Posted By Susan Young at 01/09/2010 12:32:18
I’ve seen some spin in my time, but even I’m quite impressed by the the press release that’s just arrived from the Department for Education.
“142 schools to convert to Academy status weeks after Academy Act passed,” it proclaims. Gosh, how amazing, I thought, and opened the attachment containing the list. Which is where it started getting rather more complicated.
Of the 96 academies opening this week, about two thirds are actually old-fashioned academies, replacing failing schools. The other 32 are schools which amazingly have jumped through all the hoops since it became legal for outstanding schools to become academies back in July.
Turning back to the release itself, you can see where the figures have come from. The 142 schools proclaimed are this week’s 32, plus a further 110 where Academy Orders have been signed. However, the attachment shows that the financial arrangements aren’t yet in place for most of them, so it could be quite a lot of weeks before they break free.
So the release is true, but confusingly worded. And its own attachments show that on the one hand it’s overstating the case – and simultaneously understating it. The same attachments show that something like 170 schools have applied to convert.
These figures show there is clearly real interest in the scheme. And given the nature of what schools had to do to convert, even under the new legislation, it’s quite an achievement that even 20 have managed it in the time. So, you wonder, why not trumpet those facts in a straightforward way?
It does make me give a little more credence to a story I saw in one of the papers during the holidays, claiming that Michael Gove was annoyed by the slow rate of school conversions and claiming that the academies project was being effectively sabotaged by three things: the Labour amendment to the Bill which meant there had to be some consultation of parents and teachers before a school became an Academy; a dogged union campaign against the scheme; and slow civil servants.
At the time, the story struck me as a bit of spinning by a traditional Conservative-supporting newspaper. But now, I do wonder a bit – and if there were elements of truth in it, that’s quite worrying. For if it were true, it would imply that the education secretary didn’t really understand how schools work, and how big decisions are taken, and that these take time, particularly over the summer holiday. If schools haven’t rushed to sign on the dotted line, that’s not going to be just because of slow civil servants or obstructive unions – and surely consultation is a good thing?
Perhaps Mr Gove’s been reading children’s fiction, like Professor Pat Thomson. She’s been ploughing through everything from Harry Potter to the Demon Headmaster series, and concluded that they are often more truthful about the power of headship than many adult discussions about school leadership. And she’s been telling other researchers at the British Educational Research Association conference about it this week.
Power, she says, is often regarded by heads as a “dirty word”. “Children’s stories come clean about head teachers’ work in ways that mainstream educational leadership texts often do not.
“The implied reader of children’s books is a child who recognises that power can be used wisely and to ethical ends – or not; who understands that pupils can use their individual and collective power to challenge school/headteacher authority; and who sees that the judicial use of power is preferable to symbolic or actual violence.
“By contrast, the implied reader of educational administration texts is arguably someone who prefers to avoid questions about power.”
Susan Young is an education journalist. Contact me at educationhack@googlemail.com
