The government’s plans for education in England, announced, unusually, by the Chancellor in the Budget, were quickly followed by the White Paper.
Educational Excellence Everywhere is a blueprint for education for the next five years. As an aspiration it is to be commended. As a vision it is radical and has far-reaching implications for education and the teaching profession.
The paper sets a clear direction and pace of change. What it does not include is detail, and the devil is always in the detail. Too much detail would inhibit the much-needed contribution of education unions and the profession to the development of that detail.
However, in this form, without any previous consultation with the profession or the unions, the paper provides just enough information to cause widespread alarm and contention that distracts from any promise the paper might contain.
Engagement with the profession and unions at an earlier stage could militate against the profession feeling it is being “done to” yet again.
The White Paper moves the academies programme to a final phase, one that is galvanising the profession to oppose it. At a time when we are being urged to use evidence effectively, there is no clear evidence to show that academies raise standards overall.
The Education Select Committee had urged the Department for Education to be “less defensive and more open about its implementation programme, and to review the lessons of the rapid conversion of secondary schools to inform future expansion”. It would be interesting to know if a review took place and how, if at all, it influenced the contents of the White Paper.
The government, however, seems to be preoccupied with systems and structures in its race to achieve a higher Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranking. This preoccupation distracts from what really matters – the content of education – and demonstrates that insufficient consideration has been given to the resource implications, capacity and need for schools to become academies. Why force schools that are good or outstanding to become academies, for little, if any, discernible benefit, jeopardising the education of pupils during the change process?
The rapid timetable and compulsory nature of the change fails to consider the effect of change on pupils and education professionals. Education is about what and how pupils learn. Their education cannot be equated to a production line. Pupils are not widgets – raw goods in and quality-assured products out in the form of specified target results.
To consider children in this way fails to recognise and celebrate that all pupils are different. It is dedicated education professionals who recognise the difference and enable them to succeed, not the name or the type of school they attend. Interfering with reliable, robust, effective and successful schools by introducing unnecessary change presents a high risk of damaging the education outcomes of thousands of children and the teaching profession.
Forcing all schools to become academies is not the silver bullet which will deliver the outcomes the government is seeking, especially in such a short space of time. There is only one group who can do that – education professionals – teachers, school leaders and the wider education team. After many years of being “done to”, the profession is tired and weary of yet more change, especially change which ignores their repeated entreaties to government to listen to them.
Voice is against the rapid academisation of schools and although we welcome the government’s vision for educational excellence everywhere, we are unable to support the compulsory conversion of all schools into academies, given the lack of evidence available to demonstrate the worth of the programme.
- Deborah Lawson is the general secretary of Voice. Visit www.voicetheunion.org.uk/academiespolicy