I attended Wandsworth’s Education & Standards Group (ESG) last Wednesday (22/10/14). It is an attempt by the Tory Council to maintain some kind of role in our fractured education system. Given the competent, conscientious set of Tory members on the Group, the review seems to be working but I am sure it is an illusion! It is all based on the “magician’s smoke and mirrors”.

Until 1997, the British (actually English and Welsh) education system was a largely coherent, local government controlled system. The Blair Government decided to add to this mix “independent” academies and faith schools, where independent meant funded by national government but run by largely autonomous organisations. But then in 2010 the truly Jacobin Michael Gove became the Secretary of State and he set about introducing academies, faith and free schools as quickly as possible. He made it impossible for local authorities to build new schools, even in areas of fast population growth like London and he forced any school with a poor inspection report out of the state system. This haste was a naked attempt to destroy the traditional structure by the time of the coming 2015 General Election.

But I happen to believe that Wandsworth Tories see the dangers of this policy and are using the ESG (and its similar Free Schools and Academies Commission) to try and mitigate the worst effects of Govian chaos. The Group’s main function is interviewing the Heads and Chairs of Governors, usually of two schools in an evening, in a four yearly cycle. The purpose is to assess the school’s performance and to help schools to improve or to maintain it. The role is, however, largely advisory, since Ofsted clearly makes the inspections and the assessments that really count.

This lack of a formal role may not matter too much with schools operating well, where a few words of encouragement and appreciation from the local authority are all that is required. But what if the school has difficulties? One school we saw last week, according to Ofsted, “requires improvement” and “is not good because”, amongst other things, “teaching across the school requires improvement”. To be fair that assessment was made in 2012 and, since then the school has a new governing board and has been taken over by the Chapel Street Schools – a new group of academies. Nonetheless Wandsworth’s own education officer, and indeed the councillors, were clearly not convinced that the performance is improving sufficiently rapidly to be of much help to the current cohort of school kids.

Chapel Street Schools Trust, according to its website, is linked to the Salvation Army. There are eight such schools although two of them are not due to become Chapel Street Schools until 2015 or 2016 and two others, including the Wandsworth school, have only become Chapel Street schools this year, having been forced out of the local authority structure by the Government. The Trust did not even exist in January, 2012.

Do Chapel Street Schools have any experience in getting a school, required to improve, in fact to improve? Do their seven staff (again apparently and according to their website) have any relevant experience? Well one or two of them have been teachers but that’s about it. As the discussion about the school’s progress developed, I couldn’t help but wonder what the Council’s education officer and his inspector colleague thought of the matter. They after all are only responsible for running 85 schools most of which now achieve Ofsted ratings of “outstanding” or “good”!

What can we do about our concerns? Can we help the school through its difficult patch? Can we help with skilled resources? Apparently not as it is no longer a local authority school. We can, however, ask to go and visit the appropriate Regional Schools Commissioner and tell him our concerns.

Who you might well ask is s/he? Well in Wandsworth’s case it is the South London and South East Commissioner to whom we should turn. He is one Dominic Herrington, who until recently was a senior civil servant and Director of the DFE’s Academies Group. As far as I can tell Mr. Herrington is solely accountable to the Secretary of State. Nothing in the structure has anything remotely to do with the public or elected authorities, except of course that the Secretary of State is an elected MP but appointed to the job by the Prime Minister. Herrington’s appointment was announced, without fanfare, in a Departmental press release in September, 2014.

The Commissioners for the other regions are: two Chief Executive Officers of Academy Trusts; Essex’s Director of Education; the Heads of two grammar schools and of two Academy schools. The trenchant views of the General Secretary of the NUT are worth reading at http://teachers.org.uk/node/21434.
None of these regional commissioners seem to have anything remotely like democratic legitimacy. Yet between them they control, or at least oversee, millions and millions of public money. David Cameron, and his Education Secretary Michael Gove (most of the damage was done prior to the Cabinet re-shuffle), have successfully led an assault on much of local democracy and local accountability.

Academies, faith and free schools are all, of course, overwhelmingly funded by us, the taxpayers yet they are free from any democratic overview except at the rarefied national, Secretary of State level. Will a Labour Government have the courage to restore a coherent, democratic education system? Will the on-the-ground experience of councillors, who regularly visit and oversee schools, be lost from the system, to be replaced by faceless non-elected commissioners?