Extinction of the dinosaurs can’t come too quickly
WHAT is the collective noun for a gathering of union and council leaders? A work-torule? A picket line? A dinosaur? Whatever it is, there were certainly enough gathered in one place to fit any of those titles when education was on the agenda at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities recently.
There they were, a table full of them, all grumpy with folded arms and their best ‘private sector is bad’ faces on, all complaining about the dastardly plans the Scottish Government has for education.
They had come together to prevent the Government from undermining the privileged environment they have carved out for themselves.
Make no mistake, this is what this is about. These were public sector Luddites trying desperately to protect their power bases and salaries.
So what is it that has so incensed these union and council leaders?
What appalling plans has Nicola Sturgeon come up with which have roused these public sector bureaucrats into such anger?
Well, to be honest, not much. The First Minister has proposed education reforms which would start – and just start – to give more power to headteachers.
Miss Sturgeon believes, quite rightly, that the best people to decide on priorities for schools are those who actually run them.
She wants to give headteachers some money to spend on what would work best for their schools and to give them more autonomy on other educational issues too.
But what this means is that more power and money for schools means less power and money for local education authorities.
Council departments have enjoyed almost complete control over the schools in their areas for decades but now a government is willing to challenge their hegemony – and they don’t like it.
Now, Miss Sturgeon’s reforms aren’t that radical. In fact, they don’t go even halfway towards the situation in England where the UK Government has managed to persuade two-thirds of secondary schools to opt out of local authority control.
More than 2,000 secondary schools in England are now academies, which means they are funded directly by the Government, cutting local education authorities out completely.
Miss Sturgeon has rejected the academy model but she clearly believes that more local autonomy is a good thing – and that is difficult to argue with.
Actually, the only problem with Miss Sturgeon’s reforms is that they do not go far enough. Why not give schools even more responsibility? Why not explore the option of academies?
It doesn’t have to be ideological, like it is with the Conservative Government in England, which is driving academies because it wants to destroy the comprehensive system – but it could still be an option in Scotland.
So far, the unions have objected to the reforms because, they claim, “headteachers are not accountants” and because, by giving money direct to schools, they argue that the Scottish Government is undermining local democracy.
That is hogwash. Ask headteachers if they would like more control and more money to spend and they will say yes. They know they could use the extra money to employ classroom assistants for the year group that really needs it or perhaps introduce a breakfast club.
THIS sort of decisionmaking should be up to the heads because every school has different needs and priorities. The problems for a school in a sparsely populated area of the Highlands are very different from those of a school in Glasgow. Ask any parent and they will back the headteacher over the council any day. So parents want it, headteachers want it, the Government wants it – the only people who don’t want it are council bureaucrats. One of the side-effects of the radical school reforms in England has been to turn the spotlight on to local education authorities.
The question now being asked is – if these bureaucratic council bodies no longer look after school budgets and school policy, what role do they actually fulfil?
It did not take long for our grumpy dinosaurs to realise that people will start asking that question north of the Border too.
So, this really is about protecting vested interests. If officials were really concerned with improving the education of our children, they wouldn’t stand in the way of these changes.
And, if our Government was really prepared to do what it takes to give our children the best opportunities in life, then it wouldn’t be so timid. It would go further and give schools more control and more money, allowing them to thrive outside the local authority straitjacket.
So yes, Miss Sturgeon, give them the freedom to make their own choices – but don’t reject English reforms just because they are ‘Tory’.
And, please, don’t kowtow to the Luddites who only want to keep things as they are so they can protect the cushy power bases they have held for so long.