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Sam Freedman: Let's have real parental choice and allow schools to control education
BRITAIN has the most centralised education system in the Western world. Nowhere else do Ministers try to control with such precision what happens in every classroom in the country. And, unsurprisingly, they don't do it very well.
Since 1997, there have been six Education Secretaries. Each has tried to make their mark with a new agenda, a new focus, a new five-year plan, and so far each one has left the system in an even greater confusion than before.
Take the National Curriculum. Ministers seem unable to resist the temptation to squeeze the latest fashionable subject into an already overloaded timetable.
In the last few months alone, we've seen cookery, economic literacy, more citizenship and five hours of "culture" (whatever that means) being introduced, with a flood of spin, into the curriculum.
All of these new subjects have some value, of course, but each new requirement gives schools less freedom to teach according to the needs of their pupils, who rarely conform to Whitehall's image of the average student.
It also has a hugely negative impact on teachers' morale – as they see their remaining professional freedom disappearing in a puff of
press releases.
Central control extends well beyond the curriculum. Teachers' pay is set from the centre which means schools cannot take local conditions
into account when trying to hire the best staff.
The current programme to rebuild all the schools in the country is rolling out according to a plan worked out in Whitehall, again without the flexibility to respond to local circumstances.
Alongside basic school funding there are a staggering 35 pots of money available to schools to apply for – all controlled from the centre.
My favourite example is the "power to innovate" legislation which allows schools to apply to ministers for the permission to set up innovative schemes.
In the last six years, this power has been used the grand total of 24 times. Can you imagine the number of genuinely innovative schemes thought up by heads and teachers that have never left the ground because they couldn't face the prospect of filling in
yet more forms?
In a new report, Helping Schools Succeed, Cheryl Lim, Chris Davies and I argue that this central control has created an incoherent school system with no inspiring educational vision.
None of the educationalists, politicians or teachers that we spoke to knew what the Government thought schooling was supposed to achieve.
As with so many other policy areas, the vision vacuum has been filled
with arbitrary and often damaging targets. Our solution
is simple: devolve as much control of education back to schools while keeping them accountable to parents and the taxpayer.
At the moment, accountability is simply an echo of central control. Government sets targets, schools try to meet the targets regardless of whether there is any educational value in doing so and the Government applauds itself when targets are successfully met (and hopes everyone will ignore the misses).
League tables are the ultimate example of this – the information they give tells us almost nothing aboutschools beyond their success
in hitting very narrow exam targets and they are loathed by schools and teachers.
Parents are well aware of their limitations – just two per cent of parents said that they chose their children's school on the basis of league tables in a poll that Policy Exchange commissioned from YouGov
to coincide with the launch of our report.
But our report does not suggest a return to the time before league tables when there was no information available to parents at all.
Instead we recommend a "report card" for each school which would contain far more information about the school than just exam results. This information would be aggregated into a single grade that every parent could understand.
At the same time, every school in the country could strive for an "A" grade – they would not be artificially "ranked" against other schools.
But the truest test of accountability would be genuine parental choice. As the admissions row of the last few weeks has shown, far too many parents are forced to put up with failing schools.
This is because local authorities are monopoly suppliers of schools. It is almost impossible for charities or companies to open a new school and receive state funding.
So perhaps our most important recommendation would see all schools given legal and financial independence from local authorities – who would instead be charged with making sure parents got a real choice. Charities and non-for-profit organisations would be encouraged to open new schools. Failing schools would either close or be taken over.
At the moment, Government controls education and then tells parents results are getting better each year. We want to see schools given control over education and judged by parents.
You may think that just sounds like common sense, but as Voltaire said "common sense is not so common," especially in government.
Sam Freedman is Head of the Education Unit at Policy Exchange www.policyexchange.org.uk which is publishing a report today entitled
Helping Schools Succeed.
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