Academisation of all English schools is a terrible idea

In what would arguably be the most radical change to English education in contemporary history, the government has announced its intention for every school in England to become an academy in the white paper Educational excellence everywhere. In doing so, they've announced their intention for an almost absolute dismantling of state involvement when it comes to English schools.

The government has said that it wants to give control of schools to headteachers rather than local authorities. Currently, the latter have oversight of the bulk of English schools and of more than 24,000 schools in England, about 5,000 are academies. With their proposed academisation of the remaining schools, a lofty task to say the least, the government claims they'd be ridding schools of those pesky local government bureaucrats. Schools would consequently have sufficient control to do what's best for students and education standards in another righteous move from the Tories, right? Wrong.

Academies are funded directly by central government rather than local authorities and have more autonomy that other state schools. They have no accountability to local authorities, thus removing a layer of checks and balances in safeguarding against inappropriate conduct and improper management of public funds. They can decide on their curriculum, length of school day and teachers’ pay, terms and conditions (the latter being an area where many academies have already shown themselves to have little commitment to or value of their staff). While academies in England were initiated by Labour, they’ve become a favoured policy of the Conservatives who have actively sought for more schools to adopt the model. Indeed, their proposal for the academisation of all schools has confirmed that beyond any doubt.

In 2011 I wrote about the rise of academies and free schools and I called the widespread academisation of schools based on what was already happening -

‘...where such demand [for academies] does not exist, it is likely that academy status will be foisted upon more challenging schools, particularly against a backdrop of the coalition government’s zeal in promoting its flagship education policy… Diminishing what should be an altruistic role of the state with regard to the provision of education and replacing it with autonomy raises several concerns. It also takes the provision of education a step closer to privatisation – a move that would pit the provision of quality education against profit.’

The government hasn't announced that academies will be able to be run for profit but its proposal does take it a step closer to that (it was rumoured that the then Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, had sought to allow academies and free schools to eventually make a profit during the coalition government but was blocked by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg). Nevertheless, they’ve laid their cards on the table with their intention to foist academy status onto all schools.

Should the government's proposals become law, what would that mean for schools in England? Firstly, in making such radical plans they've neglected to consider who will fill the void left by the loss of local government’s role in education? It's also proposing something for which it has no evidence to support and it’s failed to consult parents, teachers and unions (the proposal wasn’t in its manifesto either). Most significantly, it's also failed to realise that academies do not equate to better schools which is the crux of the failure of such a proposal.

Academies are not a panacea to improving school standards and there is no evidence of this being the case. There are of course some good academies for whom the academy model works for their respective school and community and that should be acknowledged. Conversely, there certainly are some bad ones for whom their autonomy should be relinquished as a result.

Academisation of all schools is a hugely politicised move and one driven by ideology; a commitment to further dismantling of the state. Education should be driven by the motivation of what is best for students and in raising standards. That shouldn't include bureaucratic targets, political or ideological motivation, profit or any other drivers that detract from its primary goal. It's why the role of the state in education is invaluable as it provides and preserves much needed altruism.

Admittedly, the state can often be lacking in dynamism, is guilty of its frequent charge of being overly bureaucratic and can be sluggish in getting things done. What the state is good at however, is prioritising what really matters as it's broadly free of influences that benefit the privileged few and disadvantage the many. It's where the state's inherent altruism comes into play and why it plays such an important role in education.

Removing the state from education cannot be deemed positive. Education is already a sector at breaking point in England with untenable bureaucracy and a very present teaching crisis. Allowing schools to be free from the state's oversight will likely exacerbate the status quo and become the straw that breaks the camel's back in causing education in England to implode. Yet the government doesn't seem to care and it's partly due to who they intend to hand control of schools over to.

At present, academies can be standalone schools that have decided that autonomy is best for them. For others, they're part of chains or trusts, effectively overseeing umbrella groups that control a number of academies with similar branding and uniformity amongst all of their schools. Some academies within chains are the result of takeovers where they have been converted and rebranded under the identity of the chain while others have been ‘born’ under the banner of their respective chain and are wholly new schools. Though looking more closely at many of the chains, are they an appropriate alternative model upon which the English school system should be based on?

Candidly, many academy trusts are politicised vanity projects. They're often established by individuals or groups who claim to want to make a difference in education via noble use of their wealth and influence. Many, such as Harris Federation (which was established by Conservative Lord Harris of Carpet Right fame), tend to be run by those who the Tories would love to bestow with further academies as they reward their backers and help bolster their vanity projects. All very cosy with raising education standards somewhat of a secondary thought.

It's also important to remember that when schools under local authority control are handed over to academy chains, with each one millions of pounds of state assets in school buildings and land are handed over with them. Not in exchange for cash like traditional privatisation, but absolutely free. It's therefore little wonder that many academy chain bosses are friends and backers of the Conservative party who stand to benefit from a windfall should every school be up for grabs as an academy. A wholesale conversion of all schools to academies would amount to billions of pounds of assets being handed over to private entities in exchange for absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, state cash would continue to be handed over for the academies to spend as they see fit. Just let that sink in.

An additional problem with the academy chains is that they are seen by many as driving the destruction of education in England. So why would we allow them to run schools?

Many academy chains are considered by parents, teachers and unions to care only about results with little regard for anything else. That makes for a toxic environment to work in for teachers and can create a sterile environment for students that is void of empathy and support during their youth.

One consequence of this approach is huge staff turnover with academies haemorrhaging staff at an incredible rate that dwarfs the already high turnover throughout teaching as a whole. According to a Freedom of Information request, between 2012 and 2015, over 1000 staff left schools within the Harris Federation. And they aren't the only chain with shockingly high staff turnover. It begs the question what might all those teachers be keen to escape from if these are such bastions of educational excellence? With such an exodus of staff, they're definitely not retaining expertise, good practice and good teachers that are crucial to any good school.

The fervent and blinkered focus on external results isn't any different from teaching across the board. Though in academies it's typically pursued even more aggressively with a ‘by any means necessary’ attitude that's akin to a pyrrhic victory with students and staff taking the loss in the process. Hardly an appropriate attitude for a school.

Some may read this and think if academies are getting results with their approach, then perhaps the government is correct in wanting to give them further control. However, grades and levels aren't the only things that matter when it comes to the betterment of students. Nurture, empathy, wellbeing and good mental health matter just as much but they're often given insufficient regard. There is also anecdotal evidence of vulnerable children and SEN students, who may not achieve the best possible results, not being as warmly welcomed as others by some academies. Is that what we want our school system to be built upon? A factory of identikit students with a culture that is void of empathy and support? But it's OK because (allegedly) some them have good results…

Most would assume the government's proposal to be supported by robust evidence that would sway detractors and prove to the public that academisation is the way forward. Like anything, academies have shown to work in some instances and it can't be claimed that they're all bad. Although with good leadership, teaching and a supportive cohort of parents and community, most schools have a fair shot at doing the best for their students regardless of their status. And those aren't attributes that can only be engendered by an academy or an academy chain.

Currently, 82% of schools under local authority control are rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. Meanwhile, in 2014/15, 99 schools that converted to academies went from ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ to less than good. Moreover, those against academisation have an unlikely ally in Chief Inspector Michael Wilshaw who has expressed his concerns over the performance of some academy chains to Nicky Morgan, Secretary of State for Education.

There are also precedents for the Department for Education (DfE) needing to take some schools out of the control of academy chains and prohibiting some from opening or taking over any new schools due to concerns with their performance. In 2014, the then biggest academy chain, Academies Enterprise Trust, was barred from taking on additional schools and E-ACT, the then second largest chain, had a third of its schools handed back to the government. Should a similar hypothetical scenario occur where local authorities’ education functions had become defunct as a result of the government's proposal, who would then step in if several chains were deemed unfit to run their respective schools? It's more uninformed and political short sightedness from the government. Just like a Conservative policy of yesteryear in right to buy (which has resulted in a legacy of huge social housing shortages), academisation could be another policy that sees history not judging the Conservative party favourably.

Even by 2020, such a far reaching proposal for all schools to become academies is a mammoth task and it requires support yet many are opposed to it. Teachers, unions and unsurprisingly the local government community are all against academisation and a petition to scrap the plans received over 100,000 signatures within a week. The academy chains that are favoured by the government are nonetheless licking their lips with anticipation at the prospect of expanding their academy empires. They've been waiting (and I’m sure lobbying) for this and have their prey of local authority controlled schools well within their sights. But aside from the academy chains and the government, there doesn't appear to be much support for academisation.

An intention to turn all schools into academies wasn't in the Conservative party’s manifesto so there hasn't been any gauging of support for this, or any subsequent consultation whatsoever. It's hardly democratic and it's not welcome. Teachers and unions have not had a say on an issue that they are significantly more attuned to than the government. Similarly, surely parents at least deserve to be consulted before their child’s school has such a change forced upon them? On this occasion, the Tories think they know best so they'll be making that decision for you.

Academies aren’t necessarily the antithesis of good schools but they don’t equate to better schools either. Complete academisation will nonetheless force academy status onto all schools with no regard for the implications, the amount of evidence to support the contrary and the lack of support from parents, teachers and teaching unions. Instead, the government seeks to proceed with a policy that will remove the role of the state in an area where its function is paramount while giving academy chains carte blanche to run schools as they see fit. That means diminished accountability and a removal of the oversight that local authorities have long provided in English schools.

Just as the then Conservative government abolished the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) in 1990, the Tories are politically motivated to change the landscape of English education yet again. This time, the plans are more radical and the implications are bigger. And with that comes an even greater risk to the future of English schools and education.

Phonics only unlocks part of the code that is learning to read so why is it followed so rigidly?

For many people reading this, learning to read would have followed a similar pattern of being taught the alphabet, broadly knowing the corresponding sounds to each letter and being introduced to simple texts. Said texts would have introduced the reader to accessible and appropriate vocabulary with accompanying illustrations to support comprehension and those words would enter one’s orthographic store (our long term memory from which we retrieve all the words that we’ve learned to date). Burgeoning comprehension skills would also support having a stab at unfamiliar vocabulary and the more we read, the quicker our retrieval of words, the more our comprehension would develop and the more proficient we would become as readers. It’s how I learned to read and despite being biased, I’d like to say it was pretty effective.

Today’s teaching of reading is different and there’s been a departure from the aforementioned in favour of phonics. It cannot be said that any approach to reading is completely void of some form of phonics. Yet phonics is now king when it comes to early reading in schools and it’s the government mandated approach to learning to read.

Phonics effectively provides a code for the budding reader to rely upon in learning to read. Graphemes (written letters or combinations of letters such as ‘sh’, ‘ch’ or ‘igh’) are taught with their corresponding phonemes (the term given to sounds). These phonemes are the smallest unit of sound that can be found within a word and there are approximately 44 phonemes in the English language. Each phoneme provides a meaningful unit of sound upon which words can be constructed by ‘blending’ these phonemes. For example, blending the accompanying phonemes for ‘c - a - t’ would result in the word ‘cat’.

It might seem like a great strategy to adopt phonics in schools in providing children with a solid system that enables them to decode words and learn how to read. However, there’s a problem. Unlike some languages where the alphabet is purely phonetic, thus phonics instinctively lending itself to the teaching of how to read, English is only partly phonetic. English also has many contradictory rules that don’t make an approach like phonics fit for purpose in teaching reading. As a result, once you encounter a word that isn’t phonetic, phonics becomes pretty useless and as far as being able to decode unfamiliar text, you’re ultimately screwed. Herein lies the problem - phonics only unlocks part of the code that is learning to read. So why is it followed so rigidly in schools? And what has been the impact of what appears to be a flawed education policy when it comes to teaching strategies for early reading in schools?

For years, proponents of phonics have been pitted in a political and somewhat ideological battle against proponents of a whole language approach to teaching reading (where words are not deconstructed for the benefit of decoding and sight recognition and comprehension are instead relied upon). It’s referred to as the reading wars and it could be argued that supporters of phonics are winning with the credence given to its teaching in schools as outlined in the 2006 Rose Report. Following a review of the teaching of early reading in primary schools, the Rose Report recommended that phonics ‘should be taught as the prime approach in learning to decode (to read) and encode (to write/spell) print’. In adopting the recommendations as education policy, the government too declared their allegiance to phonics.

The advantages of phonics are that it does provide children with a code for reading and writing phonetically plausible text and to do so relatively quickly. Although in doing so, it also teaches children a strategy for writing that put candidly, is incorrect.

Parents and teachers of primary school children will be familiar with children's writing where few words are spelt correctly because phonics is so heavily relied upon. Even if a child has encountered a word and knows how to spell it correctly, the retrieval from their orthographic store is arguably hindered as their instinct for spelling is to rely upon their phonics. Consequently, words which aren’t phonically plausible are often misspelt and phonics has a direct role to play in this. Indeed, young children are often filled with glee when they’re able to independently write their first sentences such as ‘migh cat iz bloo’ or ‘wee went too a partee wiv migh bruthr and wee had cayk’ that are phonetically plausible but full of incorrect spellings that children are ignorant to. It’s great to see them writing but a few years later, we remove the security blanket that is phonics and tell them they’ve been spelling incorrectly all these years.

The focus on decoding within phonics is eroding overall literacy and detracts from the enjoyment and comprehension skills to be gained from reading. But many children perceive their successful decoding of text alone as an indicator of being ‘a good reader’. As a result, phonics can somewhat limit the promotion of reading for pleasure and the comprehension skills that are needed for reading in our everyday lives. Though surely with a greater reliance on sight recognition, children’s comprehension would be improved as they would feel more inclined to immerse themselves in a text instead of focusing on decoding it. Alas, the government seem unable to see this but perhaps it has something to do with the extent to which proponents of phonics seemingly have their ear.

Phonics programmes such as Ruth Miskin’s Read Write Inc are big business. Ruth Miskin rose to prominence as a headteacher in the 1990s in Tower Hamlets, a London local authority with a large Bangladeshi diaspora. Many of the children at Miskin’s school were EAL students (English as an additional language), many of whom would have started school with basic, if any, English. Nonetheless, she was able to boast huge success in reading which she attributed to her school's commitment to the teaching of phonics. Yet with such a reliance on phonics, many phonics detractors have questioned whether the emphasis on comprehension in early reading at Miskin's school would have been sufficiently supported. Furthermore, it's commonly accepted that while EAL students can make rapid progress and have high word recognition when learning to read, their comprehension is often less secure and Miskin's approach would arguably have compounded that.

Nevertheless, Miskin went on to become considered a phonics guru who now sells her resources and training to schools across the country. She is an advisor to the DfE (Department for Education) and is one of their favoured faces when it comes to the teaching of reading. Therefore it's hard to argue the government isn't biased when it comes to phonics.

Many have argued this relationship represents a conflict of interest (particularly as Ruth Miskin’s materials and training are used in so many schools), something the government and Miskin have attempted to refute. Though between 2011 and 2013, the DfE made over £23 million of match-funding available for schools that purchased phonics materials or training from an approved list (which Ruth Miskin material and training naturally appeared on). As revealed in a Freedom of Information Act request by Professor Margaret Clark, of those funds over £4 million was spent on Read Write Inc materials while £546,614 went to Ruth Miskin Literacy Ltd for training. As it was match-funded, the amount received would also actually have been doubled.

More recently, Ruth Miskin Training was also selected by the DfE to deliver phonics roadshow events. More money in the bank for Ruth Miskin and further reflection of just how much influence she has over the government as she pushes her phonics agenda. Even Michael Rosen, who’s generally considered a literary living legend, has questioned the apparent conflict of interest. It really can’t be argued that the government is free of bias when it comes to their favour of phonics and that bias is blindly driving education policy on early reading.

I’m not arguing we do away with phonics in teaching children to read. After all, even if subconsciously, a connection between letters and sounds must be present as readers develop. Nonetheless, we need to move away from the rigid commitment to phonics as a preferred and often exclusive approach for early reading and certainly once readers no longer require the crutch that phonics can initially provide.

Phonics isn’t a panacea to raising literacy standards. It gives children an ability to access text and to write but it’s an introductory one and should be left at just that as there is only so far it can take a reader in accessing written English. There also needs to be a dialogue and realisation of what reading is and that it isn’t merely decoding phonetically plausible text which is only applicable to a limited amount of the English language. Reading is being able to appreciate and immerse one’s self in literature, to access and understand information and to unlock and explore knowledge and enjoyment from a wide range of texts. Phonics can’t achieve that and it’s time that realisation is reflected in education policy for early reading.