There has been an odd spate of articles recently by right-wing commentators, like Melanie Phillips and Fraser Nelson, claiming that the rather dry Schools Bill currently making its way through the Lords is actually a plot by the mysterious “Blob”, still resident at the Department for Education, to reassert control over the education system.

The argument is that the new Schools Bill is so centralising that it undermines the autonomy of academies, and thus their freedom from progressive orthodoxy.

Is ‘The Blob’ behind the Schools Bill?

It’s strange for two reasons.

First anyone who’s spent any time in the DfE recently will know that it is about as far away from “The Blob”, as originally envisioned by former chief inspector Chris Woodhead, as possible.

There is no desire amongst civil servants to return the school system to where it was 15 years ago, either in terms of structures or curriculum and assessment.

Secondly, the argument fails to acknowledge that academies are already highly centralised. Indeed, they are, legally speaking, part of the DfE and their accounts roll up in the main DfE accounts.

Moreover, all school accountability, whether through Ofsted or exams, is centralised. So, logically, if you think central control of standards is a bad thing, you should want to get rid of these, too.

A problem that needs sorting

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t any issues with the Schools Bill - but the problem it is trying to solve is a real one.

The current regulatory system for academy trusts is a mess. There are no clear expectations on trusts, and thus no way to fairly assess their performance (as distinct from the individual schools within a trust). This has made it hard for the DfE to deal with underperforming multi-academy trusts that add little to their schools.

Unfortunately, the Bill has been introduced very quickly after the White Paper came out and before the DfE could conduct a promised regulatory review.

This means that the government doesn’t know how it wants to achieve the goals set out in the White Paper, and so it has written legislation that is extremely broad in the powers it would give to ministers.

Baroness Barran, the DfE’s minister in the Lords, has acknowledged the “strength of feeling” from her fellow peers on this issue and has promised to “clarify” the government’s position at the report stage of the Bill next month.

It will be interesting to see how the government does this, as it is unlikely the regulatory review will have been completed by then.

The DfE will need to stop this narrative from the right about “The Blob” becoming accepted wisdom among Tory MPs, as the government does not have the political capital at the moment for backbench rebellion on the issue when the Bill reaches the Commons.

The role of regions

The extent of DfE powers is not the only question that the regulatory review needs to answer.

The DfE is currently reordering itself around a new “Regions Directorate” that is replacing regional schools commissioners

It will operate in nine regions that are aligned with the rest of government, rather than the eight idiosyncratic ones used to date (London is now a single region again, rather than split across three). There is also an intention to integrate delivery of all DfE activities, such as social care, along with the management of academies.

This sounds semantic but it is a significant change, as this new directorate is likely to have more regulatory powers, taking on many of the academy-related functions that the Education and Skills Funding Agency has been doing, plus making use of the new powers in the Bill.

How it does this will be critical to the success of the government’s reforms.

There is a real danger that this directorate will become too powerful if it ends up fully responsible for both regulation and commissioning - and, in doing so, creates a “marking your own homework” problem.

If it brokers a deal to create a trust and then the trust does badly, will it be able to honestly assess that or will it want its initial decision to be seen as a success?

Would an independent regulator solve the problem?

These concerns could be resolved if there was a properly independent academies regulator. Then the DfE would only be responsible for commissioning based on its decisions.

This would remove the concerns about the DfE becoming overmighty and the risk of conflicts of interest. But it would also create another agency, with the risk of causing real confusion for trusts, which would have to deal with Ofsted, the independent regulator and the DfE.

This is why the regulatory review is so critical. These are knotty and complex questions upon which the future of the academies programme - and, by extension, the school system - rest.

They may not be as exciting as the idea of “The Blob” coming back to seek its revenge, but they are the real challenge that has to be dealt with. 

Sam Freedman is a former senior policy adviser at the Department for Education and a senior fellow at the Institute of Government