It’s time for Nicky Morgan to trust local people to run schools rather than impose change from Whitehall

The Government talks a good game on devolution but that talk seems lost on the Department for Education. On Thursday, the Government’s Education white paper demanded every school become an academy by 2020 or signed up to have become one by 2022 – regardless of whether they are failing or outstanding.

As the rest of Whitehall is devolving power on business rates, social care and transport, more or less enthusiastically, the Department for Education’s approach has been centralist to its core. I’m not going to argue against the whole academies programme. In Haringey academies have delivered better outcomes for some of our children. And that success has been replicated across the country. But not all academies have been a success and an ideological approach to reducing local authorities’ influence on the education in their boroughs risks reversing some of the enormous progress councils across the country have made in delivering huge improvements in school standards.

Good heads and teachers know a school is not an island. What goes on in a school, and how successful its pupils are depends on a range of factors from how good early years and primary provision was in the borough to what was going on in the child’s family and the wider community as they grow up.  

Schools that are divorced from the wider local education networks will find it ever harder to achieve high standards that national systems demand of them.

I’m proud that almost all Haringey’s schools, however they are structured, work together. They work with the local authority. And they work with local charities, businesses, sports clubs and other organisations who call Haringey home. This work is vital to ensuring children and young people are able to succeed in their education. But of course this is harder when schools are part of national academy chains that don’t recognise the need for strong local partnership. Building local multi-academy trusts from within the borough is one way of ensuring everyone works together to give children the best start in life.

In Haringey nearly all our schools are good or outstanding and 100 per cent of our secondary schools reach this level. Similarly, 100 per cent of our special schools do and more than 90 per cent of our primaries do also. The schools have been challenged and supported to get to this position by Haringey council. But if Nicky Morgan and George Osborne get their way all these schools will become academies, with a significantly reduced role for local authorities and no role for parents on the governing body.

We have a family of schools in Haringey who we work closely with. From community schools to academies, we provide advice and challenge. We answer to local people for schools’ performance. Schools value that role. They support each other. But the Government’s imposition of major structural change, management and governance comes with no evidence that this new system would work better. It will cut out all the local people who have helped to make schools in Haringey and across the country dynamic and successful. And it will mean that instead of heads and governors focusing all their effort and resources on improving standards, they’ll have to divert their energies into a new system of organisation which will see elected parent-governors disappear and the absence of any local accountability. For some schools, different governance structures may help drive up standards and share resources. But that decision should be based on the best interests of pupils, not on a diktat from Number 11 Downing Street.

This unwelcome change comes on top of the Government’s consultation on the national funding formula. This is set to mean schools will have fewer resources as they work around the clock to improve standards, cope with a changing curriculum and manage the demands from DfE.

The last time the Government proposed such a large scale top-down reorganisation was when Andrew Lansley led the NHS into crisis. That reorganisation of health services led to standards falling, not rising. We don’t want that to happen with our schools. We want schools that are accountable to local people. Schools that work with their community. And schools that give our children the best start in life. As Haringey’s cabinet member for children and families I’m committed to continuing to work with all our schools – whatever their governance structures – to ensure this happens. It’s time for Nicky Morgan and George Osborne to trust local people rather than imposing change from Whitehall.

Ann Waters is Haringey Council cabinet member for Children and Families