Who runs our schools?

One potential side effect from the exclusive focus in the media on problems with exam marking and the new English Baccalaureate Certificates due to be introduced in 2015 is the impression the public gets that the schools sector is one big machine: someone pushes a button in an exam board or the DfE and all 24,000 schools jump in response.  Michael Gove decides X; suddenly the impact on thousands of young people is Y.  This impression can so easily mask the revolution that is taking place in schools, a revolution that is completely overlooked for the most part by the media, yet which has the potential to change the whole country. Government policy, beginning under Blair, softening a tad under Brown, but a clear priority for Cameron, has been to encourage schools to be more and more autonomous.  They have powers to innovate written into the statute book that allow them to teach different subjects, organise staff and pupils differently, change term dates, join up with universities, companies, other schools; and now, through academy status, adopt their own pay scales.  Schools in this country have more freedom and autonomy than schools in just about every other school system in the West.  Yet hardly anyone knows.

In general, the public is unaware of how schools are run.  A recent survey conducted by YouGov for Ten Governor Support shows that even though school governors control more than £80bn of public money, 82% of the public are oblivious of their influence.  When asked who decides how to spend a school's budget, answers ranged from the Prime Minister to Michael Gove, with 41% simply confessing they didn't know.  Yet governors are the main strategic leaders in schools, making decisions that have significant impact on the nation's children. In any modern democracy, you would expect people who have high stakes in such decisions - that is, the general public, to be better informed as to who is making them.

The headteacher at George Abbot School, a large comprehensive school in Guildford with A level results in the top 1% nationally, recently became Executive Headteacher, a role where he takes responsibility not just for his own school but for a school in need of improvement on the other side of town.  It was up to the governors to assess the balance of risk and opportunity before agreeing to such a move.  The ramifications are potentially serious, with George Abbot parents concerned as to whether the school's leadership might in some way be diluted and students' education suffer in consequence.  As a governor I advised on how we should communicate with parents, using data from the National College of School Leadership to explain the potential benefits to students in those schools that support other schools.  The governing body was keen to explain its vision for the welfare of all young people in Guildford and the responsibility George Abbot had to the whole town - and not just to its own student population.  The challenge was considerable. 

Every week, governing bodies are making similar - or weightier - decisions that affect children and local communities.  We need the media to wake up and take notice of the way things actually work in education.  It is sloppy and inaccurate to give the impression that we have a central command centre in Whitehall that dictates how schools behave - and yet this is clearly the impression held by the public.  There is good news out there: 27% of adults (18-24 yr olds in particular) are keen to sign up to be governors.  Presumably then, the sooner the country understands what governors actually do, the sooner that number can increase further, creating healthy competition to raise the quality of governing bodies overall - an outcome which will be good for democracy and good for our children.