We live in a golden age of school autonomy, or so we are led to believe. The mantra from successive governments has been one of ‘empowering school leaders’ and removing the shackles that once constrained schools.

In this brave new world, schools were to be freed from ‘interfering bureaucrats’ and allowed to chart their own course to success. Yet, ask the average teacher whether they feel an overwhelming sense of freedom from external political interference, and you are unlikely to be greeted with a particularly positive response…

We do have to acknowledge that we no longer live in an era where central diktats get sent out from the Department for Education telling teachers directly how to plan and structure lessons. I say this as someone who once worked in a school where teachers had clocks on the whiteboards to ensure they didn’t stray too far from the allocated chunks of time you were expected to slavishly stick to in the early days of the National Numeracy and Literacy Strategies. Thankfully those days are long gone. Equally, it is true that there is greater managerial autonomy in our schools. Most schools do now have greater freedom to choose how they spend their budgets (although how useful such a freedom is when there is no money to spend is another matter). Why is it then that many on the front-line feel more subject to ministerial whim and political interference than ever before?

The reality is that politicians and policy makers still have huge power when it comes to influencing what goes on in schools up and down the country. Whilst there are a few levers available for ministers to pull, the one of choice seems to be national testing and statutory assessment.

Perhaps the best example of how such tests can be used to influence behaviour is the time primary teachers up and down the country have spent in recent years teaching children relatively obscure grammatical concepts and vocabulary. The introduction of the English grammar, punctuation and spelling (GPS; or spag) test in Key Stage 2 is almost entirely responsible for this. I find it hard to believe that schools would all have suddenly taken the decision en masse to devote so much time teaching children how to spot and label a fronted adverbial if it wasn’t for the national test being introduced.

The phonics screening check in year one is another example of how the introduction of a new test has a profound impact on classroom practice. Had the proposed multiplication check in Key Stage Two gone ahead, I dare say this would have had a similar effect.

There are those who would argue that the government are absolutely right to pull this lever. Those who believe in the power of synthetic phonics for example would say that the screening check has done exactly what it was intended to do and there are very few schools who now don’t now teach young children to read in this way. Putting such value judgements to one side, one thing is clear - it is very hard for anyone to argue that such policies have not had a significant impact on children’s experience of school in recent years.

Here’s the paradox, on the surface schools have more autonomy than ever before, yet so much of what goes on in the classroom up and down the nation is still driven by decisions taken in Westminster. It is quite troubling that a relatively small group of people, many of whom have never taught so much as a single lesson, get to have such a direct and immediate impact on the behaviour of teachers in our schools.

The upcoming review of primary assessment is an opportunity for us to make the case for the rolling back of some aspects of the current statutory assessment regime. It is almost certain that some form of statutory assessment is here to stay but the ‘test creep’ we have seen in recent years needs to stop.

Moving forwards, at the very least I would like to see a commitment that no new tests would be introduced without proper scrutiny and consideration of their impact, including from those within the profession. Such high-stakes tests simply have too great an influence on what happens in schools to be implemented without thorough consideration.

James Bowen is director of middle leaders’ union NAHT Edge. He tweets at @JamesJkbowen 

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