Before the end of May, Parliament was presented with a new Academies Bill that, in the words of the BBC, presaged ‘the most radical overhaul of schools in England for a generation’. England’s secondary and primary schools were to be offered the chance to convert to academy status, with institutions already judged ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted to be fast-tracked through the process without consultation with staff, parents or the wider community; free schools could be set up on the same independent basis. ‘Not since the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 has legislation other than that intended to counter terrorism, or deal with economic crisis, been rushed through all parliamentary stages in quite this fashion’, teachers’ union leader Christine Blower told her union conference later that year. There was widespread criticism of the Bill, particularly its limited provision for consultation.7 Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, uneasy at the pace of change, pushed through some minor amendments on consultation, safeguarding provision for children with special educational needs and freedom of information.
Spending cuts were to prove a key part of the school revolution jigsaw. Clear parallels were emerging with welfare and health, where government policy was developing a similarly toxic mix of radical, fast-paced, structural change and slashed spending. In the summer, the government had already announced swingeing cuts to local authority budgets which were soon to filter through to schools. In the October Comprehensive Spending Review, while the dedicated schools budget was marginally increased by 0.1 per cent (not enough to keep pace with inflation), and an additional £2.5 billion was pledged for a new ‘pupil premium’, an extra sum per pupil for children from low-income families, the overall Department for Education budget fell. Some of the main savings, like the 60 per cent cut to the school building programme and the abolition of a number of education quangos, including the General Teaching Council and the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, had already been publicised, as had the axing of the Child Trust funds and one-to-one tuition. The government now announced that it would also scrap the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), a subsidy of up to £30 a week that allowed many students from poorer homes to stay on at school, and cut £162 million from the School PE and Sports Strategy that had up to now been ring-fenced, to fund 450 schools sport partnerships.
There was public dismay at both these abolitions. Getting rid of the schools sport partnerships was ‘an act of gross stupidity’, one partnership manager told the Daily Telegraph. Under public pressure, Michael Gove restored most of the budget for school sports; but there were reports that he had partly funded this U-turn by deciding instead to abolish Bookstart, an imaginative scheme to offer free books to nearly 3.5 million children at three key ages, from pre-school to the end of primary. A fresh bout of outrage greeted the Bookstart announcement in December: Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate, accused the government of behaving like ‘Scrooge at his worst’, and best-selling author Ian McEwan declared himself ‘appalled’ at the move. In response, Department of Education officials were dispatched on Boxing Day to meet with Viv Bird, CEO of Booktrust, which administers the Bookstart scheme, to announce the continuation of funding.8 In March 2011, Gove restored a third of the budget for EMA, although this did not stop the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development calling on the government to restore the whole amount in the interests of fairness.9 The November 2010 vote to triple tuition fees, despite explicit pre-election promises by the Liberal Democrats to oppose such a move—and widespread, sometimes violent, street protests—contributed significantly to the darkening of the public mood, and the mounting fear and cynicism about public sector reform.
Nothing, however, would stop the Coalition as it steamed ahead with a White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, most of whose proposals were later enshrined in the 2011 Education Bill. University-based teacher training was to be scaled back in favour of practical experience in the classroom via a new network of Teaching Schools, some to be located in the private sector. All new schools would now be either academies or free schools, and, with the Kirklees example in mind perhaps, central government gave itself the right to purchase school land from local authorities to hand straight over to the new ventures. Schools that were not meeting the new ‘floor target’ of 35 per cent GCSEs including English, mathematics and a science (but not to include vocational qualifications like BTEC, which many thought were artificially inflating school results) could be forced to convert to academy status. Schools that wished to convert were now required only to consult when they deemed it ‘appropriate’, and this consultation could be delayed until after an academy order has been made, rendering it virtually meaningless. Free schools could be set up in a number of locations including empty shops, office space or even ice rinks. Local admissions forums, important area-based committees created to scrutinise the fairness of school admissions, were to be abolished—just as a raft of new schools, with enhanced powers over their own admissions, were to be created. The School Adjudicator could no longer make changes to a school’s admission policy in response to a complaint or a referral. These changes may have precipitated the decision of the existing School Adjudicator, Ian Craig, to announce that he would stand down in October 2011, six months before his contract expired.
Meanwhile a fresh row was brewing over the introduction of a new measurement of school quality, the English Baccalaureate, known as the E-Bacc. In order to qualify, pupils had to have a good GCSE in maths, English, two sciences, a humanities subject (but this did not include a GCSE in Humanities), and an ancient or modern foreign language. Many heads were furious to discover that their schools were to be judged retrospectively on the new measure—that is, on GCSEs taken in the summer of 2010. Many were now faced with unpalatable decisions concerning whether to switch pupils halfway through existing GCSE courses to make sure their school performed well in future league tables, or to ignore what many saw as Gove’s arbitrary rulings over what subjects now counted, and stay at the bottom of the pile. Many deplored the absence of subjects like music, art and religious education from the E-Bacc.
A new partiality seemed to have crept into government policy-making. Critics questioned the high number of academy heads and leaders represented on a major review of teaching and learning, announced in March 2011—particularly since academies and free schools were to be exempted from so many government strictures on the curriculum and standards. There were also raised eyebrows at the appointment of ex-Blair adviser Sally Morgan as Chair of a newly slimmed-down Ofsted, given her close links both to ARK, one of the powerful new academy chains, and to the New Schools Network, a government-funded body for facilitating the establishment of free schools. On the curriculum review, announced in early 2011, Gove made plain his preference for ‘a traditional education, sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England, the great works of literature, proper mental arithmetic, algebra by the age of eleven, modern foreign languages. That’s the best training of the mind and that’s how children will be able to compete.’ Later he told teachers that ‘the great tradition of our literature—Dryden, Pope, Swift, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Austen, Dickens and Hardy—should be at the heart of school life.’ But over half this list were already being taught within schools. English teachers also questioned the fact that the only expert in primary-level literacy on the committee overseeing the national curriculum review was Ruth Miskin, the most public advocate of the controversial ‘synthetic phonics’ method of teaching children to read, and whose company Read Write Inc. sells training programmes to schools. Both of the primary heads also appointed to the committee were vocal supporters—and users—of Ms Miskin’s training programme.
There were further embarrassing setbacks for the ‘breakneck Coalition’. Following a judicial review launched by six councils including Nottingham City, Luton and Kent, challenging the legality of the government’s precipitate abandonment of the Building Schools for the Future programme, the High Court found Gove’s failure to consult on BSF cancellations ‘so unfair as to amount to an abuse of power’. Gove dismissed the judgment as a minor technicality. A few weeks later he told Parliament that a college in Doncaster, a new school-building pilot project, was agreed by the government in an impressively short ten weeks. Not true, pointed out Rowan Moore in the Observer: in fact, it took 22 weeks. In the same trenchant piece, Moore, an architectural journalist,