Agent 151: Goodbye Mr Chips
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James Hilton wrote a novella published in 1934 about the faithful schoolteacher Mr. Chipping, who dedicated 43 years of his life to the fictional Brookfield Grammar School.
Although Chipping’s qualifications were regarded as second rate, he became a much loved and highly respected figure in the school, known affectionately by all as Mr. Chips. He died in the year 1933 (as Adolf Hitler was rising to power); a man who had transcended petty politics and represented all that was good about the British education system.
Chips’s story has many parallels with the history of local government in managing schools, not least of which is the announcement of the ‘retirement’ after 114 years of councils from having any say in the provision of primary and secondary education.
If Hilton’s tale is unashamedly sentimental, something which these days is looked down upon somewhat, it nonetheless feels apt: many of us will indeed be feeling a tad ‘sentimental’ in the wake of George Osborne’s budget.
Mr. Osborne said that all schools in England will either have to convert to academies by 2020 or be committed to converting by 2022. Any schools not meeting these requirements will be the subject of government intervention and forced to become an academy.
This is the pursuit of political dogma that goes far beyond the manifesto on which the government was elected, but it also highlights deep-seated frustration with the performance of schools. The government, egged on by Department for Education officials, has the belief that it can do better than local authorities in driving up standards.
Colleagues who do not work in education may well feel that given the existing messy situation of mixed schools provision and the rollercoaster speed of change, a title more reflective of their feelings would be ‘Good Riddance, Mr Chips’.
After all, the announcement signals the removal of a big headache that represents a large proportion of local authority spending.
However, colleagues in council education departments point out that unless the government has further changes planned, councils will continue to have education-related responsibilities such as school place planning, provision of school sites, creation of new schools, expansion projects to meet “basic need” demand for additional pupil places, co-ordination of the admissions system, and oversight of the safeguarding of children in schools.
We do not know how the funding for this will work, but we do know that councils will have much less direct influence with schools, making the role much harder.
Many of the services that were previously funded through the old system will probably now be directly funded through the pupil premium, a source of funding controlled by academies and not councils, which means that academies could decide not to spend the money on the services councils feel are important.
Despite the ring fence surrounding the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG), council finances are deeply entangled with education funding.
Councils have invested a great deal in the acquisition of sites and the construction of school assets over the years. They will effectively be giving up control of the school estate and the associated development opportunities; quite a prize in an inner-city environment where land values are rocketing.
The opportunity to influence schools to use balances and make revenue contributions to capital outlay (RCCO’s) to fund school expansion will diminish greatly, as will the ability to reach agreement with schools to use DSG to supplement early intervention funding.
Councils will continue to offer to provide support services to academies, but it will be up to the academy schools which of those services they buy back.
At present, some schools buy back some of the services while others buy different ones or none at all. The risk here is that economies of scale could be lost if academies opt out of council provided services, undermining the viability of those services and threatening redundancies for council staff.
One can’t help feeling that Mr. Osborne’s budget announcement is entirely inconsistent with the rhetoric about devolution.
The government says it is devolving responsibility to the point of delivery – i.e. the academy school – but in fact it is centralizing the education system, as the DfE will jolly soon find out when something goes wrong at a school.
I am looking forward to the inevitable sequel, ‘Welcome Back Mr. Chips’, or more likely ‘Mr. Chips To The Rescue’.
