Westminster Briefing

Dr Andrew Wilkins

University of East London

a.wilkins@uel.ac.uk

@andewilkins

Topic 1

A new role for local authorities:

strategic oversight at a time of rapid

decentralisation

Causes and consequences of local

authority restructuring

Decentralisation

and duplication

of bureaucracy

Hollowing out of LAs

Decentralisation

of power and

responsibility

Relocation of

local/regional

strategic

oversight

Remodelling of

relations of

accountability

Growth of soft

and hard

federations

Private sector

participation in

public sector

organisation

Maintaining strong governance and

accountability

Recentralisation of strategic planning,

budgetary control and performance

monitoring of schools.

Maintaining strong governance and

accountability Benefits:

• Greater collaboration, partnerships and sharing of good practice between schools.

• Reduction in administrative, tendering and procedural costs/labour. Less bureaucracy.

• Improved accountability through coordinated activities centrally managed by executive/non-executive teams.

• Combat isolationism and zero-sum competition through improved collective security, shared purpose and vision.

• Greater economies of scale.

• Liberate educators as administrators/compliance officers and empower them to focus on teaching.

Maintaining strong governance and

accountability Costs:

• Central intervention can militate against creativity and organizational/experimental innovation.

• Top-down, hierarchical models generate producer monopoly and concentration of power.

• Without sufficient autonomy schools lose their ‘identity’, sense of shared history and capacity to respond to local needs.

• Democratic mandates and procedures are exercised ‘elsewhere’, if indeed they are exercised at all.

Topic 2

Balancing authority with responsibility:

rethinking school engagement and

accountability

The changing role and

responsibilities of school governors

Reconstitution,

reorientation

and reculturing

Academisation

Supplant the

formal authority

of local

government

Data tracking

and monitoring

(RaiseOnline

and OSDD)

Emphasis on

experts and

expertise

Technocratic

specificity of

role (‘checks

and balances’)

Becoming

professional:

CPD, training,

external review.

Types of accountability: Formal

Explicit, statutory, legal, unconditional, concrete, hierarchical, vertical, enshrined through legal obligations and often lend

themselves to measurement, comparison and audit.

Formal relations of accountability:

• Department for Education (DfE)

• Education Funding Agency (EFA)

• Ofsted

• LEA (in the case of maintained schools)

Types of accountability: Informal

Implicit, non-statutory, moral, conditional, horizontal, enshrined through ethical obligations,

optional forums, councils, consultations, democratic member mandate, inclusion and

participation, and does not lend itself to measurement or audit.

Informal relations of accountability:

• Parents

• Local community

• Student

Greater recognition of informal

accountability?

• Governors annual report – what we’ve done, why and

how we will improve.

• Forums and user councils which engage parents and

students as stakeholders without the burden of technical

knowledge/requirements/procedures.

• Embedding student and parent voice within key

decisions concerning school vision, resource allocation

and strategic planning.

• Greater student-, teacher- and parent-led feedback

systems.

• New role for parent governor: an intermediary who

moves between governing body and parent body.