|
TERRY DIGNAN: The day begins for thirteen
year old Kit. Mr Blair expects great things of him and all the other children
attending State schools. The Prime Minister says nothing must impede their
path to academic success. Which is why Local Education Authorities - LEAs
- are being told to relieve schools of the burden of town hall bureaucracy.
While parents are more concerned about what goes on in the classroom rather
than the precise nature of the relationship between a school and its LEA,
increasingly, Labour ministers believe that this relationship is a cause
of children under-achieving. That's why they want other agencies, including
profit-making private companies to take over much of what an education
authority does. According to the Government's critics, this could undermine
local democracy and have potentially catastrophic consequences for schools
in poorer areas. Arriving for morning registration, Kit and his classmates
at Hendon School have been promised the London Comprehensive will strive
to give them a good education. The job of an education authority is to
help teachers achieve that aim. But Kit's head says he doesn't need an
LEA.
BOB LLOYD: I can't think of a single
way yet in which the local authority's done anything to improve the quality
of education or the standards of education within the school and so my
mind is full of questions as to what the role of the local authority is
in this relationship.
DIGNAN: Schools and LEAs should
be on the same side, turning children into rounded individuals. But there
are signs of rivalry. Ministers worry about complaints of too much interference
by education authorities. They want them to stay on the sidelines if a
school is providing children with a good education.
ESTELLE MORRIS MP: Each school has a different
relationship with the LEA and if it's struggling and needs the support
it's got to be closer and hands on but if it can look after itself, it's
got to be at a very much at an arm's length and a monitoring role. It
doesn't mean a visit a week. It doesn't mean a telephone call a month.
It means monitoring the data and the quality of data is such now, that
they can do that without excessive visits.
CHRIS WOODHEAD: Successful schools can manage their
own destiny - I mean they are successful because they can manage their
own destiny. They've got good teachers, committed professionals working
extremely hard; they've got head teachers with vision and drive pushing
things forward; they've got a supportive governing body. I don't think
the LEA is needed in those cases.
DIGNAN: An LEA's role as guardian
of the interests of all children could be hindered, it's argued, if suburban
schools go their own way. It's feared they'll attract the best and the
brightest, leaving schools in deprived areas at a bigger disadvantage.
VALERIE DAVEY MP: Individual schools opting out
in the long term do not benefit their communities - they only benefit themselves
- and indeed, as time goes on, if they become very popular they end up
selecting the young people coming to the school, which is detrimental to
that community as well.
DIGNAN: Graham Lane worries about
a further threat to LEAs. A Labour councillor, he's visiting the new head
of Star primary, in the deprived London borough of Newham. Among Tony Blair's
advisers there are misgivings about the role of councils even in failing
schools. Yet Lane, speaking for English education authorities, says his
council has transformed this school.
COUNCILLOR GRAHAM LANE: The people that are turning schools
round, very quickly at the moment with their new powers from the 1988 Act
are in fact local government and they're being turned round at a faster
rate than ever before. That is because local government sees that as one
of its main duties, to intervene when there's something going wrong.
DIGNAN: Praise for Newham Council
for improving standards in the classroom has come from OFSTED, the body
which now inspects LEAs. But all too often OFSTED reports make for dismal
reading.
WOODHEAD: I don't think that the inspection
evidence either of schools or local authorities leads me to the conclusion
that the local authority is a crucial agent with regard to raising educational
standards. In the worst cases - I mean Hackney, Islington, Liverpool,
Leeds - we found a situation where in our judgement the authority was not
adding any value whatsoever to the work that the schools are doing - indeed
the reverse.
DIGNAN: When OFSTED damns an LEA,
the Government calls in the private sector. There's nothing new in schools
using the private sector. This technology came from big business. But now
even council departments which advise on teaching methods are being handed
over to businesses - or, as some would put it, privatised.
MORRIS: I believe that the LEA
is so important that if it's not delivering you've got to find somebody
who has. So bottom line is, LEAs are important, if they can deliver let
them do it. But if not, let's find another way of providing that service.
DIGNAN: At an education authority
condemned by OFSTED, a visitor from big business arrives. Kevin McNeeny
runs Nord Anglia, a plc which has its eyes on the services of the LEA here
in Labour-controlled Southwark.
KEVIN McNEENY: We are private companies
in education and we've made a success out of our business thus far. We
have made the point for quite a long time that the private sector has something
to contribute to the national campaign to raise standards in schools. So
I'm pleased that the Government has now more fully taken on board the suggestion
that we can contribute.
DIGNAN: Back at Hendon comprehensive,
it's time for Kit's lunch in the privatised cafeteria. The Government believes
schools would also get better value if the core services of education authorities
were run by the private sector. It's one thing to make a profit from providing
lunch, say Labour MPs, it's quite another for businesses to make money
from taking over the LEA.
DAVEY: There is a clear distinction
at the moment between those who are getting involved as a trust, Education
Trust - in other words are not profit, not for profit company - and those
who are clearly going in with the intention in the long run to make a profit
out of state education; and I find that second category completely anathema
to me, personally.
KEVIN McKEENY: We are an education company
and we are genuinely interested in standards in education and when we improve
a school we get a great kick out of it. But we are also a commercial company
and when we offer our services we expect to receive a management charge
for those services.
MORRIS: It's money to people to
provide a service, but the end result is that millions of pounds that's
been badly spent in the past becomes more effective in contributing to
the standards agenda.
DIGNAN: At present elected members
of local authorities are answerable to their electorate for the way in
which education is provided in their area. If the powers of LEA's are swept
away in favour of allowing others including the private sector to meet
the needs of schools and their pupils who then will be accountable for
how education is run locally?
LANE: If local democracy
is not involved in that and you're relying on a private company whose main
interest in the end, and they may have worthy interests about employability
but nevertheless it's still making, making a profit and that's the first
concern, then you have not got the local accountability.
DAVEY: There has to be accountability
for the spending of that money, and more importantly I believe the values
underpinning our education have to be understood and decided democratically.
ACTUALITY. Right. Title is 'Averages
From Frequency Tables'.
DIGNAN: But the Government is trying
to calculate if a new kind of accountability can work in education. Instead
of being answerable for providing services to schools, councils will be
accountable for ensuring others do the providing.
ACTUALITY: "If you laid them all out..."
DIGNAN: In business jargon it's
called outsourcing.
MORRIS: In each of the LEA's where
we've intervened, I've met with all the head teachers. I've gone and spoken
to them and they are so critical of the service that they've been getting
from the local authority. And one of the great things about outsourcing
is it is a commercial contract and for the very first time what the council
does is written down, what the private sector, or the provider is written
down and the Heads know what they get from whom.
DIGNAN: On to drama class to learn
stage fighting. There's no pretence, though, about the attack on LEAs'
powers. Ministers will take failing schools from councils and give these
to businesses too. They'll get extra money and be renamed City Academies
with the aim of achieving standards set by schools like this one. Labour
MPs fear the idea sounds similar to a Conservative creation.
DAVEY: I think if the model were
to be the City Technology Colleges, which took a school outside the LEA
remit and gave it huge extra funding, causing a great deal of animosity
and distrust, that would be disastrous.
DIGNAN: Back in Newham, as parents
wait to collect their children, some councillors feel aggrieved that they
get the blame for schools in poor areas under-performing. They regard City
Academies as a gimmick. And they can't see why the private sector will
make a better job of running them.
LANE: The only way I think
they will turn round failing schools by that method is to get rid of some
of the students and select a new lot which actually isn't, isn't the answer,
you have to turn a school round with the existing students in it.
MORRIS: Those problems have been
there for generation after generation and nobody did a damned thing about
it. So if we're serious about trying to tackle that generational underachievement
in both LEA's and in schools, I just think it would be silly to close our
minds to things that other sectors could bring to us.
DIGNAN: Competitive sport is taken
seriously at Hendon Comprehensive. Ministers would like leaner education
authorities, too. So they are forcing them to pass on to schools ever-larger
slices of their budgets. LEAs say the money's for providing services, an
argument the head here rejects.
BOB LLOYD: Instead of the funding
that the Government are providing for education coming straight to the
school it comes through the local authority and the local authority takes
its cut, about ten to fifteen per cent and I'm continuously having to ask
myself what is it as a school, what is it that the children in this school
are getting from that money the local authority is taking off and I'd have
to say that my answer is that there is nothing that I can detect at all.
DIGNAN: We could be heading for
a system whereby well-managed schools like this one will be left to run
their own affairs with minimal interference. Failing schools could be taken
out of council control altogether. All that will be left for LEAs to do
is to monitor schools' performance - and the services they receive from
the private sector.
WOODHEAD: They shouldn't be over-monitored
by the Local Education Authority - there's got to be a freedom of executive
decision to decide how best to meet the challenges that are there. And
looking to the future, as this Government initiative is developed, I think
the key issue really is how do we ensure that the private sector, as it
takes on these responsibilities, does have a proper freedom of action to
come up with solutions that are genuinely innovative and genuinely helpful
to the schools concerned.
MORRIS: I think if you look right
across local authorities, not just in local education authorities, the
days of LEA's, local authorities delivering themselves all services, they've
gone. They've gone forever.
DIGNAN: The bell goes for the end
of the school day - and possibly the system by which education is currently
run - in England at least. But cutting LEAs out of providing education,
it's argued, will harm the interests of many children.
LANE: What it would result
in would be more and more sink schools emerging, there would be some elite
schools and those would be very good schools, but a lot of people in this
country would not receive the education they should be entitled to do so.
DIGNAN: By the time Kit and his
friends have left school for work or college, local government's role in
education may have been reduced to a minimum. Councillors will complain
about the absence of democratic accountability, but ministers are in little
mood to heed their warnings.
|