It was a “mistake” for government to “assume that academies are a silver bullet that would solve everything”, the leader of a large multi-academy trust has said.
The chief executive officer of Ark Schools, Lucy Heller, told the Festival of Education that the expansion of the academies programme went “too far, too fast”.
At the same event former Department for Education senior policy adviser Sam Freedman said that the incoming Labour government will have to make decisions about academies and the school system, despite it not having focused on this in the build-up to the general election.
Under the previous government a goal was set for all state schools to be in - or moving towards being in - a multi-academy trust by 2030, although the planned legislation supporting this fell through.
Responding to a question from Tes about whether Labour’s “agnostic” stance on school structures and academisation would hold firm, Mr Freedman said that the party would “have to tackle a bunch of questions about the academy system”.
Sir Kevan Collins, the former education recovery commissioner who is set to be an expert adviser to the Labour government, told school leaders that he is “pretty agnostic” about school structures last week.
Govian regime ‘felt like Wild West’
Reflecting on government policy over the past 14 years at the festival event, Ms Heller said: “I think there are things that one would do differently and I think part of the mistake was to assume that academies are a sort of silver bullet that would solve everything.”
And Ms Heller criticised DfE ministers for “thinking that they can dictate the minutiae of school life”.
Speaking about the arrival of the “Govian regime” in 2010, when Michael Gove became education secretary and when academisation gathered pace, Ms Heller said it “felt like the Wild West”.
She argued that while it was an “opening up” of academisation, it went “too far, too fast” and the academy system has now “paid the price for over expansion rather than if we had gone slightly slower”.
Ms Heller added that if Mr Gove had continued with targeting the “most problematic schools” there would have been a “stronger argument” for academisation.
After Mr Gove became education secretary, he passed legislation allowing for the rapid expansion of the academies programme.
However, Ms Heller suggested that “in lots of cases the main improvement [of academisation] was in principal salaries, rather than in outcomes”.
And, reflecting on the priorities for the the incoming government, Mr Freedman said that the “big question” will be “how far they want to go” on changes to the academy system.
Labour has been clear that it prioritises school standards over structure. But Bridget Phillipson, who is expected to be named as the next education secretary, has previously said that there is a need for more transparency and accountability in the regional “layer” of the schools system.
And the party has promised to introduce new regional improvement teams, which Labour says will “enhance school-to-school support and spread best practice”.
Mr Freedman warned that trying to separate school structures from standards doesn’t work.
Referring to the new government, he added: “Although they’re absolutely not going to come out and say ‘This school should be an academy’ or ‘Every school should go back to their local authority’ - and they shouldn’t because that’s not the right approach - they are going to have to tackle a bunch of questions about the academy system.”
Mr Freedman also said that the new Labour government will need to think about whether it makes “tweaks” to the school system or says, “Here is a vision for what this system will ultimately look like.’”
He said this could be a “different way of organising trusts”, mentioning that it could include a more devolved model “bringing mayors more into oversight”.
And reflecting on the past 14 years of Conservative-led government, Mr Freedman said the “biggest problem” had been “the loss of any sense of relationship between schools and the wider children’s system”.
He said that while the intention was for “the rest of the system” to “handle all the problems”, this “has not happened”.
Leaders have warned that schools have become a “fourth emergency service” in recent years amid a breakdown of mental health and social care services.
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