Public Affairs Part I: The Local Education System

Public Affairs Part I The Local Education System

The ‘Phases’ of Education in the UK • Primary phase – Education in all the subjects of “primary” importance (i.e. English language, maths, basis history and science) in primary schools (ages five to 11); infant (five to seven) and junior schools (seven to 11): or first (five to eight/nine) and middle schools (eight/nine to 12/13) •

• Secondary phase – Education (for11/13 – 16/19 year olds) in primary subjects like English and maths, but with increasing specialisation after pupils take their “options” at 13 or 14. •  • Further education – “Catch-up” and vocational education for the less academic and/or additional qualifications for those who do less well at GCSE. The generic term used to describe FE colleges is tertiary colleges •  • Higher education – University education for those who

Recent History of State Schools System • 1944 – Introduction of new system of comprehensive education in England and Wales, overseen by a Secretary of State for Education. He or she delegated responsibility for actually running and planning local schools in the maintained– or “state” – sector to LEAs. The Act also…  •

a) Set up a three-tier system of primary, secondary and further education •(b) Made provision for child welfare and children with disabilities •(c) Abolished fees in secondary schools •(d) Raised the school leaving age to 15 •  • 1960s/70s – Emergence of selection through controversial “11-plus” exams for entry to secondary •

Recent History of State School System • 1965 – Labour government calls for LEAs to start planning to convert all schools into comprehensives – eliminating need for a selection •

• 1970 – The then Tory Education Secretary, Margaret Thatcher, tells LEAs they are no longer bound to do this •   • 1976 – Recently re-elected Labour government urges all LEAs still to abolish grammar schools to submit schemes outlining how they plan to •

• 1979 – Tories return to power and repeal this stipulation. •  • 1980 – The Government introduces the assisted places scheme - a means by which pupils from lower income families who were successful in entrance exams for independent schools (i.e. ‘private’ and ‘public’

The 1988 Education Reform Act •

This Act introduced the biggest shake-up of the state school system since the 1944 Act. In an effort to give parents, teachers and governors of individual schools greater direct control over the day-to-day running of those schools, it ushered in a system known as local management of schools (LMS):

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• Parents and governors of schools with a least 300 pupils offered chance to “opt-out” of local authority control and be given grantmaintainedstatus. Money would be given direct to them in future by central government – bypassing local councils – and they could take

The 1988 Education Reform Act • A single National Curriculum introduced to teaching in specific key subjects •  • Tertiary colleges taken out of LEA control and transferred to new FE sector funded directly by government via the Further and Higher Education Funding Councils •  • Act also allowed individual LEAs discretion to move as quickly as they liked towards the new system - meaning wide geographical discrepancies emerged •

Controversies Surrounding 1988 Act • Schools that opted out of local authority control were seen as being granted unfairly favourable financial treatment from government.

• • Many GM applications made by schools seeking to avoid closure or amalgamation proposed by their LEAs to reduce surplus places

• • The eventual number of approved GM schools fell well short of the Conservatives’ initial estimates, meaning that, in some people’s eyes, the cost of introducing the system was never wholly justified.

• • Despite the fact that Labour later put an end to the creation of any new GM schools on coming to power, both Tony Blair and the administration’s first

Further Reforms Post-1988 • 1992 – Local league tables of schools covering National Curriculum test results, truancy rates and destinations of school leavers released amid huge controversy. Schools inspected regularly by Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) •

• 1993– Secretary of State formally given duty of “promoting the education of the people of England and Wales” in a new Act. No mention any longer of the role of LEAs, and new quangos – The Funding Agency for Schools and The Schools Funding Council for Wales – introduced

Further Reforms Post-1988 • 1996 – All post-1944 Acts pulled together in a single Consolidation Act. The Act also gave the Education Secretary the right to publish information relevant to “parental choice” • • 1997 – The assisted places scheme scrapped. • • 2002 – Government opens first city academy, a new type of ‘independent state school’, which is allowed to select 10% of its pupils on the basis of aptitude in a specialist area • • 2007 – Govt invites struggling private schools to become academies

Department for Education and Skills and the Secretary of State •

The role of the Secretary of State has become an increasingly interventionist one as the powers of LEAs have been eroded over the years. He or she now:

• • Intervenes to prevent unreasonable uses of power/acts in default where particular bodies are failing to carry out their statutory duties • • Can direct LEAs and other to reduce surplus places in schools - or increase them • •

Department for Education and Skills and the Secretary of State

• Where individual schools are deemed to be “failing”, can put them under special measures, under Fresh Start Initiative (schools given two years to improve) •

• 2000 (March 1) – David Blunkett, then Education Secretary, announced at NUT conference that he wanted LEAs to consider “fresh starts” for any schools where fewer than 15 per cent of their pupils achieved five or more GCSE passes as grades C or above. First on the block was Gillingham Community College in Medway, Kent •

Local Education Authorities (LEAs) •

Traditionally, LEAs have been directly involved in the running of schools. This has changed since the advent of LMS. Reductions in their powers have included:

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• 1993 – Statutory ‘duty’ of LEA to appoint an education committee removed, although, in practice, most have continued to do so •

• New Labour has proposed that committees that remain should include parents – just as the Tories introduced church reps and teachers • 

Local Education Authorities (LEAs) • 1998 – New requirement for every LEA to prepare an education development plan (EDP) setting out proposals to Secretary of State for developing school provision • • 1997 onwards – Labour has gradually replaced pre-existing grant-maintained schools with foundation schools (now known as trust schools)– which also ‘self-govern’ – and is planning to increase the number of academies to 400 by 2010 •

Range and Types of State Schools • •

Prior to 1998, these were main ‘categories’ of LEA schools:

  • County schools (often known as “comprehensives” or “secondary moderns”, if at secondary level) – Established by the LEA, which owned their buildings •  • Voluntary schools – Though run by LEAs, land and/or buildings owned by charities and/or church denominations (e.g. Roman Catholic schools). There were either voluntary •

Range and Types of State Schools • City technology colleges – An early incarnation of the principle behind ‘city academies’, introduced by Tories • • Special schools– Set up to meet the needs of children with learning disabilities. Most are educated in the normal state system, but if awarded “statement of special education need” – a process known as statementing – go to special school •  • Grammar schools – Secondary schools located in some parts of England (e.g. Kent, Lincolnshire) where academically able pupils

Changes of School Name Post-1998 •

Old

New

 

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County Community College Controlled Voluntary Controlled Aided Voluntary Aided Maintained Special Community Special • GM (previous county/controlled) Foundation • GM (established by Funding Agency) Foundation • GM Special Foundation Special • • • •

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Recent Trends in State Schooling • City Technology Colleges– The Tories began to experiment with new kinds of secondary schools, CTCs, specifically designed to prepare pupils for careers in science, technology and maths. The first were set up in Kingshurst, Birmingham, and Nottingham. Controversially, while the schools themselves received most funding direct from central government, the capital costs were shared with business sponsors (Bradford has a “Dixons CTC”) •

• City Academies – Tony Blair’s equivalent of City Technology Colleges, these are major capital investments, usually financed through PPP/PFI and targeted at areas of deprivation/academic underachievement. In some cases, existing schools have been ‘improved’ in this way, rather than new ones built. There are currently a little over 40, but Blair hopes that, within a few years, there could be as

Recent Trends in State Schooling • Faith schools– Tony Blair has been a vocal advocate of the standards of discipline and academic achievement in faith schools, and sent his own son, Euan, to the Roman Catholic Oratory School. After a long lull, the number of faith schools has begun to increase again – with four Muslim, two Sikh, one Greek Orthodox and one Seventh Day Adventist school being set up since 1998 • • “Successful” schools (those that perform strongly in government league tables) to be granted “super school” status. This will enable them to set their own pay policy and decide how they wish to raise money for new buildings and resources and spend the budgets allocated to

Recent Trends in State Schooling • Major decisions to be made directly by school governors - giving parents more say • • High-performing schools to potentially be given control of their own admissions policy – a move which some parents’ groups, unions and Labour traditionalists object to on the grounds that popular schools may be able to reintroduce a form of selection (i.e. choosing only the academically most bright/”middle-class” pupils) •

• Local authorities reduced in many areas to “commissioners” of education services, rather than providers. This model is seen by many as

The Role of Ofsted •

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The Office of Standards in Education (Ofsted), led by the Chief Inspector of Schools, has legal responsibility for monitoring the quality of teaching in all state schools (including foundation/trust ones and grammar schools) and tertiary colleges. Inspections are usually carried out once every three or four years: Summary report produced by Ofsted/Estyn (Wales) is considered by the governing body, which has to produce an action plan within 40 working days

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LEA required to produce a report depending on Ofsted findings Where report finds that a school is “failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education” – i.e. is dubbed a “failing” school – it can be deemed to be in need of “special measures”. In such cases, an action plan must be submitted to the Education Secretary, who will monitor closely the school’s progress over the following two years. If no signs of