One of the our top Clarendon Tutors has been a leader at one of London’s best state secondary schools for the past decade, inspiring children from diverse backgrounds. He is a natural and passionate educator – the one thing that unites all of our different tutors – but he was stifled by the school’s move to become part of a Multi Academy Trust.
He shares this thoughts below.
Political conversations that tread a well-worn path tend to wear me down, particularly when they use that most-feared word ‘bureaucracy’. In education, rants about bureaucracy tend to focus on Multi Academy Trusts. I would ordinarily refrain from joining in. But on this matter, I think the oracles of adversity have a point that needs making.
Let me give some context. I’ve been a school leader at a highly successful state comprehensive school for more than a decade. I’ve seen it transformed from a local authority school, to a Single Academy Trust and finally handed over to one of the country’s biggest chains. I am no cheer-leader for local control, nor am I an advocate for turning the education system back to the 1980s. But there are a number of troubling things about MATs that do not bode well for closing the gap between the independent and state sectors.
First of all, there is the issue of competition. One of the long-held government principles behind education has been promoting parent choice. When all the local secondary schools in a particular area all begin to wear the same uniform and adopt the same teaching methods, parents no longer have a choice. Of course I am up for collaboration and sharing practice, but not for total conformity. When people remember their favourite teacher from school, it’s very rarely because they were the best at following school-wide policy. It is more often because they were a total individual, inventive and unique.
Second, the structures of accountability have not kept pace with changes to school governance. It is still individual schools that have to measure up to Ofsted and have their exam results published each year. Ofsted have not begun to inspect MATs directly, despite the fact that there are 1,190 trusts with multiple schools nationally. It is a systemic failure not to hold senior managers to account.
Third, replication for its own sake is uninspiring and doctrinaire. The problem with imposing systems on another school is the failure to recognise context. Simply because something works, doesn’t mean it works best. Far too often, the people charged with making decisions themselves do not have a handle on what the effect of those decisions will be. And the more decisions made in a central office, the less their impact will be understood by those who make them.
Independent schools do not work this way. They have expanded, of course. Some have joined forces, others have begun partnerships or shared their brand in other countries. Nevertheless, in the independent sector, no one has forgotten the importance of a headteacher working within the school that they lead. Independent schools simply could not afford to dilute their unique quality. Their focus always is on providing the very best product, bringing parents along with them.
Until this becomes the primary purpose for MATs, students will forever be in the grip of the bureaucrats. And the mind of the bureaucrat is narrow, unyielding and frequently misguided. It is perhaps best summarised by Iain McGilchrist:
“When things go wrong, it is never that we have been traveling in the wrong direction, or have gone too far in what may once have been the right direction, only that we have not gone far enough”
Iain McGilchrist