THERE is perhaps no more controversial figure in education than Katharine Birbalsingh, the head teacher of Michaela Free School in Wembley Park. Birbalsingh was the darling of the Gove-led Conservative education team and once boasted of having a framed letter from him on her office wall. So revered by Conservatives was she that she was invited to speak at Conservative Party conferences and was even appointed chair of the Social Mobility Commission.

Birbalsingh was the poster child for conservative education reform. Although she describes herself as a “small-C conservative,” her pedagogy is deeply connected with the Conservative Party. Her school, while an excellent exam factory that produces impressive results, is run like a military boot camp. Children sit in silence, walk down corridors in silence and sing God Save the King. 

The question here is, first, do the ends justify the means? Second, who decides that the end result is what we really want anyway? Pupils excel in public exams based around a narrow curriculum focused on recalling knowledge, but is this the only metric that matters?

The winds of change

The winds of change have blown and, perhaps because she now does not have the ear of the Department for Education, Ms Snuffy (her online pseudonym) has gone on the attack over the new schools Bill. She has branded the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson as a “Marxist” (if only!) who is “horrible” and is going to “destroy the huge gains made over the last decade.”

Let us dissect some of these statements. Birbalsingh was a member of the Socialist Workers Party who read Living Marxism, so you would expect her to have at least a basic understanding of what is meant by Marxism.

Though we are used to conservatives branding everything they don’t like as either “woke” or “Marxist,” in this context I presume she is referring to the plans to remove some of the freedoms currently enjoyed by academies. These freedoms include the freedom to employ unqualified teachers, diverge from the national curriculum and set their own pay — usually lower than average for staff and higher than average for CEOs.

I’m also not sure what “huge gains” have been made. What we have seen is tens of thousands of teachers leaving the profession and a rise in the number of vacancies. We’ve seen a narrowing of the curriculum accompanied by a rise in mental health issues among young people. We've seen widespread condemnation of the school inspectorate, Ofsted, after the tragic suicide of head teacher Ruth Perry.

The academy experiment

The government’s new plans around academies, as set out in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, have caused some criticism from those who see the Bill as removing some of their autonomy and giving the state more control over how academies are run. At present, academy schools do not have to follow the national curriculum and can set their own pay and conditions for staff.

It is easy to see why Birbalsingh would object to these changes. By her own admission, the curriculum at her school is narrow and has come under fire in the past for a lack of time given over to physical education and the lack of musical instruments in music lessons. 

According to a report of their Ofsted inspection, the Michaela head told inspectors the school did not teach music in year nine because pupils “are not really interested in the subject.”

There is no evidence that academisation of schools has delivered on the promise of improved outcomes for pupils even with their own flawed metrics. For example, there is no evidence that either academies produce better results with equivalent pupils when compared to local schools.  Also, the Local Government Association (LGA) found that more local authority schools than academies were classed outstanding or good by Ofsted in January 2022. 

This is despite academy chains shipping in staff when Ofsted inspections are taking place, as another report recently highlighted. 

Education investigative reporter Warwick Mansell reported that Astrea — an academy chain known for its zero-tolerance behaviour policies — admitted that they had brought in 25 extra staff for the inspection of one of its schools.

Don’t get me started on Ofsted, though, that is a whole different article.

The true purpose of academisation

In truth, academisation should never have happened. It serves solely an ideological purpose: the removal of democratic accountability and the transfer of state funds into private hands. Because of this, barely a week goes by without hearing of more corruption and scandals involving academy chains. These range from awful working conditions, treatment of overseas teachers, low pay, the use of unqualified teachers to the misuse of funds meant for pupils.

Only last month Dorrington Academy Trust in Birmingham was found to have used school funds to pay for the head to go on a botox course, and a report cited “excessive spending” on bougie gifts including a Harrods hamper, luxury hotel stays and aromatherapy treatments for staff. The head teacher in charge of the school has now retired and written a book titled If the Gravy is Good, Then Lick the Plate — no comment.

Academy chains regularly “top-slice” from school budgets to pay for central services. The University of Brighton Academies Trust will no longer be running 14 schools in Sussex after complaints that it has been taking 20 per cent of the government grant meant for schools and education. This in itself is not an issue — local authorities have to do the same thing, of course. What is an issue is how much is being taken and what it is spent on. Excessive salaries for fat-cat academy chain CEOs being one of them. For example, in the last year Harris Federation CEO Sir Dan Moynihan became the first academy trust chief executive to cross the £500,000 threshold. He’s not the only one there earning massive wages — six other members of staff are also on more than £190,000 a year.

As always, I think the government should go further, but equalising pay and conditions across the fractured education system as well as ensuring that schools use qualified teachers is a definite step in the right direction. We should welcome the new schools bill more so because it is upsetting the right people: the Conservatives, the fat cat CEOs and all those who see the Bill as a threat to their own fiefdoms, power and influence.

Robert Poole is a teacher, union rep, assistant district secretary for Bolton NEU and editor of the journal Education for Tomorrow.