Will another initiative help to improve standards in schools?

Last updated 16:30, Monday, 26 May 2008

The announcement of a Performance Improvement Board, to help improve the performance of secondary schools in Cumbria, is a salutary reminder that central and local government policy on education remains as confused as ever.

For nearly 30 years successive governments have preached the gospel of more independence for schools.

When Tony Blair came to power he, quite rightly, “saw off” an attempt by his left wing to restore more control to local authorities. Since then the move towards greater freedom has gathered pace.

Academies, foundation and trust schools and aided schools make up a sizeable percentage of the entire school population.

They not only employ their own staff but also have greater autonomy in relation to issues such as building schools for the future. Mind you, community schools are not that far behind when it comes to decision making.

This is all designed to give heads and governing bodies greater control over standards and the way in which recourses are deployed to achieve higher and higher standards.

Accountability has been sharpened up, both through agencies such as Ofsted, with its relatively new regime, and via the dreaded league tables.

Billions of pounds of both local and national government money has been spent on initiative after initiative, all designed to lever up standards, so that, for instance, this country might start to perform respectably in terms of international comparisons.

Yet in Cumbria results at Key Stages 3 and 4 appear to have plateaued or even gone into reverse.

Of course it would be quite wrong to suggest that all initiatives are worthless or that all quangoes are a waste of space. Undoubtedly there will be real successes, such as extended schooling.

But all too often yet another initiative or yet another quango is seen as the answer to yet another educational problem.

No evaluation of its purpose or impact is carried out and the poor old taxpayer is asked to foot the bill.

This is partly why I question the need for another Cumbrian quango.

What is it going to achieve that Cumbria County Council is not already supposed to achieve? Is it a confession that the local authority is failing in one of its core functions?

Does it mean yet another layer of bureaucracy which will divert hard-pressed heads and governors from their task of raising standards for all the pupils in their care?

This comes at a time when the national debate about standards continues unabated.

I have always been suspicious about government targets because politicians can rarely resist the temptation to fiddle the system in order to get as close as they can to success, measured in these crude terms.

That is why it is so important that a discussion about reforms to the current system takes place without people talking from entrenched positions.

I notice that the NUT secretary for Cumbria opined in The Cumberland News that Scotland’s education system is better than England’s because the former does not have SATs or league tables.

Even if it were true that the system is better across the border, and there would be a fair old ding dong on that issue alone, the absence of SAT’s and league tables would be only a small part of a much bigger picture.

So the NUT’s contribution to the debate is somewhat superficial.

What is needed is a much more reasoned analysis of the key issues that really concern teachers, parents, governors and students.

This government came into power on the back of the motto “Education, education, education”.

It is liable to be facing the next election with “Initiative, initiative, initiative” ringing in its ears.

By that time it will be too late to ask itself the question once asked by an excellent head. “If my filing cabinet full of local and central government bumpf went up in flames would it make any difference to the standard of education in this school?”

His answer, and I suspect the answer of many, was “No”.