Government officials have been tasked with drawing up proposals to balance out a school system that currently heavily favours academies.
One idea under consideration is to let councils open schools again.
Labour has said loud and clear that trusts are no longer the only school improvement show in town. But running a two-tier system is beset with problems, experts say.
Sector leaders are already calling for urgent clarity on the roles of responsible bodies in the new government’s emerging system.
As officials now try to get to grips with some of these issues, Schools Week investigates…
‘Smoothing the difference’
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has previously said she is “not interested in wholesale structural reform” as the distinction between schools means “mostly nothing to parents”.
Sir Kevan Collins, the school standards tsar, has said he is “agnostic” on school structures.
Instead, Phillipson wants to “smooth the differences” between academies and maintained schools. But rather than come in with a plan, the new team has asked the civil service to come up with options of how this could look in practice, sources say.
Schools Week understands that Department for Education officials have been tasked with exploring policies that will balance out the school system.
The free school ‘presumption’
Currently, many elements favour academies and multi-academy trusts, the last government’s route to school improvement.
For example, when a council identifies the need for a new school in its area, it has a legal duty to seek proposals to set up an academy via the “free school presumption process”.
This is understood to be one of the policies that officials are discussing, paving the way for councils to open their own schools again.
Labour has already committed to forcing academies to teach the national curriculum and making them co-operate with councils on place planning and SEND. They will also not be allowed to employ unqualified teachers.
However, officials are believed to have looked at other academy freedoms as part of their broad scoping into reshaping the system.
The work is at an early stage, but a paper with potential options is believed to be being drawn up. However, David Thomas, a former government adviser, said: “The risk is this could entirely absorb the department capacity for a few years.”
Clarity sought on school groups plan?
The move once again puts the local authority’s role in the system back in the spotlight. Officials have been briefed that Labour’s view is that struggling schools should be part of a group of schools – but this could, for instance, be a local authority federation.
Previously, underperforming schools were automatically ordered to join an academy trust.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, said it is not about “structures for their own sake, but rather how we build a strong and sustainable school sector”.
She added: “The resilience of the school system is really fragile right now with funding, the pandemic, global shifts, child poverty.”
And she warned that the government must be “much clearer in the system about the roles and responsibilities of responsible bodies”, usually the relevant local authority, academy trust or voluntary-aided body. There is currently an imbalance.
Councils ‘hamstrung’
One example is a recent learning review by two former council education chiefs, commissioned by Reading council after the death of headteacher Ruth Perry, who was in charge of Caversham Primary, a maintained school.
The review stated that councils are “effectively hamstrung in their ability to provide high quality support for their school leaders by a combination of both policy and funding constraints”.
While councils are the employers of maintained school staff, they “in reality have few of the powers one would expect of an employer, which are instead deployed through the board of governors, acting as the de facto employer”.
The review also said that, while councils have a statutory duty in “promoting high standards”, they rely on schools choosing to use their budget to fund such intervention work.
This “has the potential to further wither the effectiveness of the system overall both nationally and locally”.
And Cruddas said: “If we’re going to say, ‘we have a two-tier system’, then you have to identify who is responsible. You have to be very specific.
“They should write that now: statutory guidance on what that is and what it means.”
Do LAs have the capacity?
Former government adviser Tom Richmond added that it was “perfectly reasonable for the new government to seek to create a level playing field between schools and groups of schools regardless of who operates them”.
But giving more responsibilities back to councils – such as letting them open new schools – would be a “seismic policy shift”, he said.
It would also lead to “legitimate” questions around whether all local authorities have the “necessary capacity and expertise to take on such responsibilities given the significant budget cuts that they have experienced over this same time period”.
For instance, councils currently have a combined deficit in their high needs budgets of £1.6 billion. The proportion of council primary schools in deficit rose from 7.6 per cent in 2021-22 to 12.3 per cent the following year.
Thomas also said that this puts the role of councils back in the spotlight: “We need to decide what role local authorities should play in the system, ensuring it doesn’t contain conflicts of interest, and give them the powers and resources to do this.
“The LA should be able to be the champion of the child and fight their corner – but they can’t do that if they are the deliverer of services… it becomes an incoherent role.”
Inspections for all?
The question of who is responsible for what will also be impacted by new regional improvement teams (RITs). The groups of school experts will be sent to help schools deemed to be struggling before a decision is made on any potential change of governance from early next year.
But policy expert Sam Freedman said: “There seems to be a confusion – that Labour doesn’t understand what the purpose of a MAT is. Like, why have MATs if we have RITs?
“To me, the line that ‘we aren’t going to focus on structures’ is a warning sign – because we can’t improve standards without structures.
“And if they are going to take away [academy] freedoms, then there is no overarching theory about what a MAT is, or how they fit into the system.
“It’s fine to say, ‘we don’t want every school to be an academy’ – but why bother having them at all then?”
‘Define what a MAT does’
Freedman believes the government’s commitment to inspect trusts will mean they have to confront this issue. “They talk about inspection, but inspect against what? They will have to define what a MAT does. It’s all a bit confused.”
In a two-track system, this level of accountability may also have to be rolled out to other responsible bodies. That seems to be Ofsted’s thinking.
Its recent Big Listen consultation response said it “strongly believes” the trust inspection pledge “should be expanded to cover all school groups”.
“This would help to improve standards across the system… Inspection should align with the governance structures of schools and the bodies responsible for supporting leaders.”
Conversation moves from all academies
Either way, the potential beefing up of councils’ role in schools – long called for by the Local Government Association – marks a shift in the reform conversation. It has for years been dominated by how to get more schools to become academies.
A recent report from Nesta warned that the current school system had “evolved without a clear end vision in mind, which is now causing significant challenges for wider policymaking”.
“Government could outline a clear vision for – and path to – a single governance structure for the school system, which blends the best of the current two systems together.”
In the report’s suggested “plan for 2030”, it said the government should “set a deadline for all schools being in a single structure and stick to it”.
Previous governments “have failed to provide this, flip-flopping on whether to resolve this problem”.
Ministers should then “redesign the regulatory, inspection and commissioning frameworks” to fit the new system.
The DfE was approached for comment.
