The 2010 Academies Act might end up giving central government too much power over teachers and schools, argues Tom Clark
Listen to Michael Gove enthuse about academies, and you imagine the educational system as an archipelago of fiercely independent islands, each with a distinctive culture. Rather like Oxbridge colleges, free schools are envisaged as each being blessed with a distinctive ethos. The chief objection raised to this vision amounts to the claim that no school is an island – the fortunes of one are so tied to the other, that some institutions will end up prospering at the expense of others.
That argument is important, and it has been well rehearsed, not least in the pages of Education Guardian. But after a generation of curriculums and tests being handed down from on high, it is not hard to see why the idea of independence holds terrific appeal.
Far less thought, though, has gone into assessing whether the claimed independence is meaningful, or even what "independence" actually means. The legislation hardly helps: Labour's laws defined independent state schools purely negatively, as institutions not funded by local authorities.
Sir Peter Newsam, the respected educationalist, notes that this is rather like "defining a camel as not being a horse", and suggests it is more instructive to consider how far academies are beholden to powers outside their own walls.
Consider how academies fare in respect of the two worries that most reliably render institutions dependent – worries about where the money will come from, and worries about the right to stay open for business. Unlike universities, private schools or even church schools, academies have virtually no independent resources. The revenue comes from a deal with the secretary of state, and in the final resort even the premises can be returned to him or her, to redeploy or sell off as the secretary sees fit.
Under Labour, the law provided at least a measure of security by specifying that there would be formal contracts that would run for at least seven years, but the new Academies Act – which was rushed through in July – opens the possibility of new schools being established from scratch, using the secretary of state's sweeping powers "to give financial assistance for purposes related to education". These were originally intended to allow Whitehall to subsidise particular initiatives, such as scholarships or literacy schemes, but in theory they could now be used to set up and maintain entire institutions on the basis of insecure grants.
The traditional local authority school was, if anything, rather too free of the fear that anyone would shut it down. Rab Butler's 1944 Education Act was in part a response to the totalitarian habit of bullying schools into line. While local authorities could propose shutting a school, they could not actually do so unless the secretary of state agreed. The secretary, meanwhile, could not close any school's gates without receiving such a proposal. With the local tier swept away, however, academies lack these checks and balances. The educational islands have no defence if they incur the wrath of the imperial power in London.
Now, whatever else Gove may be, I do not think he is a power-mad centraliser. He defines himself against the French Third Republic, where the minister could sit in his office and dictate that children all over the nation were reading the same book at the same time. But, like all politicians, he has his own views – think of the great stress he lays on children learning British kings and queens.
The great dependence of academies on the educational centre might make them more receptive to such whims. The real dangers, however, could emerge when we get a new education secretary who has a more prescriptive agenda – be it religious, secular, liberal or traditional. We might then discover that – in the name of increasing school independence – the 2010 Academies Act has given the centre all the power it needs to tell teachers how to teach.