As anyone who follows this blog will know,
I could not be described as a fan of this government’s perverse education
policy yet there are some exciting opportunities around that help to balance
the bonkers ideas. I’ve just found myself nodding at Gove’s rejection of his
backbenchers’ calls for a return to Grammar schools, saying they were not the
‘magic bullet’ many supposed them. This
seems a little different from the neo-conservative reactionism we have come to
expect from the Secretary of State who many, including this writer, have often
accused as having a desire to re-create the education system of his childhood.
It might have something to do with the drubbing the Tories received in the
local elections, but far be it from me to suggest that.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of
Reading, David Bell is better remembered as that long-serving Permanent
Secretary at the DfE who was once New Labour’s HMCI and who served in Whitehall
under four Secretaries of State. Bell commented on the ease with which the Gove
steamroller has bowled on without much serious opposition, citing two reasons
for this lack of resistance. First, Gove spent a lot of time in opposition
“rolling the pitch: in other words, preparing the ground for what he wanted to
do.” Secondly, he claimed, the DfE’s policies are “genuinely driven by local
demand…The vast majority of teachers in those schools are seeing the benefits
of their school having more control over what it does. There’s a sense in which
this is just going with the grain.”[1]
There are many who would disagree with this
‘local demand’ – converting to Academy status is frequently the result of fear
of trying to operate as an LA school while the LA is struggling to keep going
or of DfE bullying and coercion. I am
Chair of Governors of a large Junior School and we have twice had the Academy
discussion but, somehow, it’s just not that alluring and there doesn’t seem to
be the will to take the risk. And it is a risk – the financials do not stack up
quite as favourably as they do for us in an LA context and there is a lot more
isolation for the headteacher; the buck comes to an even more sudden stop when
there is not a LA officer to criticise!
It is a pity that our LA is picking its way
round the ruins of its own collapsed empire. It seems to have rather more
schools than it can properly service with the rump of its resources. But
somehow, it is a comforting billet…for the moment. I was once told by a Man from the Ministry,
‘Oh, you’ll become an Academy…. one way or another’. Was that a threat? Surely not!
Nevertheless, the changed landscape of the
strange admixture of schools that now characterise UK education, is throwing up
some extraordinary opportunities for those prepared to take the risk. Each week
I look at the TES and see posts that I would have killed for: strange and
exciting opportunities to forge a unique future and shape education, a real
chance to make a difference. But there,
I have always liked the element of risk and thrived on instability. There are
plenty of my colleagues, good headteachers whom I respect, who are not risk
takers and who run highly successful schools. In this Brave New World of
opportunity, is there still a place for them? The trouble with risk taking is
that it is quite as easy to get it wrong as it is to get it right and, even at
this stage in Govian education, the machine is driving over the corpses of the
risk takers for whom it all went horribly wrong.
But, were I looking for a headship right now, in the current fairground of education there are many really thrilling rides and I look at some of these roller-coasters in envy. From time to time I consider going back into headship but then I think I am probably better to use my experience and expertise in working alongside my colleagues - the risk takers and the safe-players.
It’s a funny old world. Let’s hope, like the
GM Schools debacle, we can look back one day and laugh. Hmm.
