Rick Muir recognises that many local authorities have ‘an outstanding recent record on school improvement’. He’s quite right. Over the past 15 years local authorities have helped drive dramatic improvements in schools’ performance, working alongside parents, teachers and school governors at a time of unprecedented investment in schools by the previous Labour government. It seems odd to acknowledge this but then to propose that there should be no future role for local government in overseeing local schools.
Councils drove improvement by doing all the things proposed for education commissioners. Local government is close enough to schools to spot problems early on and intervene before they escalate. They regulate fair access and plan investment to make sure there are enough school places available in the areas where children need them. They ensure that parents and the wider local community have a voice. They form federations of schools so better-performing schools can support weaker schools to improve. They replace failing heads and governing bodies, and they provide strategic services including IT, financial systems and HR as well as guidance on national policy.
National chains of academies can provide some of these services, and other schools can purchase them from whoever they like. But none of this provides the local perspective, or local accountability, that is essential to making education work locally. That perspective is critical when it comes to making sure there are enough school places available in the right places for every child that needs one. Underperforming schools that need support prefer to get it from another school that experiences the same local challenges, and it’s the local authority that fosters partnerships in this way. Critically, neither academy chains nor education commissioners can deliver the wider children’s services agenda for which local authorities are responsible. That includes identifying children at risk of abuse and bringing in social services to support them and their families, helping young offenders get their lives back on track, and offering appropriate education to children with physical and mental disabilities.
Schools don’t educate children in isolation from other factors that affect their ability to learn. Some students perform poorly at school because they drift into crime and antisocial behaviour, they come from dysfunctional families, their concentration is impaired by poor nutrition, or they live in low-quality or overcrowded homes. Local government may not directly control all these factors, but we can influence all the services that affect them and that puts us in the best position to bring them together to tackle poor performance at school.
Councils do not need to take back control of free schools and independent academies in order to act as the ‘middle tier’. The world’s moved on, and school provision has become more pluralistic. Local authorities already work alongside a range of school providers. Legislation is required to ensure that we have the powers to intervene when necessary. Needing local authorities to play a different role from that of the past doesn’t mean we should deny them any role in the future, especially if that closes off the opportunity to bring together a range of services in pursuit of higher standards.
The creation of local education commissioners, like local police commissioners or supremoes in other public services, simply fragments the ability of local communities to tie up resources in ways that meet local needs. Labour councils today are shaping a new role for local government that’s more open, locally accountable and pluralistic than in the past. We can do that by joining up services from diverse providers in ways that make more sense to the people who use them. We have outgrown the narrow mentality that sees our communities only from the perspective of a single-service provider. Education commissioners are unnecessary and unhelpful. We don’t need to invent a new ‘middle tier’ between national government and local schools. It already exists, and it’s called local government.
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Cllr Steve Reed is leader of Lambeth council
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Read also: The case for school commissioners by Josh MacAlister
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