HC 269 Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by NASUWT

Executive Summary

The status of education as a public good and a human right means that policy and practice should not only seek to secure benefits for individual pupils and learners but should also recognise the importance of education to the economic, cultural, civic and democratic wellbeing of wider society.

Notions of education as a commodity to be consumed by individuals and provided for in a competitive and marketised context are therefore wholly inconsistent with the principles upon which the organisation of the public education system should be based.

However, following reforms initiated by the 1979–97 Conservative Government, the use of competition and quasi-markets became established to an increasing extent in the education system in England, although the last Government had begun to place greater emphasis on the importance of collaboration.

Since taking office, the Coalition Government has intensified significantly the marketisation of the education system, reflected particularly clearly in the terms on which it has taken forward rapid expansion of its academies and free schools programmes.

These programmes have created profound risks to the ability of the education system to benefit from effective inter-school and intersectoral collaboration in areas including provision for pupils with special educational needs, school admissions, pupil exclusions and strategies for school improvement.

Assertions by the Coalition Government that it is seeking to promote collaboration through the creation of academy chains, making inter-school collaboration a requirement of academy and free school funding agreements and its teaching schools programme are difficult to justify on the basis of evidence.

An alternative strategy for promoting collaboration must be developed, based on a clear recognition of education as a public good and a universal human right and in which partnership and cooperation at school, local and national levels are firmly established as guiding principles of policy.

Introduction

1. The NASUWT welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the House of Commons Education Select Committee Inquiry into School Partnerships and Cooperation.

2. The Union’s evidence addresses the specific issues identified by the Committee in its call for evidence by:

locating considerations in relation to partnerships and cooperation in the education system in the context of the status of education as a public good and a human right;

examining the historic implications of public policy in England for inter-school cooperation and for collaboration between schools and other public services for children and young people;

identifying the impediments to cooperation resulting from key elements of Coalition Government policy; and

setting out the basis upon which alternative approaches to the promotion of collaboration and partnership within the education system might be developed.

Collaboration and the Status of Education as a Public Good and a Universal Human Right

3. The NASUWT’s understanding of the importance of collaboration and partnership within the education system derives from its recognition of education as a public good and a universal human right.

4. The Union is clear that the status of education as a public good means that policy and practice should not only seek to secure benefits for individual pupils and learners but should also recognise the importance of education to the economic, cultural, civic and democratic wellbeing of wider society.

5. These inherent characteristics of education have profound implications for the principles upon which education systems are organised. In particular, they confirm that notions of education as a commodity to be consumed by individuals and provided for in a competitive and marketised context are wholly inconsistent with an understanding of education as a public good and a human right.

6. Consideration of the implications of policy programmes based on the promotion of competition between schools serves to highlight the inappropriateness of marketised approaches to the organisation of the education system. In market theory, competition between providers is regarded as central to securing the efficient production and distribution of commodities and is dependent, in part, on producers being able to differentiate their products sufficiently from those of other market participants in order to maximise their market share and undermine the position of other producers operating in the same market space.1

7. In its report to its 2013 Annual Conference, Maintaining World Class Schools, the NASUWT described the profoundly negative consequences of attempts to use market mechanisms, including competition between providers, as a guiding principle for the organisation of provision in the education system.2

8. In particular, the NASUWT’s report draws attention to the fact that there is no credible international evidence that the development of education systems on the basis of conceptualising pupils and parents as consumers of education in a marketised context, with the promotion of competition between providers as an incentive to raise standards of provision, generates improved educational outcomes.3 Instead, the use of such mechanisms has been associated with high rates of variation in levels of pupil performance4 and increased social and economic segregation.5

9. It is also evident that the use of competitive quasi-markets in the provision of education works to undermine collaboration between educational institutions, thereby exacerbating barriers to the sharing of professional experience and expertise across the education system.6 The pressures within schools to secure market advantage against competitor institutions also creates perverse incentives for schools to focus on the narrow range of pupil performance indicators used to differentiate between providers in the market rather than on ensuring that educational offers are tailored to the needs of individual children and to achievement of the public aims of the education system.7

10. In such a context, it is also evident that collaboration between schools and providers of wider services for children and young people to promote and improve children’s wider wellbeing is also likely to be emphasised insufficiently where inter-school competition is a prevent characteristic of the education system.

11. The impediments to institutional collaboration generated by marketised approaches to the operation of the education system also have important implications for its productive and allocative efficiency by undermining the ability of schools to generate economies of scale through effective partnership working and impeding the distribution of finite resources across the school system on a strategic basis.8

12. It is therefore clear that models of educational provision based on collaboration work to create circumstances within which significant educational organisational and economic benefits can be secured. This has been recognised by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and was an unequivocal message of the recent independent investigation of the Department for Education’s (DfE’s) academies programme undertaken by the Academies Commission.9

The Developing Role of Competition and Quasi-markets in the School System in England

13. It is important to recognise that, notwithstanding the compelling evidence of the importance of institutional collaboration in securing positive outcomes for individuals and for wider society, policy development in England has long sought to embed quasi-markets and competition between schools as key features of the state education system.

14. This approach was initiated by the 1979–97 Conservative Government and was based to a significant extent on the introduction of performance league tables and punitive individual school inspection, a fundamental purpose of both policies was to provide “market” information to parents in order to allow them to exercise consumer choice in relation to the schools attended by their children.10

15. These reforms were supported by the granting of significant degrees of financial autonomy and control over key personnel-related functions to individual schools, reflecting the view of proponents of marketisation in the education system that such autonomy is a necessary condition of the efficient operation of quasi-markets as, in theory, it permits schools to respond more effectively to prevailing market conditions.11 The necessary corollary of the re-location of financial authority and control of resources at school level was a weakening of the strategic role of local authorities in supporting and maintaining effective collaborative arrangements between schools.12

16. While the Labour Government of 1997–2010 retained many of the features of a quasi-marketised education system, it is important to note that the value of collaboration was recognised to an increasing extent in the development of policy during this period.13 This revised approach was reflected in, for example, the introduction of school behaviour and attendance partnerships, 14–19 curriculum and qualification consortia and the co-ordination of admissions arrangements through Admissions Forums. In relation to school accountability, the previous administration’s School Report Card proposal, subsequently discarded by the Coalition Government, sought to examine ways in which systems of accountability might be recast to emphasise more effectively the importance of collaboration between schools.14

17. More broadly, the critical importance of cooperation and partnership working between schools and other agencies and organisations within the wider children’s services sector was recognised in the development of statutory local authority-led Children and Young People’s Trusts. These bodies were established not only to enhance the educational opportunities available to children and young people but also to promote their wider wellbeing through the adoption of strategic local approaches to inter-agency collaboration.

18. However, since taking office, the Coalition Government has removed many of the remaining key drivers of cooperation within the education system, through its abolition of previous requirements on schools to collaborate with others and by undermining local-level structures through which effective inter-school partnership arrangements, as well as those between schools and other children and young people-focused public services, could be secured in practice.

19. The undermining of support for effective collaboration within the education and wider children and young people’s services sectors has been driven by a clear commitment on the part of Coalition Government Ministers to the use of competition and quasi-market structures as the principal drivers of system improvement, despite an asserted recognition by the DfE of the value of inter-school and intersectoral collaboration.15

20. The implications of current policy approaches for collaboration and school partnerships are examined in further detail below.

Increasing Risks to Collaboration through Intensified Marketisation

21. The intensification of marketisation within the education system since the Coalition Government came to office has been evident in significant demand-side reforms, including an intensification of the school accountability regime and the development of vouchers or “personal budgets” in the context of revised funding arrangement for pupils with special educational needs (SEN).

22. In respect of supply-side policy, the Coalition Government has initiated a significant expansion in the number of schools with academy status and has also allowed for the establishment of free schools. A deliberate aim of both of these policy agendas has been to locate a substantial and increasing proportion of the state-funded schools sector beyond the local authority structures and national frameworks through which inter-school and intersectoral collaboration had been secured previously. These schools have also been encouraged by Ministers to make full use of their enhanced institutional autonomy over matters including the pay and conditions of staff, the curriculum, the allocation of resources and policies on pupil admissions, emphasising further the importance attached to the use of quasi-markets by Ministers.

23. However, in light of the nature of education as a public good, it is unsurprising that the development of academies and free schools as essential components of a competitive quasi-market for education has been associated with the identification of increased risks to sustaining and enhancing collaboration within the education system.

24. For example, the Academies Commission has highlighted the potentially damaging implications of a more pronounced culture of competition between schools, unmediated by local level strategic oversight, for effective and equitable arrangements in relation to school improvement, the sharing between schools of resources and professional expertise, admissions and meeting the needs of pupils with SEN.16 In relation to the particularly sensitive area of the management of pupil exclusions, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner has emphasised the dangers of an increasingly autonomised and competitive education system to ensuring that schools and other relevant agencies work together to meet the needs of all excluded pupils and those at risk of exclusion, regardless of the school they happen to attend.17

25. Notwithstanding the clear relationship between the academisation and free schools agendas and the increased focus on the use of competition and quasi-markets in the education system, it has been suggested by Ministers18 and commentators sympathetic to the Coalition Government that the increasing extent to which academies and free schools are organised into multi-institutional federations or chains is creating new opportunities for inter-school collaboration.19

26. However, it should be noted that while it may be the case that some forms of collaboration may emerge between academies within such chains, recent evidence appears to suggest that inter-school collaboration in this context takes place to a disproportionate extent within chain boundaries rather than with other local academies or with schools that are maintained by local authorities, given these institutions’ status as “competitor” organisations.20 It is also important to recognise that collaboration within academy chains is not subject to effective common expectations comparable to those associated with the behaviour and qualifications-related partnership arrangements established by the previous Government. Inter-school collaboration within academy chains is therefore likely to develop on a basis marked by high degrees of variation in nature, quality and extent.

27. The Coalition Government has also sought to assert that the academies and free schools programmes secure inter-school collaboration through requirements in academy and free school funding agreements to work in partnership with other schools.21 However, it is clear that the contractual rather than statutory basis of funding agreements creates significant barriers to securing compliance with their provisions in practice as a result of the inability of parties other than the schools concerned and the DfE to seek effective implementation of terms set out in these agreements.

28. The lack of any effective enforcement mechanism in relation to inter-school collaboration provisions in funding agreements was identified by the Academies Commission as a critical barrier to ensuring that academies and free schools engage effectively in partnership working.22

29. The DfE has further highlighted its teaching school programme as an important means by which schools are supported to work in partnership and thereby secure system-wide benefits in respect of initial teacher training (ITT), the professional development of teachers, support staff and school leaders, school improvement and headteacher succession planning.23

30. However, the Committee will note that the teaching school programme is based on marketised relationships between participating settings in which services are made available on a commercial basis by teaching schools to other institutions. As a result, incentives have been created for schools involved in such arrangements to focus on commercial objectives and priorities rather than on ensuring that collaboration works to maintain and enhance the quality and range of educational opportunities made available to pupils. The conceptualisation of inter-school relationships inherent in the teaching school programme is therefore entirely inconsistent with the collaborative principle associated with recognition of education as a public good.

Towards a New Model of Collaboration in the State Education System

31. It is apparent from the considerations highlighted in this evidence that an education system organised on marketised principles, in which competition between providers is recognised as a central organising principle, will encounter significant difficulties in securing the benefits for individual pupils and for wider society that inter-school and intersectoral collaboration are able to generate.

32. The contradictions between approaches to the organisation of the education system based on competition between providers and those established on genuinely collaborative principles are addressed in the NASUWT’s Maintaining World Class Schools report. In acknowledging the barriers to inter-school and intersectoral collaboration that the commodification of education creates, the NASUWT restates its call for all those with a stake in the success of the education system in England to work towards the development of an alternative strategy for reform based on a clear recognition of education as a public good and a universal human right and in which partnership and co-operation at school, local and national levels are established as guiding principles of policy.24

33. In particular, steps will need to be taken by Government to ensure that all schools are required to take forward their duty to co-operate in the public interest and on behalf of all children and young people by ensuring that institutional collaboration across publicly funded schools is non-negotiable and is undertaken without restriction or qualification. This will require a careful and thorough examination of the implications for collaboration of the highly delegated models of school funding in place currently.

34. Maintaining World Class Schools further emphasises that a recasting of the operation of the education system to reflect more effectively the status of education as a public good requires a fundamental revision of the aims and purposes of the school accountability framework. Through objective and appropriately contextualised use of international evidence, steps should be taken to develop an approach in England that no longer casts accountability narrowly as an aid to consumers in a quasi-market for education but that instead ensures that schools and others responsible for the education system can be held to effective account for their activities in ways that promote rather than militate against collaboration and cooperation.

35. This consideration draws attention to reforms of the national pay and conditions framework being taken forward currently by the Coalition Government. To date, the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD) has worked to support inter-school collaboration through its establishment of a common framework of pay and conditions for teachers, within which schools could, if necessary, exercise sufficient flexibility in respect of their pay and conditions arrangements to meet clearly identifiable school-specific needs and objectives. As a result, a system developed within which incentives for schools to compete with others to attract staff on the basis of pay were largely absent, thereby contributing to the creation of a supportive context for inter-school collaboration.

36. The changes to the STPCD being taken forward by the Coalition Government will, if implemented, critically weaken the common basis for the pay and conditions of teachers across the state education system through removal of the key provisions on which this commonality was based and by explicitly encouraging schools to compete with others on the basis of their pay arrangements. It should also be noted that the crude approaches to establishing relationships between the performance of teachers and their pay being promoted by the Coalition Government will also serve to undermine essential professional collaboration between teachers within schools.

37. The NASUWT is therefore clear that an education system in which positive collaboration and cooperation between depends to a significant extent on the maintenance of meaningful and robust national pay and conditions framework.

38. It is evident that work to support inter-school and intersectoral collaboration will need to be accompanied by the establishment of a wider supportive infrastructure. While local councils can and should have a vital role in facilitating co-operation and partnership, the NASUWT does not believe that establishing effective structures to promote and sustain collaboration are necessarily predicated on the development of approaches shaped by the rubric of traditional corporate municipalities or on a rejection of diversity of provision within the education system.25

39. Instead, Maintaining World Class Schools, calls for a “co-operative revolution” in the state education system, in which all stakeholders would be supported to work in collaborative partnerships to secure quality education for all children and young people.

40. In relation to the education system in England, the work of the Schools Co-operative Society (SCS) in developing effective partnership arrangements between schools, local authorities and other key stakeholders in a context of increasing diversity of provision represents a progressive and dynamic model of cooperative working. In contrast to the serious limitations of the prevalent academy chain model described above, the frameworks of collaboration established by SCS seek to develop partnerships between all schools and other agencies that share its principles of mutualism and its commitment to state education as a public good.

41. The NASUWT, with which the SCS signed an historic agreement in 2012, would welcome the opportunity to set out in more detail in oral evidence to the Committee the opportunities for securing greater inter-school and inter-agency collaboration represented by the establishment of cooperative models of school organisation that reflect those developed by the SCS.

October 2013