Each policy announcement from Michael Gove, the new Coalition government Education Secretary, has its roots in the legislation of the previous Labour government. Academy schools, for example, dreamed up in Prime Minister Blair’s office, were originally a blatant gift of state school buildings, land and infrastructure to businesses, religious and charitable organisations. At first the owners of the Academy schools were expected to contribute £2 million towards the £10 million worth of new buildings and resources they were given. Little of this money was received. Why was the state paying for new schools and then donating them to the private sector as a strange hybrid, the private state school?
Labour was extending the role of the market in the education system. In 13 years in power it would transfer wealth to the private sector via teacher training, exam boards, payroll staff, buildings and maintenance – all the infrastructure of the schools system was privatised. Labour was serving its friends in big business and the City of London by opening up the state sector to privatisation.
Labour justified the Academy schools programme by attacking what it called the ‘bog standard’ school provision of the Local Education Authorities (LEAs). The centralised and authoritarian governments of Blair and Brown offered freedom from the curriculum, a separate wages structure and conditions of work to a few schools in the state sector in a grovelling imitation of Eton and the other private schools of the upper classes. By May 2010, 200 Academy schools had been set up and another 200 were planned.
Every school an Academy school?
Labour prepared the arguments and the legal means of transferring public property to the private sector for the incoming Coalition government. Education Secretary Michael Gove is a babbling enthusiast for private enterprise and the dissolution of the state education system has been speeded up. A new Academies Bill offers every school the status of an Academy school, free from LEA control. Parents, faith groups and businesses are all invited to tender for schools to be set up in imitation of Sweden’s ‘Free Schools’ and the ‘Charter Schools’ of the USA.
Will Gove govern them all?
Freedom from LEA control might seem an attractive alternative to the heavy-handed, over-managed, endless bureaucracy, targets and health and safety agenda imposed on LEAs from the centre. However, teaching standards, pay and conditions and statutory rights for children are all at risk in the new proposals.
There are 3,211 maintained secondary schools in England and 17,040 Primary Schools (Scotland, Wales and the north of Ireland have separate education systems). At present the vast majority are accountable to LEAs and draw on LEA provision for special needs support, sporting activities and numerous other locally shared amenities. If each school is transformed into an Academy they will have to operate as separate businesses and be managed individually. Either Gove himself at the Department of Education will end up running thousands of schools from the centre or there will be unregulated educational establishments all over England that may, or may not, provide schooling for local pupils.
Where will the money come from?
Gove is keen to promote the rights of school governors to opt out of the state sector into Academy status ‘by September’ without even consulting parents, pupils and staff. He is also boastful about the contribution his department will make to the cuts in public expenditure. Over 700 schools are waiting to be rebuilt under the Building Schools for the Future programme. Although this was a typically over-priced Labour private sector contract, the need of the schools for refurbishment is real. Only Academies have been assured that they will get the funding needed for new buildings – one very good reason why 1,600 schools have already enquired about becoming Academies.
Cuts and chaos to come
The demand for good educational provision for all our children and young people must be at the centre of our struggles. The rebuilding of a not-for-profit state education system will have to be at the heart of our demands for socialism as we fight back against the myths of the market and the greed of the ruling class.
Susan Davidson
FRFI 216 August/September 2010
