Ending the town hall grip on failing schools

The Conservatives are today announcing that they would remove all failing schools - over 500 of them  - from local authority control. I believe this is the right move.

To be fair to many local authorities there ability to run and influence schools is pretty non-existent as this Government has systematically taken away the power for them to involve themselves in the priorities of the budget they receive to give to schools. However, there are some local authorities ho are guilty of negligence, especially in areas of high deprivation.

So, the removal of schools from local authority control might be the only solution in the current environment.

However, I am concerned that this means the removal of local accountability. By nature I am one of those who believes accountability should lie pretty close to the people who elect you. This is why, in principle, I dislike the EU but support local decision making and referendums. So, what to do with schools? Well, maybe the time has come to treat the Governance of schools and education in a   similar way. Either this means you scrap Primary Care Trusts and hand the control over to local councils, or you establish local elected school boards and hand control to them. I would hope this will also mean stronger schools governing bodies and more soft federation of schools - single headteachers running a number of schools. The facts is that the skills to run a modern secondary school are not necessarily those that someone from education can acquire. There are many fine headteachers who grow into this management role, but there are equally some pretty awful examples of those who are brilliant teachers but lousy Chief Executives.

So yes, let's do something about the kids who go to the most dreadful schools, where often the teachers sole objective is to get to the end of the lesson without being assaulted, but not forget that whilst the rest are doing better they might not be doing as well as they could and a new structure is needed to free education.

Tories to end town hall grip on failing schools - Telegraph