ABSTRACT
Political debates, policy manoeuvres and legislative reforms regarding publicly funded education in England have been about the imagining, promotion and realisation of the ‘independent’ school as the preferred model. The provision of educational services as local schools interconnected within a system governed through individual school governing bodies, area-based local authorities (LAs) and elected councils, and a national UK government department and Parliament has been variously challenged, reformed and is in the process of being dismantled. Schools with governing bodies in England, and under the direction of the national UK government, have been restructured as ‘independent’ of the LA and elected councils in three main ways: first, the establishment of new provision outside of the LA. e.g. City Technology Colleges from the mid-1980s, and Free Schools from 2010; second, the removal of schools from the LA, e.g. Grant Maintained Status from 1988, and Academies from 2000; and third, major interventions into LA provision such as Fresh Start from 1997 (where a school closed and then reopened with new staffing), and the National Challenge from 2008 (where a framework for improvement was imposed on selected schools deemed at risk and National Challenge Advisers were appointed to support the school and the LA). The notion of ‘independence’ is based on removing the school from local democratic accountability by building on the
. Gunter and Ruth McGinity
self-managing school as a business in a competitive market place created through the Education Reform Act of 1988. The language is one of ‘specialisation’ and ‘choice’, where ‘diversity’ of provision would enable ‘standards’ to improve. Consequently, such ‘independence’ has warranted further changes whereby Academies and Free Schools can operate outside of national workforce conditions of service and the national curriculum, and have facilitated the dominance of powerful interests (e.g. faith groups, businesses, and individual philanthropists). The shift from a predominantly public ‘system’ to private ‘provision’ is not yet settled or complete but there are visible trends through the promotion of parental choice, the shift of public assets into private hands, the outsourcing of provision to private interests, and the discourses around ‘for-profit’ educational services, interplayed with localised compliance and development of ‘independence’ schemes.
