When the school where I taught for 23 years went “grant-maintained” in the early 1990s, I had an uneasy feeling that it was putting children in charge of the tuck shop (Editorial, 14 March). The Blair government’s conversion of grant-maintained schools into foundation schools, largely independent of the democratically accountable local education authorities (LEAs), and the conversion under subsequent governments of most schools to academies, largely independent of the LEA (unless, of course, they were deemed to be failing), was just another example of casting around for alternative solutions instead of making a perfectly adequate model work properly.
It has now ended up with so-called multi-academy trusts, with superheads/CEOs ultimately accountable to central government in what are, to all intents and purposes, privatised LEAs. We need to scrap all such unaccountable organisations and return state schools to LEA control, whose sole purpose should be to provide schools for the local community.
John Marriott
Lincoln
• Good to see the Guardian calling out the appalling burden being placed on the state education budget by the academy model of school governance. Your editorial says that research shows that an average top slice of 7.4% is taken from school budgets to cover burgeoning central management costs.
When Stockport local education authority – which I served as chief education officer – was subject to an Ofsted inspection in 2001, the inspectors reported central management costs of £29 per pupil – something under 2% of the total spend per child. No school had chosen to “opt out” of council control, as they could have done under government policy.
The Ofsted report concluded that the council was “a good LEA with few areas of significant weakness” and that its “services for vulnerable pupils are exceptionally consistent in their effectiveness”. Of course, there were no highly paid chief executives remote from school classrooms, and education committee members were accountable to their local electorate.
Max Hunt
Bewdley, Worcestershire
• On the question of academies, I was amazed that there is no inspection of academy governing bodies, only the schools within their jurisdiction. I appreciate that the original idea was to get “professionals” on board. However, the opposite seems to have occurred. In my area, the same people, with the same educational views, are sitting on the governing bodies of several schools at the same time. At least with the old system the local authority had some form of representation. The benefits appear to favour the lucky few who run the academy trusts, and not the education of our children.
Timothy McQuay
Hayle, Cornwall
• As a governor of a community secondary school, I was very anxious about the inspectorate’s feedback at our latest inspection.
The governance of our rural school was at stake, and with it the possibility of the school being taken out of the community’s hands and being given over to a distant, undemocratic multi-academy trust out of touch with our parents and students.
However, following that feedback, we governors can retain one of our core aspirations – to be the very last community school in England to resist academisation.
Prof Colin Richards
Spark Bridge, Cumbria
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