The Big Society has spoken…

Well, congratulations to Ed Miliband on being elected Labour leader, and congratulations (I think!) to the Labour party for taking such a high-risk (but potentially high-reward) course of action. I’m not going to pretend I’m free from trepidation – quite the opposite – but I do think Ed made a solid start in his acceptance speech, and perhaps my fears about his ability to find the right tone will (as I’d hoped) prove unfounded.

Ed is of course already being attacked as “the unions’ choice”, thanks to the fact the only section of the electoral college in which he came first was the Affiliates section. But it’s worth taking a look at the actual voting results to see what has actually happened.

First, a total of 338,374 people voted in this election. I don’t know if that’s a record for a party leadership election, but it’s pretty impressive. Of those, 266 were MPs, 126,874 were Labour party members – and 211,234 were members of trades unions and affiliated societies.

Contrary to the perception which the Tories (aided and abetted by the media) will be assiduously seeking to promote, there is not a single “union block vote” to be found: those 211,234 Affiliate votes were mostly from ordinary working people who pay voluntary political contributions along with their union dues. If anything, that section of the electoral college is the one that most reflects the wider electorate. The Tories like to talk about the “Big Society”: well, the trades unions are Britain’s largest voluntary organisations, and here are hundreds of thousands of their members engaging in politics as individuals. It’s the Big Society that has made Ed Miliband leader.

Does this result mean that Ed Miliband is in the pocket of the trades unions? At the very least, he’s likely to engineer some sort of minor confrontation with the unions in the near future to counter suggestions that he is beholden to them. More fundamentally (and more constructively), the fact that he’s been voted in by ordinary union members, rather than by union bosses, could well be a means for him to assert himself against union leaders: “You didn’t vote for me; your members voted for me, and I’m going to act in their interests rather than yours.”

As for claims that union members blindly follow their leaderships’ guidance: in 1994, union leaderships recommended that their members vote against Tony Blair, but 52% voted for him.

Let’s be honest, though: the “voted in by the unions” millstone is going to be hung round Ed’s neck by the Tories and the media, and his first big test as leader is going to be how he avoids being defined by this.

The other threat to Ed Miliband is the narrowness of the result. However, even there the 50.65% to 49.35% result thrown out by the complexities of the electoral college belies the fact that in terms of total votes, Ed beat David by 175,519 votes to 147,220. In other words, 28,299 more people voted for Ed than for David.

I haven’t been able to find figures yet for the total 1st & 2nd preferences cast for each candidate (as we don’t know how Ed and David’s second preferences went), but YouGov’s last poll suggested that 43% of party members voting for David Miliband as first preference then put Ed Miliband as their second preference. Sunder Katwala observes that 66% of party members will have voted for Ed as first or second preference, which gives him a solid mandate among party members. (Ed was my second preference.)

I haven’t had time to run the numbers yet, but it looks like Ed will also have a solid majority of MPs and MEPs voting for him as first or second preference. (Update: by my reckoning, Ed got 78 MPs’ first preferences and 70 second preferences, giving him the first or second preferences of 148 MPs, 58% of the total. Contrast Iain Duncan Smith – the last party leader generally reckoned to have been imposed on his MPs against their wishes – who only achieved 32% of Tory MPs’ final-ballot votes in the 2001 leadership election. So, once again contrary to what certain Tories and sections of the media are already saying, Ed is no IDS Mark II on these figures.)

Bottom line: despite what the Tories and the media will say, this is not about union leaders imposing Ed Miliband on MPs and the rest of the Labour party. Ed Miliband may not have been my first choice in the end, but he’s got a wide mandate from across the Labour movement. It’s up to him, now, what he makes of it and how he establishes himself as leader.

If Ed wins…

There seems to be a growing consensus that Ed Miliband is going to win the Labour leadership (Guido Fawkes reports he’s the “bookies’ favourite”). Obviously we won’t know for sure until tomorrow afternoon (unless there’s a leak – anyone fancy starting a sweepstake on when? ), but Mike Smithson gives a fairly convincing analysis here of why MiliE may well edge it.

As I’ve said before, if this were a campaign to choose a policy platform, Ed Miliband would be my first preference. However, I’m still afraid that David Cameron will find it all-too easy to make mincemeat of him, not least if he can be painted as “everybody’s second preference, nobody’s first (except the unions’)”.

That said, if Ed Miliband can get through the artillery barrage from right-wing newspapers and bloggers over the next few weeks without ending up being perceived as a combination of Michael Foot, William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith (read: electorally-toxic activists’ favourite) then there are a number of ways in which he could be very good for the party. Here are a few that spring to mind:

• He will have a better chance of freeing Labour from the baggage of Iraq and its dreadful record on civil liberties in government (post-2001 – let’s never forget that New Labour pre-2001 was the party of the Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information Act, of restoration of union rights at GCHQ and so on).
• He’s more likely than David to make Ed Balls shadow chancellor: surely a complete no-brainer of an appointment, but one which you get the impression David Miliband is inclined to avoid if possible.
• He has a ruthless streak (as evidenced by today’s Guardian front page) that is perhaps lacking in David, and which will do him no harm in taking on the Tories (and indeed in establishing his authority within the Labour party).
• If he can get Labour into government (and that, for me, is still the overwhelming big if), it has the potential to be a better Labour government than we’d have under David – one which is more committed to increasing equality and opposing the encroachment of the market into our lives. If there’s one thing the first months of the new government is showing, it’s that the Tories are far more effective at using government to drive through radical change than were New Labour. At this rate, the next Labour government, even if we get back in by 2015, will be forced to rebuild social democracy pretty much from the ground up, rather than cautiously defending its (by then non-existent) remnants.

So, we’ll see. If David turns out to be the winner, I’ll be relieved but perhaps a little uninspired. If Ed wins, I’ll be more fearful – bluntly, I’ll feel like we’ve just condemned ourselves to a decade or more of opposition – but at the same time hoping that he can prove my fears wrong.

Academy status: what is to be done?

As will be seen from my last post, there are strong “push” factors that are likely to drive schools towards academy status, at least in the borough of Bromley.

Our own school is robust and well-managed, and will no doubt thrive whether it converts to academy status or stays in the LEA. However, the wider effect of the academy programme is likely to be the fragmentation of both the secondary and primary school systems within Bromley, and a withering away of the LEA to an underfunded rump shuffling the most “difficult” students round the most deprived schools – or bussing them into Lewisham to find them a school place at all.

But as they say: “Don’t mourn – organise!” Here are some preliminary reflections on what the factors discussed in my previous post might mean for any campaign against academy status.

1. Focus on primary schools. It seems almost inevitable that Bromley’s secondary schools will all become academies before long. Two already have; a third converts on 1 November. Bromley’s secondary schools used to be grant maintained, and it’s going to be very hard to prevent them returning to a status with which they already feel comfortable. The primary schools are a different matter. Academy status is entirely novel for schools, staff and parents; there are many more of them (77 primary schools, as opposed to around 15 state secondary schools); and the impact on young children of a fragmented, divisive and uncoordinated system will be even greater than for secondary schools.
2. Think global (borough)… The key to success is going to be getting parents to see that maintaining an effective borough-wide primary school system is more beneficial than the short-term financial gains of early conversion for individual schools. This is about saving primary education in Bromley, not just about the fate of individual schools. It’s not going to be easy to get people to look beyond the short-term financial benefits of conversion, but doing so is crucial. Parents and staff opposed to academy status need to coordinate their activities between different schools. Again, easier said than done.
3. … act local (schools). That said, my impression from last night is that parents and governors will make their decisions based almost entirely on the pros and cons for individual schools. So any concerns about the wider impact have to be related to the effect on individual schools (and individual students). As noted above, for primary schools in particular the risks and uncertainties of academy status will be of concern to many, along with the impact on provision for children with special educational needs and so on.
4. The Lib Dems. Whether we like it or not, no campaign against academisation is going to succeed without getting Bromley’s Lib Dems on board. They are the “official opposition” on the council, and without them the campaign will be all-too easy to portray as “politically-motivated” and based around “narrow sectional interests” (i.e. trade unions).
5. Preschool parents? One difficulty with opposing academy conversion is that existing parents tend to feel they have their “foot in the door” and so won’t be affected by many of the negative aspects of academy status (such as a balkanized admissions system). Parents of preschool children are easy to overlook, so one specific area of activity should be to ensure these groups are informed and involved in any consultation process.

I must admit I’m not entirely sure how to take things forward from here. Orpington Labour’s next meeting (Wed 22 September) will include a presentation and discussion on academies, and hopefully some ideas will come out of that. In the meantime, if you are interested in getting involved in any campaign within Bromley borough then please let me know in the comments.

Academy status: following the money

So, I went to the meeting at our sons’ primary school last night. We’d had a reassuring letter from the headteacher in reply to a letter we wrote last week, confirming there were no plans to rush into a decision, so in the end I didn’t submit the questions as drafted in my previous post.

That said, the meeting was less reassuring, though not through any fault of our headteacher. The impression I got was that, considered in a vacuum, the school would probably prefer not to go academy. However, there are reasons why we may end up being semi-forced into doing so. Basically, it ends up being all about the money.

Following the money

Upon becoming an academy, the school would receive the money that is currently “top-sliced” by the local education authority (LEA) – Bromley – to run borough-wide services. The Department for Education has a handy calculator for schools to work out how much they’ll get, and for our school it comes out at about a quarter of a million quid.

From that, the school would have to meet additional costs for services currently provided by the LEA, and as yet it isn’t possible to work out what these costs would be. However, the general perception was that the school would come out slightly ahead, as the governing body considers the current LEA funding formula to be unfair, penalising us for our lower levels of deprivation and SEN, and we don’t use a number of LEA services.

However, this is where the push for early conversion becomes very strong. The LEA is currently revising its funding formulas for future years so that the amount that is top-sliced is reduced (though without reducing the amount the LEA actually receives). This means that if we delay conversion until after this year, we lose most of the funding benefits of converting.

(Now, in a blinding moment of epiphany, I see why Michael Gove was so keen to rush this legislation onto the statute books: so that LEAs did not have time to adjust their budgets before the first wave of conversions hit them.)

So, that’s the big “push” factor. Really that one is likely to trump all others.

Other factors and implications

Some other points that came up last night:

1. Admissions. Academies have control over their admissions. This means they can no longer be required by the LEA to take children who have been excluded from other schools. But this in turn means that those schools which remain within LEA control will have to take more children who are perceived to be “difficult”. On the one hand, this is a “push” factor for our school to avoid this fate by going academy. On the other, our headteacher spoke of her “moral concerns” over the effect of this on other schools.
2. Impact on other primary schools. As mentioned above, our headteacher has “moral” and “professional” concerns over the effect of academisation on other schools in the borough. There are 77 primary schools in the London Borough of Bromley, and only a small minority are as well placed as ours to convert to academy status. The risk is of a fragmented system in which smaller schools are left to deal with the children the academies don’t want, on sharply reduced LEA funding (indeed, the LEA will probably barely exist in its current form if enough schools opt out).
3. School budget cuts. As a more general political point, the government has been trumpeting its commitment to maintain school budgets and not to impose cuts on schools. However, our headteacher pointed out this only relates to schools’ “core” budgets. A large proportion of our income comes from additional grants – and these have disappeared overnight.
4. Secondary schools. Our headteacher believes that all Bromley secondary schools will become academies quite quickly. They used to be grant-maintained schools under the last Tory government, and so they are comfortable with that status and the additional responsibilities it brings. (Which means a return to the days when Bromley was notorious for the number of children who were unable to find a secondary school place anywhere in the borough and were forced to cross boundaries to somewhere that would take them. The fear has to be that a similar situation will arise at primary level, at an age where children are far more vulnerable and far less able to deal with travelling long distances to school.)
5. Outside pressures. It remains to be seen what pressure the DfE will put on schools like ours – which are, on the face of it, prime candidates for conversion. It is inconceivable that Michael Gove will just sit back and leave it to schools to decide in their own good time. Once the first wave of conversions has been processed, the DfE will no doubt start a steady drumbeat about the benefits of conversion (and, in a more veiled way, the dangers of lagging behind). In addition, local secondary schools are likely to apply some pressure also, as they are already suggesting they could provide services to local primary school academies as a way of sharing the additional costs of independence.
6. Attitude of parents. My assessment of the attitude of parents at the meeting was that people were not gung-ho for academy conversion and had concerns about the effects on the school and on children. That said, the headteacher’s concerns about the effect on other schools seemed to have very little traction: I suspect most people will judge the proposal entirely on its benefits (or otherwise) for our school and our school alone, in particular the financial benefits.

What now?

The school expects to have the information it needs to make an informed decision on conversion by December. Consultation will then take place in the spring term, and our headteacher expects this to be extensive. If a decision is made to convert, then it will probably take effect on 1 September 2011.

If any action is to be taken to head off conversion to academy status, it will therefore need to be taken quickly. I hope to discuss this in more detail in my next post.

Why is academy status wrong for this school?

Our children’s primary school has its PTA/Governors annual general meeting on Monday. It’s an open invitation for all parents in the school – and one of the items apparently up for discussion is academy status.

I’ve no idea whether this is intended to be a full debate on whether the school should pursue academy status, or just reporting back on the governors’ deliberations to date. If there is a wider discussion then I’d hope to contribute to this, especially if it becomes apparent there is a “clear and present danger” of the school converting. To that end would welcome people’s thoughts on the most effective and important brief points to make.

Many of the reasons given for opposing academy status (such as those set out in my previous post) seem to focus on the effects on the educational system as a whole. However, I suspect that many parents in schools actually considering academy status will be inclined to think that the wider impact of academisation is someone else’s problem – why should that mean their school misses out on the “benefits” of being an academy? (Altogether now: “ten per cent more cash… ten per cent more cash…”)

So, what are the reasons why parents at a large, “outstanding” primary school should be directly concerned about any proposal to convert the school to an academy? The headteacher is superb and widely trusted by parents and staff, so I don’t think there’d be any concerns about a dip in educational standards or administration. (Indeed, if the headteacher were to publicly back conversion to an academy, then – let’s be frank – it’s game over for any attempt at opposition.)

Similarly, arguments about increased exclusions, social segregation and covert selection will probably not have much traction: many parents will probably be quietly glad if, for example, the school is no longer required to take pupils excluded from other local schools. And if academies create a “hierarchy” of schools, then all the more reason to ensure ours is at the top, right…?

Here are some hopefully more persuasive points that come to mind, but what I really need is to have two or three “killer points” that are most likely to get people thinking twice about conversion rather than letting it go through “on the nod”.

• Why the rush? The school is doing very well already, and relations with the LEA are (we’re told) very good. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – let’s see how other schools get on with the transition to academy status before engaging in the massive upheaval of conversion, a process that will inevitably distract the headteacher and other key staff from the day-to-day business of running the school. (Memo to self: take along the DfE’s guidance on everything that has to be done to convert a school (PDF).)
• Extra money – and extra cost. Yes, the school will get money currently used by the LEA. But in return it’ll have to buy in services currently provided by the LEA. Private-sector employment lawyers, for example, do not come cheap.
• What happens next? Over time, the likelihood is that many academies will deal with the increased administrative burdens of independence by combining together in chains, or outsourcing administration to edubusinesses. The end result would be a school whose administration is more remote and less accountable than at present, where ultimately the LEA is democratically accountable to the whole community.
• No mandate. The present governors were elected before academies were a glint in Michael Gove’s eye. At the very least no action should be taken until new elections have taken place. In any event, such a major change in status should be subject to a poll of all parents, and consultation with the wider community, rather than being decided by a relatively small group.

Anything else spring to mind? Any criticisms/challenges/improvements regarding what I’ve said above? Please let me know in the comments!

(I emphasise that as yet I don’t know what, if anything, the school is planning to do. This is a case of “hoping for the best, preparing for the worst”…)

Update (10 Sept)

I’ve now seen the agenda for Monday’s meeting. At first this refers neutrally to “Discussion about Academy Status”, but the last words on the meeting invitation are:

Academy Status could really impact on W_____ R___ – come along and have your say.

Which makes it sound ominously like a “done deal”. They’re inviting people to submit questions in advance, so I’m sending this in on Monday morning:

Please can the governors confirm that no steps will be taken to pursue academy status until:

1. full consultation has taken place with parents, staff, the LEA and the wider community; and
2. a ballot has taken place showing that a majority of parents supports this move.

[Edits: Removed previous para 1 referring to governors' election - made it sound like calling for dissolution and fresh elections...]

Will keep you posted…

Academies: conversion and campaigning

Our local comprehensive has apparently announced to staff that it will convert into an academy on 1 November. As the school term only began at the end of last week, it’s hard to see what (if any) consultation the governors have carried out, though I’m sorely tempted to put in a freedom of information request to find out.

In the meantime, I’ve been checking out the website of the Anti-Academy Alliance, a campaign composed of “unions, parents, pupils, teachers, councillors and MPs”. The website summarises the reasons why the government’s academies programme is damaging for education, including:

• A two-tier education system in which “outstanding” schools go it alone, leaving local education authorities to deal with the schools that need most help – but on reduced budgets.
• Removal of schools from community ownership and democratic control, purely by a vote of the governors (who currently lack any mandate for this, having been elected before these proposals were introduced).
• While academies are given more money, they will now have to buy in services previously provided by the LEA. (Employment lawyers in particular are going to do well out of this.)
• In practice, many academies will not be run by their headteachers and governors, but by academy chains and edubusinesses. (Parents, get ready for being told on a regular basis that your school “needs approval from head office” before taking some course of action. You don’t get to elect “head office”, by the way.)
• Loss of co-ordinated approaches to teacher training, Special Educational Needs, Early Years teaching and so on.
• Inability for LEAs to plan new schools to reflect population changes.

On the positive side, though, Toby Young will be able to get his children learning Latin without having to pay school fees, so it’s not all bad.

Attempts are being made to set up a local campaign along the lines of the national Anti Academies Alliance. In the case of our local comprehensive, I suspect there is little scope for reversing the decision to convert. Local campaigns should be aimed more widely than the schools that are currently proposed to convert. As someone put it to me by email:

once a critical mass of schools “go academy” the LEA is virtually abolished. That has huge implications for a whole range of services which will ultimately be much more expensive if they can be provided at all.

That is probably the message that needs to be put across: not just the implications for each individual school, but for the consequences for the educational system in the borough as a whole (in which parents already feel disempowered by the complexities and uncertainties of the admissions process, a process which can only be made more complicated by conversions to academy status).

The question is whether parents can be persuaded that it’s better for non-academy schools to hang together rather than to try to gain the perceived short-term advantages for “first-movers” out of LEA control. In many ways it reminds me of demutualisation of building societies, where people were happy to grab the money and run – and only later did we face the consequences.

Unions, co-operatives and “fourth sector pathfinders”…

Earlier this year I blogged on the proposal by the Conservatives (then in opposition – ah, happy days, happy days…) to allow public sector workers to set up employee co-operatives. Last month, Francis Maude announced twelve pilot projects for the initiative.

I must admit I’d missed the substance of this, being too distracted by the general chortling about Maude’s use of the term “pathfinders” (as in “fourth-sector pathfinders”). The schemes involve a variety of forms of social enterprises, trusts and co-operatives, running services such as NHS services for homeless people and an awarding body for FE colleges. In addition, the government’s NHS White Paper stated its desire to create “the largest social enterprise sector in the world” in place of a unitary NHS through a “right to request” scheme in which NHS staff can request to run their services as a co-operative.

In late August, it was reported that Unison have launched a legal action against the Department of Health in relation to the NHS social enterprise proposals. The union’s main concerns about the proposals are:

• back-door privatisation: as I suspected in February, the social enterprises only have a contract for three years, after which the services will be open to “any willing provider”. Many NHS staff will therefore find that their employee co-operative is a short-lived interlude between employment by the NHS and the commercial sector: or, to put it another way, a means by which the government can privatise the NHS by putting otherwise sacrosanct services into the marketplace using employee co-operatives to make the transition politically palatable.
• management-led, not employee-led: the union suggests that most of these schemes will add a patina of employee involvement to what are otherwise conventional spin-outs of services to existing management.

Another relevant observation that could be made is that spun-out services are more vulnerable to cuts: it’s much easier to terminate a contract with an external service provider than it is to make your own people redundant directly.

An NHS run as a federation of social enterprises is an attractive idea in principle, but it is only viable in the long term if services are required to remain on a not-for-profit basis. Otherwise they are simply an instrument of marketisation. I’d also like to see more use of “multi-stakeholder” models that involve users of services as well as employees.

But what this case also demonstrates is a certain tension between the concept of co-operatives (and other forms of social enterprise) and trade unions. I’m sure this is one reason why the Tories have warmed to the idea of employee co-operatives in the public sector: their potential to undermine trade unions. Why join a union to help protect you from “the management” if you and your colleagues are “the management”?

This is not just an issue as regards Conservative plans. All the Labour leadership contenders have emphasised their support for increased use of co-operatives and mutuals – for example, David Miliband has proposed that the BBC become a mutual owned by licence-fee payers.

I’m sure there are many examples out there of how trade unions and co-operatives can work together effectively. After all, even in an employee co-operative there will be plenty of occasions when employees face problems in their relationship with managers.

So that’s the main purpose of this post: not to give my opinion, but to ask for information, in particular for examples of how trade unions and co-operatives (and other social enterprises) can interact well. How can trade unions adapt to a world in which co-operatives become more common, especially in the public sector? Is this an area where unions should actually be taking a lead and helping their members to form co-operatives? Are there examples of this already happening? And so on.

Over to you…