[Closed] Cameron: "Local authority running schools a thing of the past"

So much for localism, they just want everything run direct from Whitehall...

yes this has been looming for some time.

Can someone please give me some examples of the "shackles of local council control"?

nonsense, allowing capitalists and religious nutters to manage the education of juvenile-production-units is a sensible step that will empower [s]communities[/s] capitalists and religious nutters.

there's absolutely no reason to think that bonuses will be paid according to league tables - leading to astronomic levels of exam fraud.

to suggest that amoral financial institutions will take on school management simply to exploit the charity status is incredulous commie conspiracy theorising.

To be fair David Cameron's school was free of local council control and there are more ex-pupils of his former school in top jobs than any other school, so he has got a point.

You can see that he understands the problem.

[b]In England only[/b], local authority running schools a thing of the past

He cannot even get his own statements correct. Fool.

Paving the way for full scale privatisation. Once they've spent a load of taxpayers money on the Academies of course. Ready to hand those nice new facilities over to their mates.

We can't have that pesky democratic accountability nonsense getting in the way of that now, can we?

The move from high schools to academies for me was a huge change. Any progress in enabling individual pupils make the best of their potential has been squashed by the emphasis placed on high achievers.

Thankfully we managed to move our daughter into a more forgiving school environment, rather than the grange hill style that seemingly is making a reappearance in academies.

Trouble is, there's little of the old regulatary system meaning you can't go to your local head of education for academies, you need to put your concerns via their own complaints procedure, or the EFA, or the secretary of state for education.

I stand corrected - a rant to a colleague means I am now informed about the Northern Irish arrangements.

Sadly up here we do still persist with PFI/PPP...

Honest q as views not settled; why intrinsically better for LA's to run schools? Surely as long as regulation effective, then administration agnostic?

Same issue as private sector provision within the NHS?

So the OFSTED as a patsy technique isn't working out quick enough.

Honest q as views not settled; why intrinsically better for LA's to run schools? Surely as long as regulation effective, then administration agnostic?

-The shared resources and long term planning of those resources (physical, services provided and human). This can be anything from payroll to peripatetic specialist teachers, shared sports resources etc.

-The sharing of good practice, supporting, coaching, cajoling and b*ll*ck*ng by Development Officers and Quality Improvement Officers. Overall this is proven with struggling schools and excellent schools to narrow the attainment gap.

-Shared policies and back up in breaches of policy, practices or challenges.

Whether they achieve this (or more) as a 'less efficient' public body rather than uber efficient business is debatable.

Are schools meant to be there for profit, or the benefit of pupils? Are the two incompatible - many private schools would say 'no'.

Thanks Matt

The other thing you don't get with LA controlled schools is religion.

Why this country pays religions to indoctrinate the next generation of their followers is something that irritates and saddens me.

you get what you voted for. Be happy.

They were democratically elected. I hope none of you moaning now were any of the ones who "couldn't see the point" or made a "protest vote".

Only another 4.5 years till we get the chance to vote them out. Assuming elections still exist then!

Why this country pays religions to indoctrinate the next generation of their followers is something that irritates and saddens me.

We've always had church schools in fact the huge majority of faith schools in the UK are Christian. Having been to one I can't get excited by religious schools, most kids will ignore it anyway and religion is taught in non-faith schools anyway. TBH I'd argue an understanding of religion is essential to understand where we have come from and are going as a western society.

The other thing you don't get with LA controlled schools is religion

No idea where you get that from. Faith schools can be under local authority control.

dragon - Member
...I'd argue an understanding of religion is essential to...

agreed, but there's a significant difference between religious schools, and RE lessons.

Dividing children on religious lines is also a 'reasonably' effective way of dividing children along racial lines.

[i]Faith schools can be under local authority control. [/i]

sorry, I thought they were 'maintained' so set their own admission policies, curriculum etc?

I can't say how pissed off this makes me - the privatisation of education provision is something that will take generations to show the full results of but I doubt they'll be good.

The other thing you don't get with LA controlled schools is religion.

Why this country pays religions to indoctrinate the next generation of their followers is something that irritates and saddens me.

I think many observers me included would say private education in the UK is generally superior to that provided by the state. Class sizes of 20 instead of 30+ just for one ?

I am in favour of schools having a religious affiliation if they match British values, hundreds of years of CoE or Catholic schools have served us extremely well.

sorry, I thought they were 'maintained' so set their own admission policies, curriculum etc?

😐

They can still be under local authority control. All the catholic schools I attended were very much under the control of the Inner London Education Authority. There was no national curriculum then but I don't see why it wouldn't apply now. Admission had no separate control other than the obvious one relating to sharing the same faith as the school.

I don't know how you can say that you don't get religion in LA controlled schools.

jambalaya - Member

I think many observers me included would say private education in the UK is generally superior to that provided by the state. Class sizes of 20 instead of 30+ just for one ?

i'd suggest the first thing we should compare would be the funding:pupil between state/private schools.

As someone who works in school admissions in a English LA I can confirm that there are La controlled schools that use denominational criteria. We call them voluntary controlled.

So much for the Northern Powerhouse of the Socialist Soviet Republic of Greater Sheffield getting to run things such as business rates and local taxes! By the time Dave and Gideon devolve the power there will be nothing left to run!

I'd suggest the first thing we should compare would be the funding:pupil between state/private schools.

i'd suggest the first thing we should compare would be the funding:pupil between state/private schools.

and then compare the sorts of children they are educating

jambalaya: Acadamies and Free Schools are 'private'.

The mechanism for moving schools out of LA control is to effectively privatise provision by handing over the school buildings, staff contracts and money to run it to organisations that are no longer in state control.

they've even just changed the Ofsted rules so that schools that convert to acedamy status will not be inspected for 3 years (even if they were in special measures prior to a forced conversion), anything to hide poorly performing schools and not allow facts get in the way of the privatisation program.

My wife's a headteacher this: [i]funding in the state sector was comparable as the school doesn't have to pay for the buildings and maintenance[/i] isn't true.

You lot elected them, stop whinging.

[i]You lot elected them[/i]

see that red dot on the south coast under London? That's me that is 🙂

[img] [/img]

My wife's a headteacher

@wasawas learn to love that map as unless Labour change direction the red bits are going to be a lot smaller in 2020

We'll always keep the red flag flying in Hove 🙂

and the green one in Brighton, obvs.

and then compare the [s]sorts[/s][b] families and the resources they have,[/b] of children they are educating

FTFY.

fair point..well made

My wife taught 4 year olds (in an age before tablets/phones/etc) who had never held a book and never had one read to them.

Some children start school so far behind their peers it's no wonder that they aren't achieving the same results at the other end of the process.

And what did the Tories do to counter this?

Shut down 600 sure start centres that they'd promised not to cut funding to.

From what I've heard (from various teachers and head teachers) Academy status seem tempting because the up front funding seems very good. But long term funding turns out to be less than LA funding. So you end up with more kids per class and lots of unqualified or newly qualified teachers.

I don't really know how it all works though.

[i]I don't really know how it works though. [/i]

Much like that.

Shiney infrastructure, oppresive maintenance costs from private companies (often owned by governors of the school/academy group) no money to pay for decent staff.

There are successful academies but I don;t believe that being outside of LA control is the key to that, it is having inspirational leaders and dedicated staff.

[quote=wwaswas ]Shiney infrastructure, oppresive maintenance costs from private companies (often owned by governors of the school/academy group)

<rubs hands together> I'm not a governor, but I know quite a few of them, I'm sure I could put together an advantageous tender for better IT facilities - maybe it is time our school became an academy...

(BTW it's officially a C of E school, but under LA control and follows the standard LA admission procedure)

<rubs hands together> I'm not a governor, but I know quite a few of them, I'm sure I could put together an advantageous tender for better IT facilities - maybe it is time our school became an academy...

I am, and you have to declare pecuniary interest (and leave the room in discussions) if you are involved in supply. Not really a massive barrier to the 'mates club' I suppose, but I'm pretty objectionable so solved that dilemma 🙂

Can't help but think the governor / head power balance would be distorted by another party, particularly one holding the cheque book.

My wife taught 4 year olds (in an age before tablets/phones/etc) who had never held a book and never had one read to them.

Some children start school so far behind their peers it's no wonder that they aren't achieving the same results at the other end of the process.

And what did the Tories do to counter this?

Shut down 600 sure start centres that they'd promised not to cut funding to.

@wasawas "oppressive maintenance costs" the problem with state maintained facilities are the hidden costs of paying state employee pensions etc People don't factor this in when making a comparison private contract reflects that.

We'll always keep the red flag flying in Hove

It really isn't the governments responsibility to correct poor parenting

I think Tories do it not out of caring but, as with all things, to save money.
Its short sighted as well as heartless [ not to mention the fact they lied]

ahwiles
I think many observers me included would say private education in the UK is generally superior to that provided by the state. Class sizes of 20 instead of 30+ just for one ?

jambalaya
i'd suggest the first thing we should compare would be the funding:pupil between state/private schools.

Wellington College, Berkshire (annual boarding fees: £30,075), occupies a 400-acre site for its 1,000 pupils. To bring every school up to that standard, we would need 3.6m acres, roughly the amount of UK land now occupied by houses and other buildings (from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/01/sport-britain-elite-privilege-schools)

How much do state schools cost per pupil by way of comparison?

To bring every school up to that standard

You think every school should be a boarding school?

In Camerons speech he talked about how poor social mobility is in this country. I can't see anything that the Conservative party is proposing or doing will change this.

In 2012/13, I was involved in parent-led work with the local authority, to pressure them into increasing primary school places in our area. We gained a fair amount insight into their planning techniques as a result.

The most striking thing was that - because of the increasing number of academies - the council was clearly struggling to work out how to meet local needs for primary places and to make investment decisions. This is because of the entry of an increasing number of autonomous education providers, who aren't tied to commitments such as providing an education for a certain geographic population: they simply operate in the best interests of their own organisation.

There is a sensible level of local planning that you hope that any colour of local government is able to sort out, which - on this evidence - it is clearly struggling to do... I hate to think how it now is in 2015, let alone what it'll be by 2020.

Obviously my experience is limited, but it seems that smashing-up a single education provision body (LEA) and replacing it with lots of independent actors (academies) is a *very* inefficient way to allocate the education budget and solve problems like how to ensure that primary spaces are available in a given locality.

P.S. My father-in-law went to Wellington!

I'm not intrinsically against the whole academies concept, though it's been rolled out in a fairly demented way. But what I see from local authorities, is scale and coordination. Eh, this is one of those posts that gets a bit too close to confidential so it's intentionally vague...

Anyway, we work with a council which has been struggling, as do a lot, with maths and other stem attainment levels, so they're working with the local universities and colleges (and companies, and tons of other stuff, but that's not my thing). And some of this stuff would be really difficult to do with smaller groups- with 20 high schools, it's realistic to set up schemes for kids from multiple schools that would be worthless for 3 or 4 schools, they have teacher exchanges, full-time liaison people, they've taken people out of teaching on secondment to work on strategic stuff. Tons going on. And we're committing a level of resource to some of these projects that'd be completely unfeasible if we were dealing with 10 schools instead of 20. Or 5 providers instead of 1. Or, you know, profit makers- lots of wrinkles there.

Obviously, an academy chain can run multiple schools but unless they're close to monopolies they'll never have those... ah ****, I'm going to have to say "synergies" aren't I. Yeah, them. It's a combination of scale and locality which is always going to be hard to replicate outwith the state.

And just to state the obvious- these are things that benefit a larger number of kids. A well resourced or very effective academy could achieve a lot of this, or go in different directions, but it'll only help "their" kids. It's pretty hard to see any way that it doesn't create new inequalities.

[quote=Northwind ]I'm not intrinsically against the whole academies concept

I think the thing is that there are some advantages to academies - because there are some things LAs do badly which can be improved if you break away from them. There are also cases where academies are vast improvements on what has gone before. The trouble is that as you identify there are a lot of things which do benefit from "economies of scale" in a very real way.

goto McSchool and get McEdukated.

anyway its all the fault of those pesky immigants.

The idea of LA-controlled schools is a myth, because they have devolved budgets and are run by the senior teachers and governors. LAs retain oversight, for example resolving poor performance, and provide services such as catering, buildings maintenance and HR.

All Cameron is doing is removing schools from the "shackles" of local democratic oversight.

In Camerons speech he talked about how poor social mobility is in this country. I can't see anything that the Conservative party is proposing or doing will change this.

@JY I didn't see any change under 10+ years of Labour. The "back story" of Caemrons comment that who your parents are makes the greatest difference in how you do is that the future of your kids is in very large part a parents responsibility. You'll never reduce crime/prison etc to zero, spending money around the edges to try and change the attitudes if parents who don't care about education is a waste of money. You provide the kids with the opportunity and dedicated teachers to try and enthuse them but ultimately it's an individual's choice

anyway its all the fault of those pesky immigants.

Controlled immigration allows us to select the best and the brightest who will have the greatest positive impact on the UK economy.

anyway its all the fault of those pesky immigants.

Well more kids requiring places at already stretched service is to going to make things better

The newspapers in Germany are now saying that the 1m migrants they were expecting is now more likely to be 1.6m to 2m by the end of the next year, with a family factor of 4-8 people likely to follow in the years immediately after that. All of these people will have right of free movement in Europe so that's the best part of 10m people who all need housing, health and schooling just from the "open door" in Germany alone.

The migrant debate is somewhat heated but the simple reality is that in Britain we already have many hundreds of thousands of families who do not have permanent, satisfactory or affordable accommodation. This situation is simply unacceptable as anyone familiar with the conditions of families living in poor accommodation will already know.

A further 6,000 net migrants are arriving in the UK every week - throw in the additional challenge of accommodating 20,000 refugees and another 80,000-160,000 of their immediate family members and it's quite easy to see that our ability to build out new healthcare capacity, schools and housing will clearly not match demand. For those already living on the fringes of our society things will almost certainly get worse.

On housing alone we need to build in excess of 300,000 homes a year just to start addressing the backlog and catching up - that's equivalent to a city the size of Newcastle on Tyne every 12 months which gives some indication about the feasibility of delivering this given constraints on land and the significant skilled labour shortages in the house building supply chains that will take years to address.

spending money around the edges to try and change the attitudes if parents who don't care about education is a waste of money.

It really isn't the governments responsibility to correct poor parenting. I do appreciate the issues your wife encountered but to imagine a Labour or any other government could address them is a fantasy.

I think for the most part most things can be fixed,

unfortunately there is no profit in doing it, in fact the opposite.

= business as usual,

no point in arguing about it really

...carry on 🙂