Forced academisation must trigger co-op action

The lack of any reference to co-operative schools in the government’s latest Education White Paper is an oversight too far. In the headlong drive to full academisation –...

The lack of any reference to co-operative schools in the government’s latest Education White Paper is an oversight too far. In the headlong drive to full academisation – or forced academisation – Ministers have set out the biggest system change in over a century of public education; and co-operative schools don’t appear to be part of the picture.

The legal process of becoming an academy will involve almost 16,000 schools, together with simultaneous changes affecting school budgets, staffing, contracts, premises – in fact everything about the way the education system works. This is a big change and one that should be a wake up call for co-operative schools.

The White Paper claims that it will help “empower local communities, putting children and parents first”. In truth, enforced academisation risks losing the benefits of parental choice, partnership working and the diversity that has always existed in England’s school system. There are just sixteen mentions of ‘community’ in the new White Paper, 57 of ‘Multi-Academy Trusts’ and 12 of ‘collaboration’ – but not one single word on co-operative schools.

What does the future hold for co-operative schools?

For the family of over 850 co-operative schools in England, this should be worrying. The government has failed to recognise that there are already many outstanding and successful approaches to improving school performance, not least the many hundreds of education partnership co-operative trusts, which over the last ten years have become a national movement for the delivery of good learning communities.

Andrew Pakes
Andrew Pakes

While the White Paper is big on structural reform, it says little on action to tackle teacher shortages, the lack of good school places or the widening attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers. According to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, schools are already facing an 8% cut to their budgets.

Good schools should be accountable to parents, governors and communities

For anyone who is a teacher or a school governor, the pressure on budgets will be increasingly familiar. These reforms could add further to budget woes. As Labour’s shadow education secretary Lucy Powell – also a Co-operative MP – has highlighted, the government has not answered how it will fund academy conversion, estimated at £44,000 per school, for 16,000 schools.

The major disappointment, however, is the lack of recognition for the local accountability of schools. Good schools should be accountable to parents, governors and communities. The priority should be on school improvement, creating resilience and self-responsibility for pupils, and co-operation and sharing best practice between schools. This value could be lost if the government presses ahead with its preferred model for all schools to be part of a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT). The White Paper accelerates the move to “fully-skilled based governance” and scraps reserved places for parent governors. The co-operative model offers a positive alternative to the traditional MAT, either through a trust model or working with co-operative academies to embed accountability and community values at the core of schools.

Gareth Thomas
Gareth Thomas

On the day the White Paper was launched, Co-operative MP and Co-operative Party chair, Gareth Thomas, raised the issue of co-operative schools directly with the education secretary.

The Co-operative Party has long been a champion of co-op schools, but this is now a job for all of us. This means building on emerging networks and improving our offer to support schools. It means doing more to demonstrate the benefits of mutual collaboration, and becoming better advocates for co-operative education.

While Ofsted has highlighted serious concerns about some MATs, we need more evidence of how the co-operative model is working effectively to contribute to school performance. There is still time to influence government thinking, but the time is now.

Andrew Pakes is a co-operative activist and school governor at a co-operative academy. He tweets at @andrew4mk

In this article

Join the Conversation