The government’s school standards tsar has said he’s “never seen teachers more enslaved”, with some “being told what to do” in “every lesson”.
Sir Kevan Collins, the former head of the Education Endowment Foundation and a non-executive director at the Department for Education, warned a “narrow compliance culture” had blighted “some classrooms” to the “degree of the slide stack we’re going to use in every lesson”.
The remarks – which will likely be viewed as an attack against academy trusts with top-down management cultures – come as the new government seeks to curtail the freedoms of the academies sector.
Ministers recently pulled academy conversion and trust growth funding grants, will soon legislate to make academies follow the national curriculum and cooperate with councils and place planning.
Academy leaders also fear the government’s new intervention model for struggling schools could undermine the freedom of trusts.
Speaking at the Confederation of School Trusts’ annual conference today, Collins said: “There is an irony in the school-led and freedom kind of culture that we’ve worked on in the last 15 years, but in some classrooms, I’ve never seen teachers more enslaved.
‘Compliance culture’
“I think we’ve sometimes slipped into a shallow compliance culture, where you see people being told what to do down to the degree of the slide stack we’re going to use in every lesson.”
Collins argued that in these cultures – which do not prioritise “longer, deeper” processes – people aren’t fulfilled and they leave”.
“People get really fed up. [They] have to feel they have agency, responsibility and support and training to be the best teacher [they] can be.
“It’s not a task that you give to someone in a way where you reduce it and remove all their agency. I don’t think that gives us a long-term stability or capacity in the system.”
Last week, the Department for Education announced it will scrap the trust capacity fund, trust establishment and growth fund and academy conversion grant.
It also revealed more details of how its regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) teams (formerly known as regional improvement teams) will work on Tuesday.
CST CEO Leora Cruddas later voiced renewed concerns over where responsibilities will lie in the system, amid fears it will also undermine the “legal status” of academy chains.
