five - Governance, school reform and change management

Summary

We have set out the wider context for understanding the Trojan Horse affair – specifically, the public discourse over British values, social integration, cohesion and the Prevent agenda. We have also set out how these were translated (or not) into guidelines for schools and the extent to which they were established as statutory requirements. Such requirements also include the provision of religious education and a daily act of collective worship. Schools are subject to inspection with regard to these requirements and other aspects of their performance; for example, the academic achievements of their pupils and their management and governance. The nature of this governance regime, in its broadest sense, is the topic of this chapter.

As we have indicated, there has been a programme of radical changes to the organisation of schools associated especially with the academies programme and other initiatives to improve school performance which were announced by the then Secretary of State in the Labour government in March 2000. The academies programme had further impetus under the coalition government following the 2010 Education Act. The academies programme removes schools from LEA control and places them under the central authority of the DfE. Schools enter into contracts with a new body of the DfE, the Education Funding Agency (EFA), through which the funding for academies is monitored and disbursed. This process has disrupted existing networks of relationships and means of communicating ‘best practice’ within LEAs, and has replaced them with new networks facilitated by the DfE, or self-organised among academies themselves, for example, through the formation of multi-academy trusts and consultancies. In addition, in the last chapter we saw how the SACREs have been displaced from their role in developing and monitoring religious education and collective worship in schools, with no clear alternative provision within the arrangements for academies and free schools.

The origins of the academies programme lie in policies to address educational disadvantage and ‘failing’ schools. However, it has been a declared intention of both the New Labour government that developed the programme and of the subsequent coalition and Conservative governments that all schools in England should become academies.