true that the new policy of potentially having regional directors force schools with more than one inspection judgment below “good” into a MAT will affect some SATs. But at present it is relatively small-scale, affecting only schools in 55 Education Investment Areas.

Many SATs have strong inspection outcomes. So, again, it is hard to see what is there in this white paper to impel them into joining a MAT, should they choose not to.

-Arguably, many new powers overall, in terms of achieving its objective of all-schools-in-MATs by 2030, beyond the notion of local authority-instigated MATs.

I made this point in a piece earlier this week.

-Much detail on local governance.

The white paper does state: “So that trusts continue to be responsive to parents and local communities, all trusts should have local governance arrangements for their schools. We will discuss how to implement this with the sector.”

The National Governance Association is certainly likely to be in talks with the DfE about this. But, as the second sentence above indicates, the detail has yet to be formulated. With Education Uncovered having revealed that many trusts actually do not have “local governing bodies” as set out on the government’s website, it is not clear how this could change.

Specifically, with the academies policy vesting all decision-making power with the overarching trust, arguably truly powerful local governance is something of an oxymoron within the MAT set-up, though Freedman’s paper suggests “legislation could be introduced to require MATs to give each school a local governing body that included the headteacher, a member of staff, at least one parent and one member of the local community”.

However, how this issue could be resolved, arguably without much more fundamental reforms to the policy than is envisaged in the white paper, remains a mystery.

-Much detail on how individual schools might be able to leave a trust

Freedman’s paper also suggests that what he calls a “core group” at the school – a “local governing body” constituted as he suggests above – “could have special voting rights to leave the MAT if they felt it was in the interests of young people in the school”. This would then be subject to authorisation by “the regulator”.

The government does go a little way down this route. It says: “We will also consult on the exceptional circumstances in which a good school could request that the regulator agrees to the school moving to a stronger trust.”

This seems to be an acknowledgement that the DfE needs to offer a fall-back to the many maintained school governing bodies which will have been worried about losing control should they opt to academise, with the thought of what happens if things go wrong. At the moment, schools have no power simply to opt out of a trust, even if they felt matters were going disastrously.

The DfE’s statement, then, seems to be an attempt to explore a scenario roughly in line with Freedman’s suggestion, though the notion that this could only happen when a school is “good” – presumably as rated by Ofsted – might worry parents concerned that such a power is needed when the school has gone downhill under the trust.

In any case, it is clear that the details, in this case, seem still to be worked out, with voices within the MAT sector likely to argue that going down this road both goes against the philosophy of the over-arching trust structure with schools technically barely existing as separate entities, and running the risk of creating instability. Against that, parent voices in individual cases will remain potentially powerful.

-Any attempt to tackle arguably the academies policy’s biggest weaknesses

The most fundamental absence, of course, does need stating, though perhaps not at length.

There was no sense within this white paper of any attempt to address the problems of private – or quasi-private - control of academy trusts, and little about the lack of democracy within the policy.

The paper does acknowledge that the academies policy was initially designed for just a “small group of disruptor schools” when it was launched under Labour.

But it does not acknowledge that some quirks of that design, with incoming “sponsors” in some cases given complete control over trust boards, needed addressing. Is it appropriate for one individual, or small groups of people, to be given ultimate power over what are now large groups of institutions, with budgets which can run into the hundreds of millions of pounds?

This is exactly what happens now. Would it be better if institutions were ultimately in the control of those who rely on them, rather than with power invested in a few individuals as if they were shareholders in a for-profit company?

And yet these questions were not posed. Neither was it discussed, for example, whether the public should get the right to attend meetings at which academy trusts take decisions, or whether there should be transparency over individual school budgets, as MPs argued recently.

In other words, there was no discussion as to whether England’s school system, as ministers want it, is sufficiently public-facing: whether it is sufficiently accountable to those who fund and use these institutions.

That was some omission.