A SCHOOLING SYSTEM WE MIGHT WANT -AND NEED (original) (raw)

Teachers on Strike: a struggle for the future of teaching?

FORUM, 2013

Teachers in England and Wales are involved in the largest campaign of industrial action since the mid-1980s. At the heart of their grievances are government plans to abolish a national framework for teachers' pay and the removal of important safeguards relating to working conditions. Wider questions of workload and pensions are also involved. This article argues that the changes to teachers' pay and working conditions cannot be divorced from the wider objective of establishing a largely privatised system of state-subsidised schooling. Such a goal is based on a much-changed vision of teaching, which in turns assumes a low-cost, flexible and fragmented workforce. The article seeks to link the changes proposed to teachers' pay and conditions to wider changes in the nature of teaching as work and the future of teaching as a profession. It argues that the teachers' pay dispute opens up important possibilities to interrupt the trajectory of current policy and to create spaces to present alternative visions of the future of teaching and what a democratic and public education system might look like.

DEMOCRATIC OPTIMISM AND AUTHORITY IN AN INCREASINGLY DEPOLITICISED SCHOOLS ‘SYSTEM’ IN ENGLAND

2018

This paper reports initial outcomes from a short series of semi-structured interviews in 2017 with senior politicians from three parties elected to two contrasting English local authorities (LAs): an urban city authority and a largely rural shire county. These were complemented by continuing interviews with senior officers and head teachers, of both academies and maintained schools, some with positions in multi-academy trusts (MATs), and critical readings of LA strategic documents. Interviews focused on the nature of democratic authority in what is an increasingly privatised schools system in the sense that school governance and decision making have moved steadily away from the authority inherent in democratic representation of a local community towards a more technical (or technicist) conception that depends more on ‘people with the right skills, experience, qualities and capacity’ (DfE, 2017: 10). This process has been described as ‘depoliticisation’ (Ball, 2007), or even ‘destalization’ (Jessop, 2002), whereby there is little public disagreement or debate about schools’ role in achieving national objectives (for example, social mobility). And the new technologies underpinning these changes have in turn engendered new governmentalities and discursive formations focused on little except better ‘outcomes’ (Wilkins, 2016). The principal policy in pursuit of these aims in English schools has been the process of academisation, whereby schools have been steadily removed from the purview of LAs, however etiolated, to be funded directly by central government on the basis of a contract with the minister. More recently, schools have been more progressively organised into Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) – voluntarily or involuntarily – in processes overseen by Regional Schools Commissioners, central government officials also responsible directly to the minister (Riddell, 2016). Politicians interviewed varied in their support for academisation - not always in ways that might be expected to reflect party affiliation – but all felt that schools had an important contribution to make to the realisation of their strategic aims, from economic development to lifelong learning. In addition, they were interested in what happened to the children of their constituents and all felt local authorities needed to engage with schools, reporting varying success in doing so. All acknowledged the difficulties inherent in a system increasingly organised de facto to exclude them, especially with MATs with wider regional or national roles with the attendant more remote offices and boards. According to some politicians (and officers), responses from MATs varied but having an elected mayor in the city authority was seen as one significant mechanism. Nearly all were optimistic for the future. The paper sets these initial findings in the context of what one interviewee described as a ‘stalled process’ (of economic reform), with central government not willing or able to respond to their concerns about the management of the system, especially since the 2017 general election. The reported absence of any space in the national legislative programme for schools because of the preparations for BREXIT means that even the much-discussed National Funding Formula (for school budgets) will be implemented via LAs for maintained schools, retaining some discretion, not the original intention (DfE, 2016: 68). Nor is the process of academisation by any means complete; nor, it is argued, is it ever likely to be. At the time of the first interviews, Regional Schools Commissioners were in the early stages of setting up ‘Sub-Regional Schools Improvement Boards’ involving senior LA representatives, that will most likely remain ‘strategic partners’. In addition, according to several interviewees, a paper setting out the proposed statutory roles of LAs to be amended by subsequent legislation had been drafted before the 2017 election, but not published since. Whereas it could be argued that the newer system based on school collaboration increasingly organised through MATs, overseen by Regional Schools Commissioners, might be more consistent and reliable in attaining greater equity in educational outcomes, a focus so limited leaves major moral (as opposed to technical) questions concerning the nature of ‘state’ schooling in England unanswered in policy: what democratic oversight will local and national communities have of their children’s education; how can and will parents be deeply involved.

Remodelling the school workforce in England: a study in tyranny

Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 2007

Remodelling the school workforce is being rolled out across England with official purposes articulated around work-life balance, improving standards, and the need to efficiently and effectively deploy staffing. This is not new and can be related to ongoing policy thrusts designed to restructure the state as manifest in the haphazard construction of sitebased management from the late 1980s. I intend developing an intellectual argument about ways in which researchers and practitioners can engage with this major piece of government reform. Central to this argument will be to examine the how tyrannies form, how they work, how they sustain themselves and how they end. In particular, I will be examining the power structures that are embedded within Remodelling, and how the experiences of practitioners who are being remodelled and who are doing remodelling can be described, understood and explained. England are undergoing rapid centralised modernisation with structural and cultural changes taking place to those who practice, how they practice, who they practice with, and for what purpose. Consequently, the division of labour in regard to the place of teachers, their work and how they relate to other adults is being radically changed. New roles are being created to do with securing organisational efficiencies and effectiveness, new types of credentials are being required such as business administration, and new power relationships are being developed within the range of adults being employed, and in a situation where more non-teachers may work in a school than teachers. The reform is known as Remodelling the School Workforce and it has

The tragedy of state education in England: Reluctance, compromise and muddle— a system in disarray

Journal of the British Academy

This paper is a reflection on the current state of education and education policy in England drawn from over forty years of my involvement in education policy research. It articulates a strong sense of my discomfort, disappointment, and frustra tion with the current state of the English education system and with the educational state. I shall take stock and look across the school system, confining myself to com pulsory education, and argue that there is no 'system' at all. Rather, I suggest, the current iteration of school reform perpetuates and exacerbates the messiness and incoherence, and the mix of meddlesomeness and reluctance, that have always bedevilled education policy in England and at the same time reproduces and legit imates complex social divisions and inequalities embedded in this messiness. I also look back at the several attempts to impose some sort of order on the delivery of schooling (1870, 1902, 1944, 1988, and 2016) and the discordant interests that have confounded these attempts, particularly in relation to church schools.

Local authorities as actors in the emerging “school-led” system in England

Educational Review, 2020

Most research to date about the English government's policy to make schools independent of local authorities (LAs) has looked at the 'macro' level of national policy and at the 'micro' level of the institution. The study of which this article is a part explores changes at the 'meso' level of the locality. Over a period of six years 52 semi-structured interviews were carried out with key actors at school, LA and local system levels in three areas. Participants were chosen purposively because of their key positions in the local schooling systems. The article focuses on the role of the LA as an actor in the 'school led' system, and explores how LAs are repositioning their role and enacting influence in new ways. The article also discusses how changes in local arenas over time have been affected by the different responses to academisation of primary and secondary schools. The article uses an adaptive theory methodology to bring together theorising set out in earlier articles and theory generated by others with theory generated from this new analysis.

The benefiting lessons from Britain's public education system and its sources of funding

Sohag University International Journal of Educational Research

The Britain's public education system is subject to the supervision of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Skills. The local authorities (LA) are responsible for implementing public education policies, with supervision public schools at the local level. Britain has achieved-in its public education-the principles of free education for all , education that achieves equal educational opportunities , and is linked to work most closely , education that provides general culture in accordance with the English concept of general culture , education that removes barriers between public education and vocational education , education that strikes a balance between desires Individuals and community needs. The Britain's public education spending is second only to health within public spending in the UK, at around £ 90 billion in (2017-2018), or about 4.3% of national income. From a review of Britain's experiences in financing public education we draw the following results:-There is a partnership between colleges of education in Britain to support public education schools through teachers 'communication with professors of colleges of education through the site that links schools and colleges with work to establish camps within colleges of education in which school teachers and other college students from various disciplines participate in developing the cooperative work.-Professional and labor unions in Britain participate in continuous awareness among their members in the field of educational expenditures in order to support educational funding.