by Ron Glatter
The standards vs structures debate: schools shouldn't have to choose
Politicians may be working hard to emphasise the importance of quality teaching and leadership in schools, but neither can thrive without the right framework
Two politicians from opposing parties were singing the same song last month. Speaking at the North of England Education Conference, Tristram Hunt, the relatively new shadow education secretary, bemoaned: "The relentless focus on structural change in our schooling system" mainly through opening large numbers of academies and free schools.
He said if elected Labour would adopt a different approach, emphasising teacher quality, symbolised by his announcement that teachers would have to be regularly relicensed.
A day later, at the same conference in Nottingham, David Laws, the Liberal Democrat minister for education, concluded his speech by remarking: "The subject of teaching and leadership is hugely important, but is too often neglected in favour of more ideological debates about structural reform".
I've seen such diversity regarding this change of schools' structures (organisation, ruling authority) in England ranging from schools being truly coerced into academy status compared to other schools where people cannot wait to gain the freedoms they think that becoming an academy provides.This is hugely important in the context of the current extreme atomisation of the school system with its many distinct types of school, unparalleled among comparable countries internationally, which is generating very large problems of both equity and manageability as well as great complexity and instability. Having two starkly different regimes of funding and oversight and totally separate legal bases for broadly similar schools only adds to the confusion.
It is an exceptional situation which presents formidable challenges to political parties that it would be irresponsible of them to duck, simply in order to secure a quieter life. They should plan to pick up the pieces of a fractured and chaotic system, ensure that all state-funded schools are on a level playing-field, inject coherence and order into the provision so that the options available can be clearly understood by all parents (and, where relevant, learners) and allow significant decisions to be made at local level.
Great contrasts - great upheavals.