The UK’s education systems have undergone huge transformations in the past two decades, some of which are only now beginning to have an impact, and many of which we won’t be able to properly assess for years, if ever. There is one thing we can be certain of already, though - the system is far more complex than it has ever been, and democratic accountability has been greatly affected.

Devolution has meant that education is a matter for national assemblies, only affected by Westminster indirectly through funding. So far, so democratic. Indeed, devolution has been a great success for democracy in Britain.

In England, however, democracy in education has suffered.

Academisation has changed the role of local education authorities and the accountability of schools to their communities. Multi-academy trusts (MATs) have emerged, and around them has grown a new layer of government - the national schools commissioner and regional schools commissioners - which uncomfortably straddles the local/national divide. This new layer has a veneer of democracy - the headteacher boards that support them are nominally part-elected - but serious questions surround the process, as well as the legitimacy of their remit.

Schools remain overseen by Ofsted, but trusts are not.

Free schools - like standalone academies - are directly accountable to the Department for Education, and to parents, but not the broader communities within which they are set up.

Curriculum and accountability levers are more firmly in the grip of the DfE than ever.

As a result, not only is it impossible to say that the UK has a national education system at all, it is also becoming increasingly difficult to say that even England does.

‘Shrouded in mystery’

Until recently, the continuing existence of grammar schools and of a minority private sector didn’t undermine this basic status quo - all schools were accountable to their communities through local authorities and to the nation through the DfE.

Voters generally care very little about education policy, and so the level to which they made use of their democratic institutions was limited. But the fact remains that they could.

And now they can’t.

Indeed, the complexity is such that only an elite can affect any change, and the process is shrouded in mystery, with all the obfuscatory feel of corrupt meetings in smoke-filled rooms.

This is not to defend the previous structure, which wouldn’t have been changed if people hadn’t believed it suffered serious weaknesses, but the fact that we’ve allowed the current state of affairs to arise is worrying.

Most worrying of all is that any successor government can come in and use this system of concentrated powers to remake education in its image - new curriculum, new accountability measures, new structures…New yes-men to push it all through.

All this serves is political expediency. Seldom, and only by chance, does it ever serve education.

Democracy doesn’t matter until it matters. As a result, we are complacent about it. As long as policy works for most people, most of the time, we tend to concern ourselves as little about the how of it as we do about those people for whom it doesn’t work.

But when it doesn’t work for us, it isn’t long before we realise its corruption, its bias, and our powerlessness within it.

The danger of corruption

One of the key ways in which corruption can set into a system is through the appointment of its personnel. It is something constitutional writers of the past were well aware of, and the reason the appointment system to the US Supreme Court is the way it is.

In 2005, Jack Straw pursued New Labour’s democratisation agenda - which had delivered devolution - in our judiciary. The reforms centred upon the creation of a UK Supreme Court.

Keen to protect the judicial system from corruption and politicisation, he led through Parliament an act that created the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), an independent body which oversees the appointments of all judges in England and Wales.

At all times, the JAC must be made up of judges from all types of courts, as well as lay members. It is guided by only three principles:

• to select candidates solely on merit;
• to select only people of good character; and
• to have regard to the need to encourage diversity in the range of persons available for judicial selection.

Imagine, for a moment, what effect an Educational Appointments Commission might have on education.

Imagine if the Ofsted chief inspector wasn’t effectively appointed by the latest DfE incumbent (officially it’s the arcane Privy Council), and replaced at will - but they were appointed by an independent body, guided by these principles alone, and for a fixed term. Now imagine that applied to all of Ofsted’s personnel.

Imagine if the same was also true for the national schools commissioner, and the eight regional schools commissioners.

The direct impact of a neutrally appointed, politically diverse personnel would be to immediately slow the violent swings of the party-political pendulum. It would put consultation back at the heart of policy-making. It would force the incumbents of those positions to reframe their remits.

Such maturity in the system might propel education to become the fifth great office of state, sitting alongside the PM, the chancellor, the home secretary and foreign secretary. Secretaries of state might be less inclined to propel their own careers onwards, and more focused on the long-term aims of the job.

It’s a reform that would seldom, and only by chance, ever serve political expediency.

But it’s a reform that would truly serve education.

JL Dutaut is a teacher of politics and citizenship and co-editor of the upcoming book Flip The System UK: a teachers’ manifesto

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