With the sharp increase in the number of academies, do local education authorities still have a role to play? Anthony Painter investigates

Local education authorities have almost 200 statutory duties but lack purpose in the modern education landscape. The simple fact is that more than half of secondary schools are now academies. In the process of expanding their number, education secretary Michael Gove has turned academies into more a description of one governance and legal structure than a brand. What matters now is the quality of the school, its curriculum and ethos rather than its type whether it is an academy, community, voluntary aided, free, studio or university technical college school. This marks a significant change – one that is confusing for parents and pupils alike.

Gove and Labour secretaries of state before him have fundamentally altered the balance of power and responsibility between schools’ leadership and LEAs. There is no point carrying on as if these changes have not happened. Instead, some serious consideration now needs to be given to what role local education authorities have. It is pointless to continue pretending that the hybrid system of local education that has evolved (albeit at lightning speed) is in any way suitable for the education needs of today’s secondary-age pupils. Instead, reform is necessary and it should be soon.

Right away, it is important to state that LEAs do have a role. Abolishing them would not make any sense, as, properly focused, they can have a significantly positive impact. The key to high-quality education is leadership and yet it can emerge in many different places at once – school leadership, governance and at the local authority level. Any change that is made to LEAs needs to acknowledge this. For example, despite relative deprivation, 95 per cent of pupils in Wigan attend good or outstanding schools according to Ofsted, as do 87 per cent in Southwark and 86 per cent in Oldham. One size does not fit all, by any means.

Where there is success and leadership it should be safeguarded. Too often there is a deficit of success and leadership, so reform is necessary – at the LEA, as well as the individual school level that we are used to seeing. How might an incoming Labour government approach this? First, it would make clear that the primary legal responsibility that LEAs have is to provide pupils with high-quality education choices that provide them with the knowledge and skills to progress on to good careers – usually via further or higher education. This will require securing the provision of a range of high-quality options.

A primary means of enabling parents and pupils to make these choices is good information and guidance. LEAs should be given responsibility for providing excellent advice and guidance to parents and pupils as they survey and choose their options throughout the system. This will usually be at age five, 11 and 16 but, with UTCs, studio schools and further education now supplying provision from the age of 14, the same legal duty should be applied at that age too. There should be open opportunities to transfer institutions after key stages two (11 years old), three (14 years old) and four (16 years old). Local authorities should have a statutory duty to provide information and advice to facilitate transfers.

In an excellent report entitled Outstanding For All, the Haringey Education Commission, chaired by the inspirational Anna Hassan (with whom I have worked over a number of years on the board at Hackney community college), argues that a ‘pupil passport’ should be introduced. This passport would ‘summarise key information about each pupil’s attainment, their strengths and weaknesses and other important information. It should be used whenever pupils move schools, including assisting with primary/secondary transfer and with pupil mobility within each phase.’ The passport will thus facilitate pupils changing between educational institutions so they can get the right experience and will help raise standards. Furthermore, the commission suggests the introduction of an ‘annual scorecard, using data such as family of schools [schools of a similar type], to compare the achievement of each school with similar ones outside Haringey’. These are exactly the types of responses that will give parents and pupils the tools with which to make good choices. Once diverse new provision has also been secured, pupils will have a much wider range of options at their disposal. It is to Haringey council’s credit that it was willing to challenge itself in this way.

In order to ensure that every LEA is entirely independent throughout the system, the presumption should be that community schools will be placed in a separate trust with their own governance and leadership. This trust will have its own management which will buy services from the LEA like any other school in the area. Community schools will no longer be local authority schools. Where LEAs can demonstrate absolute independence and the highest level of provision of information, advice and guidance they would not be required to place their schools into a separate trust. However, the default would be that a community schools trust should be established in every LEA area. This is an alternative to forced academisation.

The purpose of the measure is very simple: to prevent a protectionist attitude towards certain schools in any local authority area. LEAs can have a tendency to view community schools as ‘their’ schools. However, any publicly funded school – and not just located in the local authority area – that meets the educational needs of a pupil resident in the area should be treated the same as any other. The most important function of the LEA will be to broker high-quality education on behalf of parents and keep them informed of their options and progression every step of the way.

Local authorities have a democratic function too. How is this expressed in the field of education if they do not actually have any control over the institutions themselves? By LEAs becoming the voice of parents and pupils: they will challenge underperformance through the provision of good information. And where parents or a group of parents have a grievance they should be able to raise it with the LEA. This grievance would then be conveyed to the individual school who would be required to reject it or accept it with a specified response. Where the LEA is not happy with the response there would be potential for referral to Ofsted, which may decide to follow it up. Parents would be kept informed throughout the process. Ofsted would remain the regulator of individual schools (and, indeed, of LEAs) but the LEA would be there to serve the interests of pupils and parents.

Once Labour passed the Local Education Act within months of returning to power, it should then give LEAs two years to meet its provisions. Ofsted would then begin inspecting every single LEA, with the worst-performing areas first. The purpose of this would be to assess compliance with the new act. Where an LEA was not compliant it would be given a period of time to adapt followed by a reinspection or the local authority would be required to find another provider of its LEA functions.

All these changes together achieve a number of things: a clear focus on parents and pupils; emphasis on quality and range of provision; a smooth transfer between different institutions; a greater local democratic voice within education; schools being judged by their excellence not by their legal structure; and an improvement in standards across the board. The current system is now unclear, unfocused and inconsistent. Parents and pupils have the right to expect the best. A refocused, reformed system of education can help them secure precisely that.

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Anthony Painter is a contributing editor to Progress

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Photo: Athena