Opinion
Cartoon by Polly Donnison
A game-changing victory against academisation Warwick Mansell
is a freelance education journalist and founder/writer of educationuncovered. co.uk
THE recent High Court victory of a West Midlands primary school against the Government’s forced academisation policy points to the ugly reality of the scheme. Yew Tree Primary School in Sandwell is the first school to win a High Court appeal against forced academisation. It boldly challenged Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, as the Department for Education (DfE) sought to press on with imposing academisation through an academy order, more than two years on from an Inadequate Ofsted judgement. The school, supported by its local authority, pointed to strong improvement under a new head teacher, and a confidence that this would have been demonstrated with a Good judgement from Ofsted, had
inspections not been suspended because of the pandemic. The Government has the power to revoke academy orders, imposed on schools which had failed inspections, in the event that a subsequent one had rated them Good or Outstanding. In a stunning verdict for the school, Gavin Mansfield QC found that the DfE’s refusal to revoke the academy order “was irrational”. He said it was of “grave concern” that the department appeared not to have engaged with evidence submitted by the school and local authority, which demonstrated improvement without the need for academisation. The DfE had said in its evidence to the court that any support from the local authority was unlikely to be sustainable. But the judge found that this was an “irrational” conclusion. Perhaps most damningly, the judge pulled apart a remarkable DfE statement that the local authority’s evidence had been taken less seriously as it was “not… supportive of academisation”. There was no good evidence that was the local authority’s position, found Mansfield. Even if it were, it was “wholly unreasonable”
for the DfE not to take the local authority’s evidence in relation to this school seriously as a result. There seemed a suggestion that the judge took a dim view of DfE arguments, which failed to put the needs of pupils front and centre. The DfE should have considered all the available evidence as to whether the school would best be served staying with its existing improvement model or academising. It had not done so. The truth is that this policy, on which I have reported for a decade, has always been about an often evidentially dubious national political position rather than the needs of individual school communities. Officials did not see the need to look in detail at evidence, since the imperative from ministers – convert as many schools as possible, no matter what – seemed clear. This case is likely to provide hope to other campaigns which have fought the irrationality of blanket forced academisation. If schools can show genuine improvement, there is optimism that the imposition of an external solution on communities, which they do not want, can be avoided.
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