Abstract
This article considers the ways in which government policy in England is causing local schooling landscapes to be reconfigured. By August 2014, 12 percent of primary schools and 53 percent of secondary schools had become academies – ‘independent publicly funded schools’ directly responsible to the Secretary of State. The article begins by considering ways in which schools may choose, or be forced, to respond to this policy environment, and, in particular, the new forms of school grouping that may emerge. It then draws on case studies of three local authorities – a large metropolitan authority, a large rural county and a small unitary authority – to explore changing patterns of schooling. It notes that rates of ‘academization’ vary between the three areas, that local and regional groupings have gained greater purchase than national chains, and that, even allowing for this, almost half the academies are stand-alone – not belonging to any formal grouping. It concludes by arguing that deeper understanding of emerging patterns will require further study of the ways in which the values, purposes and power of key actors interact as decisions are taken about schools’ futures.
Introduction
The changes to educational policy in England instituted by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government which took office in 2010 have presented major challenges for schools. The Government’s aim is to establish a system of ‘independent publicly-funded schools’ (Department for Education, 2010). The large majority of these schools are academies – schools which transfer from local authority (LA) funding and accountability to direct funding by the Department for Education (DfE). In addition, there are provisions for new free schools to be created in response to proposals by community and religious groups and other organizations. The corollary of direct responsibility for schools being passed to the Secretary of State is the ‘hollowing out’ (Rhodes, 1997) of the LA’s responsibilities for ensuring the quality of schooling locally and its replacement with a vision of a ‘self-improving school system’ (Hargreaves, 2010, 2011) through which responsibility for school improvement is passed down to school level, with school-to-school collaboration seen as the primary vehicle of change. This view is embodied in the policy of establishing Teaching Schools (Husbands, 2014; Matthews and Berwick, 2013). Since 2010 these processes have proceeded apace (Woods and Simkins, 2014). By August 2014, 12 percent of primary and 53 percent of secondary schools had converted to academy status (a total of 4009) and 175 free schools had been created.
Schools are faced with the need to develop responses to this environment. The ways in which they do this and the outcomes that result will be critical in determining the nature of the schooling ‘landscape’ going forward. Two key questions face schools. First, should the school seek academy status, and, secondly, should it seek to work collaboratively with other schools in some form of partnership? In principle these are independent decisions: many schools that have not chosen to become academies have, nevertheless, formed partnerships (typically ‘federations’) with other schools, for a variety of reasons; and schools can also choose not to join such groupings and to become ‘stand-alone’ academies. However, schools’ freedom of choice will be constrained by various factors, the most important of which is the way in which their performance is judged. All schools are being encouraged to become academies, but where schools are deemed to be underperforming on the basis of criteria relating to their student outcomes and inspection judgements they may be required to become academies under a sponsor, which might be, for example, a not-for-profit school chain or another successful school. 1 Such arrangements need to be approved by the Secretary of State, and in many cases the DfE will be a key actor in determining the ‘solution’ that emerges. As a result of these processes, the choices that are made about schools’ futures are leading to increasingly fragmented local landscapes of schooling with different patterns emerging in different parts of the country. This article considers some of the implications of this fragmentation by exploring the patterns of schooling that are emerging in three local areas.
New patterns of school organization
It is not easy to find ways of analysing the new patterns of schooling that are emerging. Hill et al. (2012) in their pioneering study suggest a ‘loose–tight’ spectrum of organizational forms from situations where schools collaborate loosely over areas of common interest through to those where groups of schools have a joint model of governance and may even have a shared model of pedagogy. They identify three key positions along this spectrum – collaborative partnerships, umbrella trusts (where schools work together under a trust but retain their own governance) and multi-academy trusts with fully shared governance.
This position is too simple, however. In fact the relationships made between schools are complex and take diverse forms, some of which may not function as Hill et al. (2012) envisage. Schools may be involved in loose ‘collaboratives’, where they come together merely to gain advantages of scale in such areas as professional development or business management support, or to enable shared activities concerned with school improvement. Some schools establish more formal relationships through federations. Federations, which were encouraged under the previous (Labour) government, are typically small groups locally constructed from schools that choose, or are encouraged by the LA, to come together in partnerships that are institutionalized through some reconfiguration of their governance arrangements. The reasons for the greater formality may include school improvement concerns – especially where higher- and lower-performing schools are brought together – or more pragmatic considerations such as the difficulty of recruiting a head teacher, or the advantages, as with collaboratives, of pooling key resources (Chapman et al., 2010; Howarth, 2015; Ofsted, 2011). Federation arrangements may be relatively loose, such as the establishment of a joint committee to address particular issues, or tighter such as the appointment of an executive head teacher over the federation or the creation of a joint governing body.
Finally, schools may be grouped into chains. While this is sometimes used (as do Hill et al., 2012) as a collective term for many forms of school collaboration, we prefer to use it specifically for groupings which are relatively tight, centrally controlled and led by an organization which might be a non-profit/charitable organization or a school. In many ways such chains are similar to Charter Management Organizations in the United States on which some of them are modelled (Farrell et al., 2012; Wohlstetter et al, 2013). However, it is important to note that chains vary considerably, in their ‘ownership’, in their size, in their geographical reach and in their governance – for example, in the degree to which member schools collaborate closely or are granted autonomy from central controls and policies (Papanastasiou, 2013; Salokangas and Chapman, 2014). In particular, it is important to distinguish between those that are led and managed under the auspices of a national or regional non-profit organization and those that are led by schools. The former have received much of the publicity – good and bad – in the national press, but the latter are becoming very significant players in the emerging landscape.
Sources of data
This article draws on a research project which seeks to gather evidence as to what new order is emerging at the local level and the factors affecting this. To do this we have sought information and perspectives on local developments in three LAs chosen to provide a variety of geographical, historical and policy contexts: a large metropolitan authority (City); a large rural authority with a dispersed population (County); and a smaller unitary authority centred on a town (Town). Within each we interviewed people in senior posts in the LA and in schools, especially those likely to have an LA-wide perspective. We also obtained data concerning the changing status of schools from key officers in each LA and from the DfE website. Between 2011 and 2013 we conducted 26 semi-structured hour-long interviews. This article largely draws on interviews with seven senior LA staff (three of whom we interviewed twice) and the data they provided.
The academization process in three LA areas
Describing the emerging relationships between schools is difficult. In all three areas, mixed and fragmented patterns were emerging in a highly dynamic process. The policy of ‘academization’ continued as additional schools chose – or were required because they were judged to be underperforming – to seek academy status and take fateful decisions about how best to position themselves in the emerging local schools landscape. Furthermore, knowing the proportions of academies in each LA says little about the diversity of forms of leadership and governance that underpin those surface structures. Nevertheless, basic data on the schooling landscape may still be instructive: mapping emerging surface patterns is a first step in understanding how the local landscape is being reconfigured.
The number of schools by phase and status in each of our LAs in September 2013, after three years of Coalition Government, was as given in Table 1.This shows two main trends: the rate of ‘academization’ varied considerably between the LAs; and in all the LAs the rate of primary conversion lagged considerably behind that of secondary schools. Burrowing below these percentages we find a complex picture.
Number (percentage) of schools by academy status, September 2013.
National chains were first introduced into each of the authorities through New Labour’s academies programme. In City, three schools became such academies under the sponsorship of large national chains; in County, two did; and in Town, one did. All were secondary schools in challenging circumstances or with issues around performance. Since 2010, further penetration by such chains into the three LAs has been limited. In City, no further schools had joined national chains by September 2013; in County, 12 had, and in Town, two had. The figure for County, however, is somewhat misleading: nine primary and secondary converter academies in that LA were sponsored – and loosely controlled – by a subsidiary of a large non-profit organization which has a contract with that LA for the provision of services to schools. Apart from this, the relatively small purchase of these large national chains across all three LAs in September 2013 is notable. One chain with 59 schools nationally has a total of six schools in all three LAs; another is working in two of the LAs, with just one school in each out of 31 nationally.
In addition to the national chains, some schools in County are members of one of two chains that are regionally focused. Both have their ‘headquarters’ in the geographical wider region which includes County – although not in the County administrative area – and sponsor schools across the region. These chains sponsor 13 and 15 academies, respectively, of which, between them, nine are in County. In each case the schools are a mixture of primary and secondary schools (and one special school) and of sponsored and converter academies, and the majority in each case are located within one local area of the authority.
All three LAs have school-led groupings of academies. In City, one secondary school has sponsored another secondary school in another part of the city as well as two of that school’s feeder primary schools. All three schools were vulnerable in terms of their performance, and the development of this grouping was facilitated by the LA. In addition, the LA has facilitated two primary school groupings, comprising a total of five schools, again with a strong school acting as a sponsor to weaker ones. In County, local school-led groupings have arisen for different reasons. A grouping of four secondary schools was established under a lead school in response to New Labour’s academies policy. A more recent example in County is a grouping of five primary schools (including converter and sponsored academies and one free school) under a joint Academy Trust centred around a town. In County, too, there are six federations of academies which combine schools in a variety of ways: for example, a secondary school and some of its feeder primaries; two grammar schools; a pair of primary schools; and an infant–junior federation. In Town there is one local chain comprising one secondary school as the lead school and two primaries. Finally, in two of the LAs the local Catholic diocese is building groupings of schools, currently comprising two secondary and six primaries in City, and one secondary and four primaries in County.
Finally, it needs to be re-emphasized that a large proportion (around 45% across the three LAs) of academies in all three LA areas are free-standing and not part of any formal grouping. The vast majority of these are converter academies, although a small number have sponsors such as local universities or regional educational consultancy organizations.
Discussion
These brief summaries of the position in the three LAs in September 2013 are incomplete in that they only relate to school groups that emerged as part of the academization process; they do not include other groups, especially federations and collaboratives that did not include academies. Nevertheless, they suggest a number of initial conclusions concerning emerging patterns.
First, rates of academization vary between LA areas. A major explanation for this can be found in the conditions in each LA area. County had been traditionally a low-interventionist administration and had attempted to minimize the activity and impact of the local state by giving as much autonomy to schools as possible, whereas Town was emerging from a period of difficult relationships with its schools. In contrast, City had traditionally been a relatively interventionist administration and placed strong emphasis on nurturing families of schools that were embedded in their local communities. Consequently, prior to 2010, a much higher proportion of schools in County and Town than in City had taken on and become used to the enhanced responsibilities and freedom associated with foundation status (45% of secondary schools in County and 75% in Town, compared with 23% in City), whereas in City there were stronger cultural and political pressures within the schooling community towards the maintenance of a coherent local system despite the pressures of national policy (Simkins et al., forthcoming). A second factor concerned school performance: County and Town had a higher proportion of ‘outstanding’ schools than did City, providing greater opportunities for early conversion and school sponsorship.
Second, academization has been slow to establish itself among primary schools in all three LA areas, although this is moving rather faster in County than in the other two areas.
Third, national chains have not achieved significant purchase in any of the LAs, especially since 2010. The preference for key actors in each LA – LA politicians and officers and the schools themselves – seems to have been to establish school groups with more local roots, although the degree to which this was a central concern varied. A significant development is the emergence of regional and local groupings. These vary widely in their initiation (top-down or mutually constructed), their ‘leadership’ (focused on a not-for-profit organization or an individual lead school), their size and their composition. This was most noticeable in City, where the LA actively attempted to influence patterns emerging locally towards groupings led by high-performing local schools (for a fuller discussion see Simkins et al., forthcoming). In contrast, in County, where the LA’s position was less assertive about solutions, a wide variety of groups was emerging including both those led by local schools and by regionally based non-profit organizations. One of the consequences in County was that particular groupings were emerging in dominant positions in various localities.
Finally, the largest group of academies in all three authorities comprised those that were free-standing. It does not follow that many of these did not have various informal collaborative relationships in place, but it does mean that they did not see a necessity to establish formal groupings with other schools as part of the academization process.
The experience in these three LA areas demonstrates the complexities that are emerging as national policy is translated into local patterns of implementation. Description and analysis of this dynamic is difficult. The number of organizational forms that are emerging is increasing, and the balance between them varies from area to area. Indeed, in large LAs such as County, emerging patterns may well differ between quite small sub-areas. Apparently similar organizational forms – chains, for example, or federations – may turn out to have very different characteristics when their internal operations are examined in detail (Salokangas and Chapman, 2014). Understanding such characteristics requires in-depth case study research at a number of organizational levels – research that has hardly begun. Our work suggests that, in order to understand the factors determining particular groupings and thereby contributing to the patterns in the local landscapes, we need to take account of how groups differ across a wide range of dimensions. Table 2 suggests the kinds of dimensions that need to be explored. 2
Variables influencing the character of emerging school groups.
Three key dimensions are suggested in Table 2: emerging forms of group structure, processes of group formation and types of group organization. This article focuses on the first of these. However, new structures will reflect historical processes through which they are formed: the organizational structures and cultures that preceded them; the decision processes that took place; and the interactions in these processes of players such as head teachers and other senior school leaders, LA politicians and officers, leaders of pre-existing groupings that the school may join, and parents and members of the local community. Similarly, once established, different forms of organization – expressed through patterns of governance and leadership – will imply different opportunities for particular actors, such as leaders (including those in new roles such as executive head or chief executive), governors and the wider community, to influence the character of the group and the policies it pursues. Fundamental questions arise, therefore, about the politics of school restructuring, in relation both to how new forms of organization emerge and the ways in which they operate once established (Chapman, 2013a, 2013b; Gunter and McGinity, 2014). A central question concerns how key actors (individuals, as exemplified above, but also organizations, such as the DfE through its policies) exercise particular forms of power and influence (for example, the authority of formal position, the capital associated with expertise, experience or network connectivity, or regulatory capacity), in various arenas (such as governing bodies, group and school management structures, or LA or community forums). In his work on heterarchies at a national level, Ball (2008; Ball and Junemann, 2012) notes the emergence of new patterns of influence, of new kinds of actors – particularly those who occupy key nodal positions in the new networks and establish new kinds of careers – and new policy discourses and narratives that legitimize new forms of governance. New kinds of actors and new policy discourses raise important issues about ‘the kind of identity and agency that players in the system want to aspire to’, particularly in relation to the balance between individualistic and competitive approaches and those based on concepts of public value (Woods and Simkins, 2014: 336). These themes have a strong resonance at a local level. The emerging school groupings and their leaders are important actors in terms of their potential to provide ‘solutions’ to problems of inter-school collaboration and support. Which individuals and groups choose to put themselves forward (or are encouraged to do so) as ‘solutions’ in particular cases, and the degree to which their characteristics (values; school performance; potential to contribute to improvement) match the hopes and expectations of the other actors, is a major influencing factor in the evolution of local schooling landscapes, and one which will need further research as local landscapes continue to evolve.
Footnotes
Acknowledgment
The research on which this article is based was part-funded by the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society.