Primary school autonomy in the context of the expanding academies programme

Introduction

England’s academy schools programme is entering into its third phase of expansion. The first saw just over two hundred secondary schools convert to academies in order to raise educational achievement within communities where there was entrenched disadvantage. The second phase opened the programme to all schools, permitting primary schools to convert to academy status and in some cases enforcing conversion. In recent years many schools have become more autonomous in their governance and pedagogy (OECD, 2011). Academies are England’s version of autonomous schools, bearing similarities to charter schools in the United States, free schools in Sweden and independent public schools in Australia, because like these other schools, academies have control over their own budgets and are presented as an opportunity for schools to self-manage, act with autonomy, and develop innovative practice that addresses local problems. England’s academies programme has changed over time, yet a constant, distinctive feature is the independence of these state-funded schools from local government oversight (Curtis et al, 2008). The plan for the third phase of expansion was articulated in the 2016 White Paper Educational Excellence Everywhere (Department for Education, 2016), aiming to compel all state-funded schools to convert to academy status by 2022, conclusively severing the link between schools and local authority control. Then Secretary of State for Education Nicky Morgan revised the plan for compulsory conversion by this date in light of opposition to mass conversion from those both within and outside government, yet the underlying aspiration to expand the academies programme remained. A change in political direction following the United Kingdom’s European Union referendum and a new incumbent as education secretary provides an opportunity to reflect on the academies programme and the sense in pursuing its progression.

The origins of the academies programme lay with the New Labour government and its City Academies, which were intended to draw upon the expertise of sponsors to support urban schools in areas of high disadvantage to raise low attainment (Glatter, 2012; Gunter and McGinity, 2014). The sponsors of the first three City Academies reflected some of the different kinds of interests that have since become commonplace in the governance of state-funded schooling, reported in the media to include a philanthropist and chair of several large companies, a ‘not-for-profit’ educational services and consultancy organisation, the Church of England, and multinational telecommunications companies (BBC, 2000). By September 2001 the first three sponsored City Academies were ready to open, and these first tentative steps can now be seen as critical developments in an ongoing policy trend towards ‘school autonomy’ (Glatter, 2012). Relationships between City Academies and their sponsors and their relative freedom from local authority oversight were departures from mainstream schooling policy. In 2008, towards the end of the Labour government’s time in power, there were 130 schools in the academies programme, with a further 194 proposed to open by September 2010 (Curtis et al., 2008). In 2016 there are 5549 academies, ¹ most brought into being through the Academies Act 2010 which was rushed into legislation not long after the election of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition in May 2010. Curtis et al. (2008) identified three original ultimate objectives of the academies programme, including: (1) raising achievement by ‘breaking the cycle of underachievement and low aspirations in areas of deprivation with historical low performance’ (p.5); (2) increasing school diversity and choice; and (3) creating inclusive and mixed ability schools. The Academies Act 2010 overrode the first objective by offering conversion by choice to schools deemed successful because they were rated as good or above by Ofsted, the inspectorate for state-funded schools. It also made changes to the relationship between academies and external sponsors, allowing successful schools to develop their own academy trusts and act as standalone academies, or in some cases to become sponsors for other schools perceived to be less successful. While many schools chose not to convert to academies, especially primary schools, some schools that were deemed to be unsuccessful found themselves compelled to convert and adopt a sponsor.

This article explores the moral dimensions of the academies programme as it exists presently for primary schools. It shows some of the challenges schools face in forming alliances within a policy environment where they are told they should act autonomously, yet they are dependent on workable external relationships to achieve their purpose and must make decisions about where to place their trust in an increasingly fragmented educational environment. It describes the context of the expanding academies programme and related policy context, and uses data from a study on new relationships between local authorities and schools in response to policy changes of 2010 (Boyask, 2014). The study shows how relations deteriorated as local authorities suffered funding losses through academy conversion that directed funding away from local authorities and into the hands of schools and formula grant-funding cuts. In these financial conditions interactions between local authorities and schools were dominated by business-like relationships of supply, consumption or brokerage. This article asks whether further expansion of the academies programme specifically, and the pursuit of school autonomy generally, is of value to primary schools. The data drawn upon are the perspectives of the schools, obtained through a survey of all schools within four local authorities, and these are compared with an analysis of interview and documentary data obtained from the local authorities. Academy and local authority maintained schools were asked whether they shared values with their local authority. Why did they either share or not share values with the local authority? What changes had they witnessed within local authorities and how had their relationship altered as a result of changes in the local authority? This article focuses upon primary schools in England using findings from a small-scale empirical study that is contextualised within national policy analysis, extant research and the global policy discourse of ‘school autonomy’. The empirical findings show: (1) the extent of common values between primary schools and local authorities, and the values upon which this commonality is based: (2) if there is a perceived gap between the school and local authority, then the differences in values. This analysis gives some indication of the extent to which school autonomy is important to primary schools, raising larger questions about school autonomy as a priority for policy reform internationally.

A context for school autonomy

The academies programme originally aimed to raise achievement in secondary education. The expansion to primary schools started in 2010, when the policy was reformulated and extended by a new government. Once the Academies Act 2010 enabled schools to opt into academy status, considerably more secondary schools converted to academies in the years following the policy reform than primaries. Four years later 54% of secondary schools in England were academies, and only 11% of primary schools. ² The rhetoric coming from government at the time of this massive expansion of the programme suggested that it was autonomy that headteachers sought when they chose to convert to academies (Fisher, 2012).

Chancellor George Osborne’s 2016 budget announced a plan that was formalised in the white paper Educational Excellence Everywhere (Department for Environment, 2016) to convert all remaining local authority maintained schools in England to academies by 2022, a plan that has since been denounced by the political opposition and some members of the government. Expanding the academies programme is the final severance of local authority oversight of education, overturning the 1902 policy that put local government in charge of the management and administration of the majority of state-funded schools. The policy will heavily impact on primary schools that have proportionally been more resistant than secondary schools to the elective academy conversion permitted through the Academies Act 2010. As numbers of academies rise, the independence of academies from local authorities presents central government with some big challenges. Extending the programme to include all 13740 primary schools not yet converted is a challenge that cannot be underestimated. The first large expansion of the academies programme that occurred following the election of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government in 2010 brought subsequent pressures on centralised organisations and systems. The National Audit Office identified risks to value-for-money accompanying the expansion of the programme, highlighting tensions between ‘strong stewardship of public money and a “light-touch” oversight regime’ (Morse, 2012, p.10) and the stresses placed on the public bodies and individuals with a role in funding and oversight (Morse, 2012; 2014a; 2014b).

The government’s solution has been to establish new intermediaries by way of eight regional commissioners for school and colleges, and the encouragement that schools form into chains of academies governed and managed through a single executive (although in practice most schools are not within chains, and those schools that do group together adopt many different forms, with only some adopting the formal multi-academy trust structure (Hutchings et al., 2014)). While it is too early to conclusively establish the effect of the regional commissioners, academy chains have been subject to scrutiny and critical comment from Ofsted, Department for Education, Skills Funding Agency and independent researchers. Reports on academy chains suggest that the nature of autonomy experienced by individual schools within chains is defined and influenced by the chain (Salokangas and Chapman, 2014), and different chains vary considerably in their effectiveness (Hutchings et al., 2014). There are also differences in academy type, with some schools required to enter into partnerships with sponsors (sponsor-led academies) based upon measures of poor performance, and therefore sometimes forced into chains with few options for partners. Other schools have chosen to convert (academy converters). The academies programme has contributed to an overall schooling landscape of diversity and fragmentation (Harris, 2012; Courtney, 2015). The policy that has released academies from local authority oversight of schools has affected the role played by local authorities in educational services, and affected access to services within the maintained schooling sector (Boyask, 2015).

Autonomous schools

In the fragmented environment, the promised autonomy of the academies programme may prove illusory. Autonomy as a political philosophy is problematic, because it obscures the important social relationships, interactions and interdependencies that occur in all human endeavours by emphasising independence and personal liberty (Olssen, 2006). Academy schools are part of complex networks of influence. Governance in the academies programme flows through intricate interrelationships between diverse individuals and organisations, leaving little room for school autonomy. Even standalone academies that are governed by their own academy trusts are subject to broader governmental influences from policy actors, brokers and service providers. Ball and Junemann (2011) use network ethnography to uncover the policy networks of schooling where governmental power is exercised through interconnections between different actors and stakeholders. They claim that philanthropic and business interests converge in state-funded schooling, with the effect of disarticulating state education and undermining its democratic function. Braun et al. (2011) highlight the importance of contextual factors in policy enactment, identifying interrelated situated, professional, material and external contexts that influence how policy is enacted within institutions. There are a variety of contextual influences on the ways that schools enact policy, including a school’s own history and geographic locality (Braun et al., 2011). There are also external influences from those who wield governmental power. In Braun et al. (2011), schools are disciplined through the governmental power of the local authority. Outside of local authority control and within the academies programme, governmental power is still exercised over schools but it becomes less visible when taken out of the mainstream public sphere and exercised through private companies. Within the new networks the discourses that inform educational goals and drive educational practices can be hidden. When governance is located in private spheres it is much more difficult to identify the ethical basis of schooling and for schools to act autonomously by aligning themselves strategically with others who share their values. Negotiating a context of multiple school formations, alliances and service providers is a complex process and requires school leaders, managers and governors to make many and varied fine-grained decisions, such as how to source and assess the best quality services for their school. Higham and Earley (2013) suggest that in a complex policy environment, school leaders are caught between competing external demands so that their capacity for decision-making is limited to ‘tactical interpretation rather than actual strategizing’ (p.704), exercising what Simkins (1997) calls operational rather than criteria or defining power in respect of the destiny of their school.

Trading some autonomy to join with other schools within an academy chain may reduce the breadth of decisions to be made; otherwise academies are positioned as consumers in an open marketplace who must themselves make these challenging decisions. Growth of the academies programme assumes not only that academies are equipped with the intellectual resources to make these decisions well, but also that they are ethically aligned with the values of an open marketplace and corporate approach to schooling. The data examined in this article suggest that many present academies and the local authority maintained primary schools that may soon be compelled to convert do not easily align themselves with these kinds of values.

Research on primary schools’ perspectives on local authorities

The findings reported here come from a regional study of changes in relations between local authorities and schools that occurred in response to structural reform of education and the expansion of the academies programme. The policy changes, including the Academies Act 2010, resulted in significant changes to local authority budgets and furthered a trend of reduction in their direct involvement in educational and social services. The study followed a pragmatic line of inquiry that sought data that would illuminate the changes in relationships between schools and local authorities in the light of the growing number of academy schools, which saw resource allocation shifted away from local authorities and a decline in local authority services affecting the schools remaining under their authority. Data were collected from four local authorities and schools within their boundaries, chosen because they represented differences in demography, geography and types of constituencies: LA 1 is a large borough authority; LA 2 is a small, non-metropolitan authority; LA 3 is a large unitary county authority; and LA 4 is a unitary authority in an average-sized city. The data were collected in the following three ways: (1) a review of publicly available documentary evidence; (2) 11 one-to-one interviews with senior managers and service providers from each local authority; and (3) a survey distributed to all state funded primary and secondary schools in each of the local authorities. The majority of these data were collected in 2012 to 2013, with the original survey data collected in May and June 2013, and some supplementary demographic data collected in March 2016. The documentary evidence gathered for this investigation was all in the public domain and produced for public consumption, so no permission was sought to access these data. Interview and survey participants’ consent to participate in the research was sought through an ethical protocol developed in accordance with university and professional body ethical guidance. Participants were informed about the nature of the project and their rights in respect of participation. The main ethical concern was to protect the identities of individuals, particularly when their responses touched on areas of personal or professional sensitivity such as redundancies, personal well-being or critique of employers: the identities of organisations such as local authorities and their joint ventures or schools have been anonymised and roles obscured to help protect the identity of individuals.

All data were examined and reported upon in a summation report (Boyask, 2014), and a closer analysis of the local authority data reported (Boyask, 2015). The current analysis draws predominantly upon the school survey data, in a more detailed analysis than previously published, and compares the findings of this analysis with prior findings from the local authority data. The survey of schools was an online survey consisting of 10 questions with a mix of closed and open responses. The survey was sent to all primary and secondary schools with an identifiable email address within the four local authorities, and received 131 responses out of a total of 682 schools contacted (see Table 1). Only 105 of these responses were completed sufficiently to use in the analysis for this article, which is based on an overall response rate of 15%. There were responses from 91 (86.7%) primaries and 14 (13.3%) secondary schools, which is close to the proportion of primary to secondary schools in the local authorities overall (primaries = 87.3%; secondaries = 13.7%). While an 85% non-response rate is quite high, it is common to have a response rate of this order for online surveys, which tend to attract a lower rate of response than paper surveys (Nulty, 2008). An assessment of the demographics of the responding schools in terms of phase and school type shows that they broadly mapped onto the population and were equivalent with non-responding schools, which shows that the self-selected sample of respondents bears some similarity with the population. Kano et al. (2008) point out that it is important for replicability that surveys report on response rates and consider the effects of response bias, although they note that analyses of school based research using more than one variable, such as most of those developed in this article, are fairly resistant to response bias, even with low response rates. Responses for this survey came from ‘headteachers, principals or executive heads’ (n = 96), ‘other senior leader’ (n = 1), ‘business manager, senior administrator or administrator’ (n = 8).

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Table 1.

Numbers of respondents by school type (between May and June 2013).

	Academy		Local authority maintained
	Academy converter	Academy sponsor led	Community school	Foundation school	Voluntary aided school	Voluntary controlled school
Primary	6	3	37	22	20	3
Secondary	8	1	1	4	0	0
Total	14	4	38	26	20	3

An additional 14 of the local authority maintained schools converted to academy status from July 2013 and the time of writing (March 2016), including 3 sponsor led academies (2 primaries and 1 secondary school) and the remainder are primary converter academies. These schools have been included in some of the analyses and helped generate further findings on academies. In the original survey data for some categories of school type there are very few respondent schools, and so the data has been grouped as either local authority maintained or not local authority maintained (academy), and is focused upon primary schools where there was a greater number of responses returned. There are also significant differences in the sizes of the authorities observed in this study, which means responses tend to come from the two larger local authorities. Most of the analysis is aggregated across the four local authorities; there is some analysis at the local authority level, and in cases where the number of schools used in a statistic is less than five this has been identified. These findings should be regarded only as indicative and requiring further investigation, although they have been discussed when they could be supported by congruent findings from qualitative data. The statistical data returned from the survey are categorical, and the statistical analysis is bivariate to show simple counts and relative frequencies. The survey analysis is compared with a deductive content analysis previously undertaken, which identified corporate, community engagement, entrepreneurial and co-operative approaches from local authorities to the privatisation of services (Boyask, 2015).

Differences between primary and secondary schools

Secondary schools are more likely to be academies, and of the secondary schools that responded to the survey, 57% of them had converted to academy status of their own volition, a proportion close to the present national average for secondary academies. This compared with 7% of primary schools. Other recent research on school reform has pointed to differences between the ways primary and secondary schools orientate themselves to the academies programme. In their study on the impact of structural reform at the local level, Coldron et al. (2015) found that a school’s decision to convert was related to their relative prestige within the local school field, with primary schools positioning themselves as subordinate to secondary schools. Personal values also play an important part in decision-making (Coldron et al., 2014).

In this survey, both primary and secondary schools were asked to identify:

which local authority services they used prior to the 2010 reforms, and which they used post reforms;

The survey was designed to prompt cumulative responses that built upon responses to previous questions. This meant that answers to the penultimate question on whether the schools shared values with their local authority were informed by the information requested in the previous questions and the respondents’ previous answers, and were followed by a request to explain their answer. Constructing the survey in this way meant that the questions related to shared values were key to the study findings.

In light of the connection made by government between academy conversion and aspirations for school autonomy, it was expected that primary schools would be closer in their relationships with local authorities than secondary schools. A larger study of headteachers has also shown differences between the two sectors (Earley, 2013; Higham and Earley, 2013), finding that ‘a majority of secondary school headteachers (68 per cent) was positive about school autonomy in general, while among primary headteachers 49 per cent were positive but 37 per cent were negative’ (Higham and Earley, 2013: 706). The survey findings from the presently reported research concurred and the proportion of secondary school respondents who agreed they shared values with their local authority was lower than for primary schools (see Table 2).

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Table 2.

Proportions of school types that share values with local authorities.

School type	No	Yes
All primaries (n = 91)	0.35	0.64
All secondaries (n = 14)	0.57	0.43
Primary schools
Primary academies (Pre June 2013) (n = 9)	0.67	0.33
Local authority maintained primaries (n = 82)	0.32	0.68
Primary academies (Post June 2013) (n = 13)	0.29	0.71

Looking more closely at the survey data, the proportion of local authority maintained primary schools who perceive that they share values with their local authority is markedly larger than for primary academies. The proportion of primary academies that perceive differences between their values and the values of the local authorities is even greater than the proportion of secondary schools who perceive similarly. The make-up of these academy schools is six converters and three sponsor-led academies, from which it can be assumed that two thirds have chosen to convert. While the number of schools included in this statistic is low and therefore inconclusive, it seems reasonable that schools which have opted to convert may be more likely to differentiate themselves from local authorities. Further investigation through inclusion of the 13 additional primary academies that have converted from July 2013 onwards reveals that this relationship is not consistent. Of the schools that converted to academies after the survey, 11 were converters and two sponsor-led. There is an apparent difference between the proportion of these schools that regard their local authority as sharing values with their school and the nine academies that converted before June 2013.

When these 22 schools (both pre and post June 2013 academies) are examined, either as two separate groups or together and despite the low numbers, their responses to this question are supported by the open ended responses explaining their answer to the question of shared values. In these responses the schools reveal some of the contextual factors that are influential in their experiences as academies and how they perceive local authorities.

Primary academies: Seeking school autonomy or distancing themselves from corporate values?

Of the 22 primary academies, nine did not think they shared values with the local authority. The explanations for this difference can be understood as relating to two main views of the local authority. The first is concerned with their previous experience of the local authority’s exercise of control over schools, and concern that this control is exerted at the expense of school autonomy or as an expression of the local authority’s dominance. For example, the following are explanations from two primary academies on why they did not share values with the local authority:

We are looking toward local self-determination; the LA tends toward centralisation and one size fits all.

They still appear to think that they have an entitlement to a job, no matter how they behave.

Becoming more business-like

The changes described by schools were also observed within the local authorities. Analysis of documentary evidence and interviews with key figures in local authority service provision and commissioning reveal conspicuous changes occurring in response to the 2010 changes to policy. At the time of the survey the main statutory duties for local authorities in respect of education included: guaranteeing there is fair access to schooling for all children and young people; supporting those who are most vulnerable; school improvement and raising standards of achievement; and promoting and responding to the interests of parents, families and children who they represent through their democratic mandate (Department for Education, 2010; Parish et al., 2012). In response to central government policy reform and funding cuts local authorities had to fulfil these responsibilities with reduced resources, and the pressures arising from a scarcity of funding led all four to the solution of privatisation (see Table 3).

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Table 3.

Models of service: Four local authorities in 2013 (Boyask, 2015).

LA 1 Corporate	LA 2 Community engagement	LA 3 Entrepreneurial	LA 4 Cooperative
A fully corporate model, developing a joint venture with a multi-national corporation	Community and stakeholder engagement, commissioning services from schools	A small statutory provision (although under threat of closure), and an entrepreneurial business unit	Aspirations for cooperative models of business, following the lead of their council

While central government structural reform was an impetus for change, each of the local authorities moved toward privatisation from a different set of ethics. In two cases, LA 1 and LA 2, privatisation of services fitted with their own trajectories of change. This and other differences show nuances in approach to privatisation, some less mitigated by deep-rooted social ethics than others (Boyask, 2015). LA 1’s solution to privatisation was to offer skeletal service provision for core statutory duties, and supplement this provision with a joint venture developed with a FTSE 100 listed multinational corporation with the intention of moving away from reliance on government commissioning and growing its traded business.

As we go through time, and money is moving away from the centre of local authorities, then more will depend on the traded arm than the commissioning arm. And that is right and proper that that company will be genuinely shaping services that schools need and schools want to buy (Interview with LA 1 Senior Manager, 11 April 2013).

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Table 4.

Proportion of all surveyed schools that perceive shared values with local authorities.

	No	Yes
LA 1 Corporate	0.36	0.64
LA 2 Community engagement	0.14*	0.86
LA 3 Entrepreneurial	0.49	0.51
LA 4 Cooperative	0.25*	0.75

* indicates fewer than five responses included in this statistic

Within LA 1 and LA 3, 36% and 49% of schools disagreed that they shared values with the local authority. These were the authorities that predominantly approached privatisation of their educational services from a business angle. There is also a strong thread of criticism about the local authorities’ financial and business practices in the schools data, even amongst those who felt that they shared values with the local authority.

A headteacher at a local authority maintained primary school who was broadly supportive of the local authority made the following statement about LA 1:

Whilst understanding the reason for undertaking the joint venture with [redacted], it does seem appalling that a private firm is now making a profit from education services.

A headteacher in an LA 2 maintained primary school stated that:

We are all committed to improving the lives of [LA 2] children.

Implications of further academies expansion

The academies programme and its supporters have reframed schooling so that ‘the idea of a public system of schools maintained by a LA is rapidly becoming unthinkable, and if it is thought about it is rendered unspeakable’ (Gunter and McGinity, 2014: 310). There are, however, voices from all parts of the political spectrum critical of extending the academies programme to all state-funded schools. Perspectives from primary schools on their relationship with local authorities suggest that some schools perceive a gap between the values of their school and the local authority that is based on a desire for freedom from control. Yet for many others autonomy is less desirable. Some schools that have converted to academies appear less concerned with freedom from local authorities and more concerned about what they perceive as a shift in values towards economic expediency that has crept into relationships between schools and local authorities. The research findings presented in this article suggest that adopting a business approach to education is what many primary schools take issue with about the present reforms of schooling. Unfortunately, the government’s robust progress towards the conversion of all schools to academies would make this objection irrelevant.

A careful read of the recent white paper Educational Excellence Everywhere (Department for Education, 2016) extends the promise of autonomy to some schools, but not all. For some school leaders who have been deemed successful within the terms set out by central government, there would be an opportunity to take on substantial leadership roles and enact autonomy also within those terms.

The best leaders will play a wider role across the system, as we transfer responsibility for school improvement from local authorities to schools and system leaders – teaching schools, NLEs and other designated system leaders – to spread expertise and best practice. This will mean those who have experience of realising high standards and turning schools around are positioned to drive change across the system. Where schools are performing well, they will choose and organise their own school improvement support when they consider it necessary; only if they’re underperforming and don’t have a plan or the means to improve will RSCs [Regional Schools Commissioners] do so on their behalf (Department for Education, 2016: 19).

If the academies programme improved educational outcomes, raised student achievement and addressed inequalities in opportunity, then it would be appropriate to ask why does it matter whether schools are academies or not and governed as businesses or not? However, research on the enactment of the Academies Act 2010 to date is on the side of the primary schools. Overall the academies programme has maintained rather than reduced social segregation (Gorard, 2014), is not involving the disadvantaged communities the government originally sought to include (Higham, 2014), and improved rates of educational attainment for disadvantaged students within them is exceptional to particular schools and not widely distributed across schools (Hutchings et al., 2014). Hutchings et al. (2014) on the impact of academy chains on low income students recommend undertaking further research to understand how a few chains are raising attainment, so that this information may be shared and potentially replicated. Gorard’s (2014) research on the links between academies, student outcomes and socio-economic segregation concludes that homogenous state-funded and governed schooling is the most preferred model for creating and maintaining equality and social justice, and thus it is systematic reform in the direction of standardisation that is required rather than understanding and disseminating examples of exceptional practice. The fundamental flaw in an education system built upon market values is that, as in any competitive marketplace, there will be winners and losers. A just society should not write off a proportion of its children, and if resistance to expansion of the academies programme to all state schools proves ineffective, the impact on children and young people must be documented, disseminated and understood.

The research reported in this paper resonates with wider policy analysis and other research studies that document the academisation of English schooling. While recent changes in government have resulted in abandonment of compulsion to convert all maintained schools to academies, there remains a commitment to academy schools and expansion of the academies programme because of the benefits of “…freedom and autonomy that academy status brings” (Greening, 2016). It remains important that researchers continue to document the different facets of academy schools policy related to governance and control, such as the effectiveness of the newly emerging middle tier in mitigating the negative consequences of the academies programme on primary schools. However, a growing body of literature on the reforms is pointing to critical flaws in England’s schools policy that can also be seen in other national school systems. Present day generative and causal influences on education policy extend beyond the national policy context and through globalization the schooling system in England is shaped by global events and forces. The fragmentation caused by the academies programme policy needs to be examined within a global context of autonomous school reform, and its drivers and consequences compared with the causal processes and mechanisms in other national contexts (Robertson and Dale, 2015).