Nick Clegg says education reforms carry risk of huge centralisation of power

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/24/nick-clegg-warning-schools-centralisation-power

Version 0 of 1.

Nick Clegg has warned that the government's education reforms carry the risk of a huge centralisation of power unless all schools, including free schools and academies, are linked to a "middle tier" of accountability and not just the Department for Education.

The deputy prime minister said he was preparing proposals for such a tier to be included in the party's election manifesto, in what could be another break with Conservative education policy.

In a speech on Thursday, he also angered his coalition partners by calling for all free schools and academies to teach the national curriculum and recruit only qualified, trained teachers.

Clegg set out his call for a middle tier of regulation as he insisted he wanted to see a new ecosystem of schools in which there is greater innovation and independence. At the same time, he warned the new system of 20,000 schools enjoying freedoms might unwittingly lead to centralisation as they became answerable only to Whitehall. He argued that it was not sustainable for the Department for Education to try to oversee 20,000 schools.

He said he had been trying to kickstart a debate about what common standards might continue to exist as schools gain more freedoms, and added: "But equally there is a perfectly legitimate debate to be had, if the system is organised increasingly around lots of individual relationships between individual schools and the department of education, how do you make sure that does not unwittingly become tantamount to recentralisation?

"So you need to think again for the future how you introduce what is called a middle tier. It is one of the reasons that [schools minister] David Laws, myself and the Liberal Democrats are working up ideas to put in the manifesto … to make sure that we don't have this lopsided relationship between one person in the secretary of state's office in the department of education and 23,000 individual schools. That clearly is not a sustainable way of arranging things."

Laws has acknowledged that his department has the capacity to intervene in all schools, but it is the first time that Clegg has said that the Lib Dems have proposals for a middle tier structure for inclusion in the party's manifesto. Labour had been looking at the same issue in its policy review under its previous shadow education secretary, Stephen Twigg.

It is not clear that the education secretary, Michael Gove, sees a case for a middle tier and some of his aides fear it may represent a return of local authority control, which reforms such as academies and free schools were designed to prevent.

With academies not subject to local government oversight and more and more schools converting to academy status, the traditional middle tier is gradually disappearing. Nearly 3,000 schools are now operating outside LEA control, and even though Clegg wants all schools to teach the national curriculum and employ qualified teachers, he expects all or most schools to gain academy-style freedoms. As many as half the secondary schools in England will be academies by the election.

The functions of a middle tier in the education system would be likely to be accountability, special educational needs, admissions monitoring, expulsions policy, school support services and place planning.

The Department for Education has set up regional school intervention units, but its resources are limited.

Labour said on Thursday it would stage a debate and vote next week to put to the test the Liberal Democrat support for qualified teachers in free schools.

Laws told the education select committee on Wednesday he opposed the use of unqualified teachers, but "in a coalition it is necessary sometimes to vote for things that are not your first preference".

The Conservatives claim the plans would kill the innovation that is at the heart of the government's school reforms. They point out that the Liberal Democrats signed up for the Wolf report on vocational education that weakened training requirements in maintained schools so that such schools could bring in "instructors" for vocational education who were not qualified teachers.

Conservative sources added: "Academies can use this freedom to hire who they want, plus their pay freedom to pay them what they like. Is Nick Clegg saying he is going to stop that?"

Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning.