Here is the text, slightly edited, of a letter I sent to Nicky Dixon, a Lewisham resident, mother of two children at Lewisham schools and a member of the NEC of the Campaign for State Education (CASE). Nicky has kindly agreed to let me post it on my blog as she agrees with me that others may find it of interest.
Dear Nicky
Thanks for your email. I think there is considerable justifiable concern about the Government's intention to turn all schools into academies by 2020. I am sure you won't be surprised when I say that you are not the first person to ask me to outline the Council's position on this issue. You are right to say that the Mayor has set up an Education Commission. It's job is to provide him with independent, professional advice on the best way forward for education in Lewisham. It's remit is not exclusively about Academisation but I am sure that they will address the issue. I am also sure that the Mayor will want to wait to receive their advice before making any new policy statements. However, this is not to say he has no view. Here is what he said in his speech at the recent Council AGM:
'Two years ago we set out to improve outcomes from our Secondary schools and to deliver enough primary places to meet the needs of our growing population. So far we have achieved the second of these but with growing difficulty while the first is a work in progress.
We have established a Commission of experts to look at the performance of our schools and to make recommendations to us about what we need to do secure improvement. It will report shortly.
When we consider its advice we will need to do so against the background of impending legislation to turn every school into an Academy and remove it from the Local Authority family of schools. Many of us take the view that this is a policy which derives from ideology not from any consideration of the evidence. We hear minsters attempt to justify it by reminding us that it was a Labour Government which first introduced academies.
And so it was – but they were expressly intended as a way of achieving improvement in schools which were experiencing significant failure. We now have a policy which is designed to lead to all of Lewisham’s primary schools becoming academies – despite the fact that we have some of the best performing primary schools in the country.
There will be opposition to this legislation and I have no doubt there will be fierce debate and efforts made to remove the worst parts of the bill. It has been encouraging to hear even Conservative councillors making clear their opposition to this.
But this government has been democratically elected and is entitled to act on that mandate. Those of us who disagree with a given policy should say so and explain why but equally those of us who hold elected office must also examine the potential impact such legislation will have and prepare to deal with it.
Nor can we wait until the legislation passes before acting – we will need to talk to those who are currently involved in delivering education in Lewisham about how we can work together to sustain the positives we now have while making ready to deal with the consequences of legislation.
The co-operation between our schools has been a great strength in this borough and I hope we can use that strength to find local solutions to a changing situation rather than sit back and let Academy chains which know little of our community pursue a piecemeal approach.'
He was also clear when the Leathersellers' expressed their desire to convert their three Lewisham schools into an academy, that he was unclear what they believed they would achieve by doing so. He also made clear his view that he believed that their priority should be school improvement, that Academisation was no guarantee of this and that he feared that the pursuit of this organisational change risked causing a distraction that would undermine efforts to improve education outcomes for pupils.
The Council's position is ultimately a matter for the Mayor but I would as the Lead Member just make a number of points, some of which expand on those expressed by Steve. Firstly, I think it is generally accepted by many, regardless of their political persuasion that, to borrow a phrase from Christine Blower, the General Secretary of the NUT, based on the evidence, Academisation is not a school improvement strategy. The recent report of the cross party Education Select Committee came to the same conclusion, although they expressed it in a more measured way. (As an aside I found it interesting that the report went out of its way to record the view of a number of witnesses that appeared before them, who were at pains to point out that Local AuthoritIes had not run any schools since the Baker reforms of the 1980s. I suspect that the motivation of these witnesses was to counter the view of many people, including the former Secretary of State for Education, that interference by Local Authorities is to blame for failing schools. No doubt the impetus for Academisation stems from this erroneous view and the mixed record of academy schools bears this out)
Secondly, 6 years of large cuts to Council budget, plus 4 more to come, means that the Council's capacity to fight the policy of a democratically elected national government has been much reduced and will decline further. Moreover, this is not a situation like the threatened closure of Lewisham Hospital's A&E, where we had a strong case to argue that the Secretary of State has acted ultra vires, as the result of the court case demonstrated. Every pound spent on lobbying is a pound taken away from front line services.
Having said this, it is clear that there isn't unanimity of view on forced Academisation on the Tory benches in Parliament. I followed the recent debate on the subject with interest. Given that the Government only has a working majority of 18, it is unclear to me that any vote on mandatory conversion of all schools by 2020 would be passed.
However, as you point out, regardless of this, Regional School Commissioners have powers to issue academy orders. To answer your specific question, our Commissioner hasn't issued any. It is hard to predict the future with certainty but, if he were to do so, it is hard to envisage a set of circumstances where we would be able to effectively oppose this.
Moreover, the government and the Commissioners are not the only driver of Academisation. Schools are free to apply to convert should they wish to do so, as our experience with the Leathersellers' demonstrates. Going back to the point I made about the Education Select Committee, the Council doesn't run any schools and hasn't run any schools in the way that many people think we do, for decades. In addition, the drive to Academisation has been given fresh impetus by the changes to schools' funding that the government are enacting. The government decision to implement what it calls 'fairer' funding for schools is going to redistribute funding away from inner city, urban schools to schools in more rural areas. It is estimated that this will reduce the funding for Lewisham Schools by more than 10%. On top of this, schools are facing increased running costs. So, regardless of Academisation, it is likely that primary schools, especially smaller ones, would have to come together in some way, in order to share management overheads. This is obviously going to fuel interest in the move towards primary schools combining to form Multi Academy Trusts.
In this response I have tried to set out the landscape in which the Council finds itself as it seeks to make Lewisham the best place to live work and learn and, in particular, to drive school improvement, as much as it is able to do so. I hope it has been helpful.
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