Labour’s Education Bill is making waves, and not in a good way. From angry politicians to disgruntled parents, education is once again a topic of furious discussion. At first glance, some of its provisions seem innocuous. No one is debating the need for increased SEND provisions for vulnerable children. But the problem lies about halfway through the Bill, where it takes aim at academy freedoms.
The Bill’s provisions are a bureaucrat’s dream, but a (good) headteacher’s nightmare. It mandates rigid teacher qualification requirements, stripping academies of the ability to hire based on expertise rather than government diktats. Enforcing the national curriculum on academies removes their flexibility to tailor learning to their pupils’ needs. Centralising behaviour policies ignores the reality that discipline strategies should be adapted to individual schools. Compliance directions for academy trusts mean more red tape and less agility. Abolishing academy orders for failing schools will slow down much-needed intervention. The chance of a new Michaela, the free school in Wembley which routinely sits at the top of leaderboards for exam results, will significantly diminish.
It reignites a fundamental debate: should schools be judged by their processes or their results? Labour introduced academies in the early 2000s, and they focused on the latter. They gave schools the autonomy to innovate, break free from the control of failing local authorities and drive up standards. With this freedom, academies have been able to offer appealing benefits like increased pay to staff, attracting top talent and ensuring the best outcomes for children. This flexibility is crucial for tackling issues like teacher retention and encouraging more people to enter the profession.
And clearly these benefits are crucial to driving results. The first ever multi-academy trust rich list from us at the TaxPayers’ Alliance shows a clear link between pay and school performance. Among the ten highest-paid academy trust leaders, over 90% of the schools they run are rated ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’. We’ve published rich lists many times before – on town halls, city halls, quangos and beyond. We’ve always said that our problem is not necessarily the pay, but the shoddy results that taxpayers are receiving.
This is clearly not the case with multi-academy trusts. Dan Moynihan, CEO of the Harris Federation, earned £565,000 in 2022-23 while overseeing 52 schools and over 40,000 pupils. His cost per pupil? Just £13.90. Some 49 out of 52 Harris Federation schools are rated ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’. His pay packet, while by no means modest, certainly looks to be justified, particularly compared to the bloated bureaucracy of failing local-authority schools.
In total, at least 757 academy trust leaders received over £100,000 in 2022-23. But their job isn’t comparable to a single-school headteacher. They manage thousands of students, oversee multi-million-pound budgets and turn failing schools around. Their average total remuneration of £156,491 is barely above the maximum for local-authority school heads, despite delivering far superior results.
The outcomes speak for themselves. Many schools taken into academy control were struggling local-authority schools, and the transformation has been striking. For example, the Harris Federation took on multiple schools in special measures; today, 70% of them are rated ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted. Yet Labour’s Bill threatens to drag them into mediocrity.
It’s a bitter irony: the party that created academies is now hellbent on gutting them. Labour’s own reforms in the early 2000s acknowledged that state control was failing pupils, hence the move toward greater autonomy. Decades later, they are rolling back that progress, shackling academies with the same bureaucratic burdens that led to failure in the first place. If academies are delivering results, why sabotage them?
This gets to the crux of the means vs outcome debate. In a grim race to the bottom, Labour’s Bill prioritises control over results and standardisation over success. By stripping academies of their independence, it takes crucial tools away from educators, limiting their ability to hire the best staff, adapt the curriculum and implement effective discipline. This isn’t just bureaucratic tinkering; it’s taking a hammer to the mechanisms that have driven school improvement.
Education isn’t a box-ticking exercise, but Labour’s approach treats it as one. Forcing academies to comply with rigid national guidelines strips them of these advantages. With 80% of schools now academies, there will inevitably be some that don’t perform at their best, but that’s not a convincing argument against academies in the round, it’s an argument for giving them the tools to succeed. Standardisation may sound fair in theory, but in practice, it undermines the adaptability that has made academies so successful. Labour aren’t levelling the playing field, they’re kneecapping the best players. The schools that are delivering the best education should be empowered, not burdened with red tape.
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