A few weeks ago, I took part in a debate at the UCL Institute of Education on the tension between accountability (and school regulation) and autonomy in the English schools system. In essence, we were asked where we should draw the line on the spectrum between the two ideas.

This, of course, has been the central policy dilemma of the education system pretty much since Labour prime minister Jim Callaghan made his famous speech in 1976 at Ruskin College bemoaning schools and their “secret garden” approach to internal management, curriculum and outcomes.

Over the years, the tension between accountability and autonomy has come to look like an impossible paradox, and successive attempts to resolve it have brought to mind Einstein’s famous definition of madness: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

So perhaps the real question should be: have we looking in the wrong place for answers over the past 40-odd years? I think perhaps the answer is yes.

But before I come to that, I want to make a point that is not terribly popular: the discussion of accountability and autonomy is not just educational, it is also hugely political.

The drive towards greater autonomy has never really been about autonomy. Under education secretaries Ken Baker and Michael Gove in 1988 and 2010, and under prime minister Tony Blair in 2001, the push to give heads more freedom was actually about attempting to break what were widely believed to be closed-shop practices and left-wing dominance. This has, for better or worse, always been about breaking the perceived hold that local government and unions have had on education.

Indeed, many successful heads who have led schools over that timeframe would suggest that their power has never really increased - especially since the birth of Local Management of Schools in 1988.

The truth is that Conservative ministers are at best lukewarm in their commitment to school autonomy. For example, schools minister Nick Gibb purports to be an advocate of increasing autonomy through academisation, but in truth seems rather more keen on controlling the curriculum and pedagogical models of primaries in a very detailed way. Just look at the phonics or times-tables checks that hold so much sway over the work of teachers.

Similarly, the government that Gibb has long served has been quick to adopt the idea of multi-academy trusts, which in many cases reduce the level of autonomy experienced by schools in an unprecedented way. As Tes’ William Stewart has argued in these pages, under the likes of the Outwood Grange Academies Trust, secondaries have no power over curriculum or finance - or even the colour of their walls or the uniforms worn by their pupils.

In 2019, for many school leaders in England, autonomy is a mirage.

As an aside, there is another problem: in the places where freedom has been allowed to flourish, it has often proved to be messy. There are far too many cases of qualification gaming, off-rolling, related-party transactions and embezzling for everyone to be truly happy about embracing the idea.

The jaws that bite

Setting to one side autonomy, let’s move on to the other side of the paradoxical debate: accountability. Too often, discussions approach the idea from the wrong direction.

The fact is that “accountability” is the wrong word for the construct of constraints that scaffold schools. Ofsted, league tables, the Department for Education and so on are about control.

“Accountability” sounds simple or innocent - a process of ensuring that billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money isn’t wasted and that young people are being taught by professionals in a safe and secure setting. But there is nothing simple or innocent about the regime faced by schools in England today.

As former Gove adviser Sam Freedman has explained, the accountability system is one of the key levers of power that politicians use to control what goes on in schools.

Blair, Baker, Gove and the rest all understand the truth that many, many heads and teachers would rather not hear: education is political. Therefore, however you finesse it, accountability will always be used as a tool of political power.

One need look no further than the English Baccalaureate for a case study in how this plays out. Starting life as a league table measure (one of several), this nakedly political intervention is now central to Progress 8, the headline measure for schools. It is the one by which they are judged to have succeeded or failed, and last month made a central appearance in Ofsted’s explanation for how the inspectorate will judge secondaries as part of its new curriculum-focused inspection framework.

Put simply, the EBacc began as a political idea and is now a cornerstone of accountability.

And so, we find that accountability and autonomy are not at opposite ends of a spectrum but instead - at least in the case of England for the past three or four decades - are both instruments of political power.

Many would like the resolution of this debate to be a rallying call to heads and teachers to throw off such chains. To somehow destroy Ofsted, league tables and endless government structural reforms, and to drive towards the promised land of professional freedom - perhaps even returning to the “secret garden” that Jim Callaghan was so keen to undermine.

And that would, of course, be nice. But it is also a flawed idea: hopelessly naive, even. Why? Because education will always be political. It will always be subject to enormous political interest - and, therefore, grandstanding interventions from politicians. There will always be another Gove around the corner keen to pull on those accountability levers.

Through the looking glass

Ultimately, this country is a democracy and schools have perhaps the most important role within it. They are responsible for educating and moulding future citizens. In the process, billions of pounds are spent imparting an edited body of knowledge. Could anything be more political than that?

(Contrast this with the NHS, which similarly spends billions, but is less political because it is charged largely with keeping an ageing population alive a little longer.)

So what should we do about it? What should education’s institutions, unions, leaders and thinkers advocate for? Instead of being distracted by attempts to draw a line on the imagined spectrum that has autonomy at one end and accountability at the other, or to destroy the whole edifice, the entire profession must collectively concentrate on building a confident and professionally proud generation of teachers and school leaders.

It must accept - celebrate, even - that the teaching profession is a body politic. Teachers must first embrace the political and then help to develop, and project, a collective voice - one that is loud and proud - in the political bunfight that is education. They must be a powerful protagonist in the fight, rather than trying end it.

Perhaps then the profession can push back against the worst excesses of political meddling and help to build an accountability model - make no mistake, there will always be one - that is as near to fit for purpose as possible. Such steps forward might, for example, help to arrest the haemorrhaging of senior staff from leadership as part of the heavy-handed and knee-jerk phenomenon now known as “football manager syndrome”.

As always with education debate, when one drills down into it, this is largely about the failure, over generations, to build a profession bursting with self-confidence and self-efficacy.

Schools and teachers will always have politicians watching over them, prodding them, using accountability to direct them. But instead of this being done to them, perhaps we can reach a situation where it is done with them.

Ed Dorrell is head of content at Tes. He tweets @ed_dorrell

This article originally appeared in the 15 March 2019 issue under the headline “Education’s terrible twins”