By 2030 every school in England, primary, secondary, sixth form and forest school, will need to be a member of a Multi Academy Trust (MAT). This would represent the final step of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings’ shake up of the Education sector, started way back in 2012 against the ‘Blob’; the unions, teachers themselves, all finally crushed beneath the machinations of the man who is often argued to be the Tories only successful minister of their 12 years in power.
Transferring one school and changing the leadership and body that controls it is one thing. It is a very different proposal to force all schools to transfer to new ownership and management, one that replicates the problem supposedly being addressed: that of uniformity stifling progress and lack of ingenuity. While many MATs contain some of the higher performing schools, they also contain some of the lowest performing too.
Academies currently make up 80% of secondary schools, 40% of primary schools, and 43% of special school academies as of June this year. With this in mind, it’s inevitable that academies have advocates. However, said advocates are yet to square the fact that academies have gone from being merely one perfectly legitimate choice schools had at their disposal to potentially improve standards, to something imposed on every school whether they like it or not.
It’s almost traditional for an educator (I’m a Cover Teacher), to rail against the new education orthodoxy, and it’s not even like academies are something new from the Tories, with Tony Blair facing significant criticism for his early forays into them. There have been many instances of an academy trust failing and the schools having to be integrated with another, usually much bigger MAT, more able to handle the financial strains inherent in education nowadays.
To many reformers in government it seemed that academies were a bonafide panacea, despite the warnings otherwise. However, even Academy leaders are calling out for more funding and help from the government, the same as local authorities. Academies face the same problems as other educational centres; lack of funds for staff pay increases and the ever present threat of the rising costs of energy.
Academies being able to set their own pay and conditions, along with increased exclusion rates compared to other schools has been a factor in the major recruitment issues schools face. The government’s solution? Create more academies.
Forcing through these reforms now, when the threat of strikes looms larger than ever and the exodus of teachers marches inexorably on, is foolhardy at best and arrogantly hubristic at worst. Public sector workers have learned to put up with enough over the last decade when it comes to working conditions and pay. The government seems to think that the limit for educators is endless, gambling on the desire to teach trumping any desire by an educator to be treated with dignity. In education, as in health, workers’ needs are seen as secondary.
If the government wants to make the argument that complete academisation of Education is needed, then they need to actually make that argument, not simply push a bill through parliament that lacks any foresight or vision of what their end goal is.
It’s this that’s most galling about this latest push for academisation. The government won, the reforms were pushed through in spite of the intense opposition. But this will to act doesn’t extend further. Where is the push to clear the backlog of CAMHS referrals? Where’s the money for a proper catch up tutoring service? Where’s the reversal of the cuts to bursaries across a range of subjects to entice students to study and eventually teach them? What was the thinking behind those cuts which have led us again to miss our recruitment targets for teachers? Where is their vision for the future of our children? That’s the reality of working in education in 2022, endless problems, endlessly begging for the help to fix them, while receiving answers to questions never asked.
The government used to argue they wanted to make more schools academies because of a lack of choice in the education system. They will soon have no more local authorities to conquer, and it will be the teachers, again, who will have to find a way to deal with it – or do as many have done already and quit.