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Question 1: what are local education authorities for?
If the Government is truly prepared to think the unthinkable, and truly prepared to take on old Left inefficiency, it should urgently consider abolishing the LEAs.
Education, education, education. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. In September, in the face of a developing scandal, the Government very publicly sent a hit squad, officially known as an "improvement team", into the London Borough of Hackney, after Ofsted inspectors warned that the local education authority was failing its pupils. Hackney did not even know whether all the borough's school-aged children actually had a place at any school, or that the service was in "serious disarray". It was actually in a state of emergency. Hackney has been notorious for years, but at long last a government was prepared to do something about it, or at least to be seen to try.
Stephen Byers, the minister for school standards, said unequivocally at the time that the local education authority was failing in its statutory responsibilities, thereby putting children at risk. He added that the Ofsted report had revealed such unacceptable practices that the Government would have taken over Hackney's education services and run them centrally, had it had the legal power to do so. (To Conservative ears, there is something deliciously ironic about the sound of this.) However, the Government did not have the power then, nor (pending legislation) does it now. It did not even have the power to impose the hit squad. Fortunately, Hackney council agreed to co-operate. Its chief executive, Tony Elliston, accepted that the Ofsted report was fair and that education in Hackney needed urgent attention.
That was then. Two days ago, Mr Elliston appeared on Radio 4's Today programme, making extremely unco-operative noises. The improvement team, under Richard Painter, had just released its report. Mr Elliston rejected its recommendations contemptuously. He called it "a wholly unreconstructed piece of fifth-rate management opportunism", whatever that may mean, and he believed that Hackney council had the legal power to reject it. He is right, at least until the Government passes new legislation. If Hackney won't do as it is told, the Government can't make it. This is immensely embarrassing for the Government. It's very awkward, proudly to say you're going to grasp a notorious nettle and then, as soon as it begins to sting, having to let go. Not surprisingly, there has been no official comment so far; departmental dock leaves are being applied in private.
It is very unlikely that the Government's current plans to grasp the local education authority nettle are likely to be any more effective. The Department for Education and Employment's White Paper, Excellence in Schools, published in July, makes vague recommendations for a new, improved role for LEAs. They are to "challenge", but not to "control". They are to "celebrate excellence", but not to provide an alternative inspection system. Above all, "the main responsibility for improving schools lies with the schools themselves".
One is left wondering what LEAs are really for. Serious inspection is already done by Ofsted. Curriculums and national standards are set centrally. What LEAs actually do is to offer management services, including handling payrolls, temporary staff, contracts, school admissions, special needs and so on. Naturally, they hold back money from school budgets to pay for these services, and for the large bureaucracy involved.
Under the White Paper proposals, they would set "benchmarks" for school performance, advise schools on best practice, help them prepare for Ofsted inspection and measure their performance against national scores. The LEAs would also co-ordinate school places, liaise with non-state schools and construct an education development plan for the authority. There is nothing much wrong with this, except that it is already being done centrally, and locally by schools themselves. The rest of it, which does not actually amount to much, can with obvious advantage be put out to tender. Some of it already is. So even when a local authority is not torn apart by political in-fighting, ideological harassment, amateurism and incompetence, it will still have nothing much to contribute to local education, other than an expensive and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. Most LEAs are useless; many of them are worse than useless.
There is an obvious solution. Why doesn't the Government go the full monty and strip the local education authorities of their vestments of power altogether? Why not abolish them and leave the schools to head teachers, local governors and regular inspection by Ofsted? It would be very devolutionary, very empowering, very New Labour. Quite apart from raising morale and expectations, giving schools direct responsibility for their own achievements would raise a great deal of money for education. At the moment, LEAs "hold back" varying amounts of money from individual school budgets to pay for their services; if they were abolished and all schools were self-governing, this money would go directly to the latter.
The astonishing thing about this sum is that no one knows how much it is. What more serious indictment of local authority culture could there be? It might be, on average, 10 per cent of each school's budget, as most LEAs say. This would be about pounds 200 per secondary school child a year, or a total of pounds 1.4 billion for secondary schools in England and Wales alone. It might even be as much as 30 per cent - pounds 594 per pupil per year, according to School Funding, an astonishing paper by Nick Seaton for the Centre for Policy Studies. This would work out at about pounds 4.2 billion a year.
According to another remarkable paper, by Dick Atkinson, called Self-Governing Schools, published this week by the Institute for Economic Affairs, an educational charity has checked this figure and agrees with Mr Seaton's calculations. I cannot imagine why this isn't public knowledge.
Of course, this sum includes money held back for children with special needs. But for head teachers desperate for extra funds, "special needs" can be a conveniently elastic concept. In any event, it would go directly to schools for their various needs, according to a nationally agreed calculation. And of course some of this money would have to go towards paying for private sector services.
Inevitably, there would be some complications. Something would have to be done about schools which fail - according to Ofsted, about three per cent, with a further 10 per cent in serious trouble. There would have to be an independent emergency body, possibly a branch of Ofsted, to sort this out. But if the Government is prepared to think the unthinkable and to take on old Left inefficiency, it should urgently consider abolishing the LEAs. Chris Woodhead, the chief inspector of schools, is said to be in favour of the idea, and some in the Treasury, and even in the Cabinet, are thought to be interested. Go on, Dave. Go on, Tony. You know it's right.
The Daily Telegraph | Thursday, November 06, 1997
