Emerging local schooling landscapes: the role of the local authority

Abstract

The school system in England is undergoing rapid change, with the government creating more than 4000 ‘independent publicly funded schools’, known as academies, since 2010. The potential for fragmentation is considerable with diversity of governance emerging as a key feature of the new schooling landscape. Consequently, a major and widely recognised issue to which these reforms give rise concerns the future of the ‘middle tier’ –that layer between individual schools or groups of schools and central government. There are competing visions of how a future middle tier might evolve: one focuses entirely on a middle tier of individual schools and chains as a ‘self-improving system’; others conceive a continuing but revised role for the local authority (LA). The aim of this paper is to begin to explore the latter position, and in particular the potential role of the LA as a ‘broker’ of new patterns of school organisation. Drawing on interview data from three very different LA areas, the findings show that LAs differ in how they conceive their role and, consequently, on the strategies that they pursue.

Keywords:

• restructuring
• academies
• local authorities
• school chains
• governance
• brokering

Funding

The research on which this paper was based was part-funded by the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society.

Notes on contributors

Tim Simkins is Professor of Education Management at Sheffield Hallam University. He is a former secretary and chair, and currently Professional Officer of the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society. His research interests concern the interface between national policy and institutional management, organisational and resource management issues in schools and colleges, evaluation of leadership development programmes and educational leadership in developing countries.

John Coldron is Professor of Education at Sheffield Hallam University where he was Assistant Dean for Research in the Faculty of Development and Society. He taught in primary schools in Huddersfield and Barnsley for 13 years before becoming a teacher educator and researcher. His research interests and publications include education policy, parental choice of school, admissions, the professional development of teachers and the philosophy of practice.

Prof. Megan Crawford is Director of the Plymouth Institute of Education. She previously worked at the University of Cambridge. She is on the Executive of the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society, and was its Chair from 2009 to 2011. Her new book on Leading and Managing in Education came out in 2014, published by Sage.

Dr Steve Jones has been a lecturer in the Faculty of Development and Society at Sheffield Hallam University since 2004, specialising in school leadership in highly disadvantaged communities, educational policy and internationalisation. He formerly spent much of his working life as a secondary school teacher in South Yorkshire. Steve is also a member of Sheffield City Council, representing an inner city area, also having been council deputy leader and chair of the South Yorkshire Pensions Authority.

Notes

1. There are other alternatives, for example the concept of a local school commissioner (Hill 2012), a post more locally – and possibly democratically – grounded than the regional commissioners established by the DfE.

2. TES Breaking News at http://news.tes.co.uk/b/news/2013/12/05/dfe-advertises-for-163-140k-a-year-commissioners-to-oversee-academies-and-free-schools.aspx.

3. The three areas for our study were chosen to provide diversity and explore the interaction between context and outcomes in terms of emerging patterns of schooling. They do that. However, it would be dangerous to suggest that their experiences can be taken as an adequate representation of patterns nationally. It is likely that elsewhere both local and regional factors will drive rather different emerging patterns.

4. Quotes are attributed to the first or second interview with each interviewee. Where there is no such attribution there was only one interview with that respondent.

5. Foundation schools continue to be funded through the LA but have greater freedom than community schools.

6. The government establishes ‘floor standards’ for student attainment. Schools that fall below these standards are at risk of compulsory conversion to academies.

7. It is recognised that the views reported here represent officer views and that deeper political perspectives might have been obtained by interviewing local politicians and drawing on policy documents.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: The research on which this paper was based was part-funded by the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society.