Issue 71 - May 2019 News and views from Campaign for State Education MULTI-ACADEMY TRUSTS: PANORAMIC VISION th On Monday, March 25 , the BBC’s Panorama programme exposed the scan- Coming to the AGM at dalous behaviour of two multi-academy trusts (MATs). Hamilton House, Mabledon In one case, a thriving school for excluded pupils was taken over by a MAT Place, London WC1H 9BD on which then allowed the buildings to decay while continuing to pay huge sala- ries to managers. It also failed from the outset to pay utility and other bills, Saturday 18th May? resulting in disconnection notices and the loss of other essential services. We do hope so. Lunch is first at The appalling financial state of what had previously been a well-run school 12.30pm. Then you can hear created such high levels of stress that both the Head and her Deputy are now excellent speakers. too ill to work. ● Natasha Devon is a writer and activist who talks with parents In a second case, a primary school head abused her position as leader of a and young people in schools small MAT by employing numerous relatives in positions for which by no means all of them were remotely suitable. She also pressured her staff into about mental health, gender assisting children during SATs examinations, a blatant form of cheating. and social equality. ● Madeleine Holt is an education th This programme was a follow-up to one aired on September 10 last year, campaigner and founder of the which exposed malpractice by Bright Tribe Trust and Wakefield City ‘More than a Score’ campaign Academies Trust. against SATs. In the case of Bright Tribe, large sums of money had been claimed and CASE is working with other received from the government for construction and repair work which was education organisations and either completed to much cheaper specifications than those originally lobbying MPs to presented to the government by Bright Tribe or not carried out at all. make our education In the case of Wakefield, the programme found that the trust was, at best, system a place financially incompetent and wasted vast sums of public money in severance where children can payments to staff it should never have employed in the first place. This learn happily, but trust, which has collapsed, has also been accused of asset stripping. we need many more people to The incompetent DFE responds to these and other financial scandals by join us. complacently asserting that stories such as these are not the norm and that Come and tell us what you think there are no issues of this kind with “95%” of academies: in other words, needs to happen and what we can “only” one in every twenty academies is misusing public money! do together. Other bodies take a less complacent view. Meg Hillier, Chair of the Public Ac- counts Committee, recently referred to “the troubling consequences of poor governance and oversight of academy trusts”, while the Local Government Association has said, “it is now clear that the Department for Education does The day is free but you not have effective oversight of spending in more than 7000 academies.” MUST book your place in advance at This mess was, of course, entirely predictable. The idea that the DFE, which https://tinyurl.com/CASE- regularly fails to sign off on its own accounts, would be competent to ensure Happy. the financial probity of over 7000 schools was always a dishonest fantasy. CASE believes in a fully comprehensive, locally accountable and democratic education system. CASE notes 1 THE CASE FOR CASE: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE The origins of CASE lie in the 1960s, when many Through participating in current debate chiefly but not parents, dissatisfied with the post-war selective system entirely through conventional media outlets: in recent of secondary schooling, began to form groups to cam- years CASE representatives have regularly been seen paign for change. These groups, of which there were and heard on national and local TV and radio. TV in- about 100 by 1967, formed a loose alliance and became volvement has included BBC’s The Sunday Politics and The Confederation for the Advancement of State Look North and ITV Meridian. CASE has been regularly Education. LEAs were then much more powerful than invited to take part in discussions on six BBC local radio now and most of CASE’s important lobbying took place stations and occasionally on BBC Radio 5 Live. CASE also at local level. makes regular contributions to debates on Talk Radio and LBC. CASE spokespersons have also taken part in There were also CASE delegations to ministers and live debates at the Cambridge Union, the Oxford Union, letters to the Secretary of State, but it was a local Lancaster University and King’s College, London. Letters decision whether an area introduced comprehensive from NEC members regularly appear in the columns of schools, and CASE groups, by being locally based, could broadsheet newspapers and political magazines and affect not only this decision but also the kind of CASE is regularly asked for comments and/or informa- comprehensive system adopted. tion by both broadcast and print outlets, the most re- As well as campaigning for the introduction of compre- cent one being Channel 4 News. hensive schools, many CASE groups argued for the Through alliances with other organizations: CASE has greater involvement of parents in their children’s long recognised the need to work with like-minded schooling and campaigned for the introduction of par- groups and in 2011 was influential in the launch of ent-governors. This led to the inclusion of representa- Reclaiming Education, an umbrella group which has tives from CASE on the 1975 Taylor Committee, organised a very successful series of national conferenc- convened to consider the governance of schools. es. Currently Reclaiming Education has eight groups The declining influence of LEAs led to a steep decline in who are formally affiliated to it and it also enjoys CASE membership towards the end of the 1980s and in excellent relations with the principal teaching unions. 1990 the consultancy Public Voice was commissioned to Through the encouragement of local campaigns: examine how CASE should plan for the future. Follow- increasing parental dissatisfaction, especially since ing the report, the membership agreed that the original 2010, has led to the re-emergence of local campaigns, structure of the organization was no longer appropriate several of which have become local branches of CASE. and that CASE should become a national organization of Dissatisfaction centres chiefly on forced academisation, individual members, with a National Executive the growing sterility of the school curriculum and the Committee to direct affairs. This change reflected the unhappiness that this is causing to children and the increasing centralisation of educational decision making growing problem of serious underfunding. as successive Secretaries of State increased their powers at the expense of those of LEAs. Since these changes CASE is currently supporting a number of campaigns in were implemented, CASE has consistently punched well and around London and hopes to see these “green above its weight, aiming to work in five chief ways. shoots” develop and spread outwards to other parts of the country. Through conventional politics: members of CASE NEC regularly meet with politicians who have an interest in By their very nature, educational campaigns rarely education. In recent years meetings have been held create the widespread interest that is aroused by with the Chairs of the Education Select Committee and campaigns about, for example, the NHS. At any given with official spokespersons from opposition parties, time it is a minority of people who feel that they have a including the Shadow Secretary of State. It has proved direct stake in educational reform: essentially users of more difficult to meet with government spokespersons. the system and those who work within it and, without a sustained and determined effort by political leaders, Through the spread of information: CASE produces this is unlikely to change. Inevitably there is the danger printed briefings on current educational issues, which that campaigners will become discouraged by a national are widely distributed at political party conferences, discourse that seems to blend apathy with ignorance trades union events and educational conferences. CASE but, for the sake of our children’s future, this has to be also produces a regular newssheet – CASENotes – which resisted. CASE and its allies have never been more is sent to members and distributed more widely through needed than now. members’ contacts. CASE notes 2 ACADEMIC SELECTION IN NORTHERN IRELAND: THE NEVER-ENDING STRUGGLE By Tony Gallagher Northern Ireland adopted a selective system of secondary The debate continued until it got embroiled in political education in 1947. Existing grammar schools resisted the talks aimed at restoring the NI Assembly. For no obvious development and a compromise allowed half of them to reason the debate had fractured along sectarian lines, with take a reduced proportion of their intake through the new the main unionist parties favouring academic selection and 11+ and a higher proportion of fee-paying pupils, while the main nationalist parties favouring its abolition. accepting a lower level of public grant: only two grammar Legislation in 2006 included a clause banning academic schools still operate under these arrangements. selection, but the Blair government offered a veto to the Throughout the 1950s about 19 per cent of pupils were unionist parties in the St Andrews talks as a carrot to selected to attend grammar schools, although most of the persuade them to restore the Assembly. It was restored in rest continued in ‘unreformed elementary schools’ as it 2007, but the clause banning academic selection would was not until the end of that decade that sufficient new only come into effect if there was a consensus in the secondary schools had been constructed.