This past week [
I began this post on 8th Sept],
as children returned to school, some of them did so for the first time at one
of the
55 new Free Schools opening this autumn term.
Also this week, perhaps not entirely coincidentally,
Biteback Publishing published "Education, Education, Education: Reforming England's Schools" by former Labour Education Minister, Andrew Adonis. One
theme of the book was presaged in an article written by Andrew Adonis for the New Statesman back in March this year: that the roots of current Government
Academies and Free Schools policy lie in the work of previous Labour governments.
The opening of those new Free Schools this term and Adonis's
March article were greeted (in the press, on twitter, for instance) with the
now familiar arguments that Free Schools are elitist and divisive, drain other
schools of funding, threaten standards at other existing local schools, reduce
local democratic control and so on. Here, of course,
are important issues of principle and of public policy to be debated and
contested.
What is, perhaps, somewhat surprising is the position taken
by some in the Labour Party since the 2010 election: opposing out of government
what the Labour Party promoted in government and ceding all credit for the
Academies programme and for Free Schools to the present Coalition Government.
I met Andrew Adonis in his office at Sanctuary Buildings in
February 2006 thanks to, and accompanied by, our MP Angela Smith. By then, the
first Academies had been created and just a few months before, in October
2005, the then Secretary of State for Education Ruth Kelly had published the
Schools White Paper, inter alia setting out how parents would be encouraged to
bring forward proposals to set up new schools – ‘Free Schools’ in all but name. (Higher Standards, better schools "This White Paper will create independent state schools, with the freedom
to innovate and succeed, backed by new not-for-profit Trusts). Incidentally, at last years’ NASS
AGM and Conference, I mentioned, to our conference guest speaker and Shadow
Minister for Education with responsibility for SEN, Sharon Hodgson MP, that
Free Schools were first proposed by the previous Labour Government. Shortly afterwards, I sent her a brief
letter on the matter.
The encouragement that Paces took from the meeting with
Andrew Adonis is captured in an email that I sent a week later to the late, highly respected, Jan
Wilson, then Leader of Sheffield Council:
Hello
A brief and
encouraging up-date on Paces Campus' news:
Last week, accompanied
by Angela Smith, we met with the Minister for Education (SEN) Andrew Adonis. He
was clearly interested in what he had heard and read of Paces Campus and
expressed an intention to visit to see for himself. He seemed well-informed. A date for the visit is being
arranged with his office.
(As a warmly amusing
aside, we were surprising to be welcomed to Sanctuary Buildings by the very
member of the Minister's staff who, when in a previous post, had been the woman
who had processed Karen Hague's nomination for an MBE.)
Coincidentally, I
heard on the same day from the Labour Party Policy Commission (with whom we
have been in correspondence for over a year now) that members of the Education
Policy Commission would like to visit Paces Campus on either 16th or 30th
March. We are to expect between 4-6 people, possibly including Ministers and
TUC-nominated members.
In both cases, we are
seeking to present the Campus as an innovative model (a "Regional
Achievement Centre") within the Government’s strategy 'Removing Barriers
to Achievement' which set out a plan to create 'Regional Centres of
Expertise'. ….
We were all very
pleased that Jonathan Crossley-Holland [Note: Director, Children and
Young People Directorate, Sheffield] recently took time out on what was clearly
a very busy day to visit Paces Campus. He asked for us at Paces Campus to do
three things which we are very pleased to do (a) to further our local community
work with children and families through active support for the Service District
pilot (b) to progress the specialist city-wide work with children with
disabilities and their families through [Note: name deleted] (c) to attempt to
assess, for him, the demand for conductive education in the city. We in turn hope Jonathan left with the
strong message of support from all Campus-group managers for the C&YP
Directorate and our willing readiness as a Campus to be an active partner.
Finally, although I am
no longer directly involved in the lease negotiation, this having been taken
over by High Green Development Trust as you know (and led by Ray Kohn as the
Chair), I think it is fair to report that there is an all-round shared sense of
guarded optimism as a result of recent conversation with Evelyn Milne.
It is very cheering to
be able to make every single report here a positive one!
My regards
That proved to be a high-water mark. To our great disappointment, Andrew
Adonis never did visit Paces Campus despite Angela Smith’s strenuous further
efforts. Nor did the visit take place from members of the Education Policy
Commission - we never did find out why, our point of contact at the Commission
having retired. Time passed: Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister, to be
replaced by Gordon Brown; Brown moved Andrew Adonis from Education to Transport;
Jonathan Crossley-Holland departed Sheffield Council to join Tribal Group; signing off the lease took a further,
seemingly interminable, 2 years, until February 2009.
And so, during 2009, with an election looming that looked to
most political commentators in the media one that Labour could not win, I as Paces CEO, began
to take note of statements by Michael Gove, tipped to be Education Secretary. I
already knew of American Charter Schools; now I learned of Swedish ‘Free
Schools’.
Becoming evident to
myself and others at Paces was that, as far as Free Schools were concerned, a
potential change of government was beginning to look much more likely to be a continuation than a reversal of policy and that we should be ready to apply for Paces School to
become a Free Special School.
There are undoubtedly differences between the political parties
on how Academies and Free Schools have, and might otherwise have, developed
depending on the political party in Government. However, in The Guardian on Thursday 13th September,
Martin Kettle wrote:
“The single most striking thing about Adonis's insider's
account of the launch of academy schools by the Blair government, and of their
linear development in Michael Gove's free schools since the coalition took
office in 2010, is that it describes what has now become a fait accompli.”
Neither Adonis or Gove, nor their advisors and civil
servants seem to have expected that there might be parents coming forward to
propose Special Free Schools. Repeatedly, both have described Free
Schools as “all-ability” schools, as if the main concern was to forestall any
notion that Free Schools could be selective schools. (Indeed, the DfE website
still does so.)
What’s more, I suspect, too, that the rules governing applications for Special Free Schools have still not yet been
thoroughly thought through from first principles. Indeed, we may have to wait
until the changes proposed in the Green Paper on SEN, now set out in Draft
Legislation, are completed, such are the hurdles that face would-be
proposers.
Children coming to Paces School at the start of this term
might have been coming to one of the first Special Free Schools ever to open.
However, despite being short-listed, our application was not, at the last,
approved.
Martin Kettle continues “It is a mere decade since the first
academy schools – independent state schools managed by private sponsors and
accountable to national rather than local government – were established. Yet
last week, at the start of the new school year, the Department for Education
was able to announce that there are now 2,309 of them, representing more than
half of the secondary schools in England. More than 2,000 of the total have
been opened since 2010.”
These Academies and Free Schools represent a monumental
change in the arrangements for schooling in England that is difficult to
exaggerate; a change that, in my experience of talking to many people not
professionally engaged in education (and, indeed, quite a few who are), has hardly
been noticed. Furthermore (and although the complete – and later regretted -
removal of Direct Grant Schools from the English system by the early Blair
Government stands as a caveat to the contrary), it would seem to be a change
that will not be reversed, not, at least for another generation.
What then for those managing, even perhaps struggling to
manage, conductive education settings? Paces is considering a fresh
application. Others, in my view, should do so. In the 1990s, when most current
CE settings were founded, doors were very firmly shut to proponents of new
special schools, unless they did so in the private sector, Paces School being
one of the very few.
What now? Is there relevance for conductive education? In my
view, becoming a Special Free School is an option that all conductive education
settings should at least consider, as an aspiration for themselves: with this
reservation, that it is not by any means an easy option, undertaken alone. For
that reason, I would advocate all and any CE settings who are considering the
option of applying to become a Special Free School of coming together and
considering the benefits of doing so collaboratively with others of like mind.
Time, perhaps, to ditch old politics and look to the future?
