Sunday thoughts: Will the Conservatives sink their own plans for universal academisation….again?
In 2016, Nicky Morgan proposed to make every school an Academy. Her White Paper argued that:
The academy system is now sufficiently mature to move to the next phase, with every school an academy. This would not have been possible in 2010, but will now help to spread high standards across the country, put great leaders at the heart of our school system, and reduce unnecessary complexity and duplication.
A system in which all state-funded schools are academies will deliver better results for all children through:
a. Empowering great teachers and leaders — autonomy and accountability will better position people to succeed and provide more effective leadership structures
b. Better responding to changes in performance — the system will prioritise responsiveness and clear accountability over an arbitrary requirement for all schools in a local area to be run by the same entity, regardless of its effectiveness
c. Sustainability — schools will operate in more sustainable groups, and we will end the dual system of running schools which is inefficient and unsustainable in the long term
d. A new role for local authorities — local authorities will move away from maintaining schools and focus on championing pupils and parents
Other than — interestingly — being more bullish about the success of the Acadamies system (whereas the current proposals propose universal academisation almost deliberately to correct some of the current confusions and complexity in the system), this is all similar to the current, 2022 plan.
But for those of us who were around at that point, we can remember how 2016 panned out. Pre-Parliamentary pushback from Conservative MPs was so strong that the DfE was forced to abandon its plans to legislate. In backing down, The Guardian reports that:
Morgan insisted the government’s goal had not changed and she still wanted every school to become an academy, but acknowledged concerns about a “hard deadline” for all schools to convert by 2022.
Instead of “blanket” conversion, she told MPs there would be new powers to enable the Department for Education to step in and force schools in “underperforming” local authorities — or those unable to provide the necessary support — to convert to academy status.
(“Nothing has changed”, one might say?)
One of the difficulties at that time was that the Cameron government had both exceeded expectations by winning an absolute majority in 2015, and yet was also in a weak position because their majority was only 12. Morgan’s White Paper was also published only a matter of weeks before the Brexit referendum, when backbench discipline and loyalty to No10 was already fraying.
So what might happen when, shortly, the new Schools Bill comes to the Commons, with a number of clauses granting the government greater powers to academise schools, to create new Trusts, and with an explicit goal in the White Paper to move to an all Trust system by 2030 — though without a proposed formal legislative power to compel academisation for those schools who are not in category and who do not voluntarily convert.
There’s already been a lot of pushback in the Lords on some of the Bill, and the accretion of powers it gives to DfE — with criticism, notably, coming from what we can call the right or the reformers (including Lords Nash and Agnew) as well as from the various Opposition inclined Lords. But ultimately, any Lords changes can be overruled. It’s the Commons votes that matter to get the Bill through. And while Zahawi and Johnson have more MPs than Cameron and Morgan, they face a similar — or perhaps greater — level of backbench rebelliousness and scepticism of No10.
So could they be in trouble? In order to answer this, I’ve done a couple of quick bits of data crunching. The first is to look at the % of schools in all 150 LAs (excl City of London and Isle of Scilly) that are already Academies, and those still left. I’ve ranked these from the most to the least academised, and then put them into quartiles:
Secondly, I’ve looked at all the LAs in the bottom quartile (ie the least Academised), and identified the constituencies that cover those LAs which are predominantly represented by Conservative MPs. I’ve also added in the constituencies that cover Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, who are just into the third quartile. Those constituencies cover (going up from the least academised): Lancashire, Hampshire, Berkshire, Cumbria, Cheshire, East Riding, Gloucestershire, West Sussex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire.
And here’s what we find:
In other words, we have a list of 96 MPs — the vast majority of them Conservative — who represent seats with among the lowest % of schools that are currently Academies.
If we assume that those MPs with lower numbers of current Academies might — all other things being equal — be more sceptical about both the case for change, and more nervous about the level of upheaval that could be caused on their patch, then these are the MPs that the government might wish to worry about.
(There are plenty of other MPs who have low academised LAs in their constituencies, but I’ve not included them here because almost all of those MPs are Opposition MPs (and the councils are Labour councils) and I’m assuming that they would all vote against any legislation anyway. But for completeness, this 96 number does exclude the odd one or two Conservative MPs — including, for example, those covering the LAs of Kensington and Chelsea and the Isle of Wight.)
Specifically, we can say the following:
- There are a total of 78 Tory MPs on this list — well in excess of Boris Johnson’s total majority (currently 75, likely to fall to 71 with the loss of two forthcoming by elections). And of course, every MP voting against legislation reduces a majority by 2. So in theory — though highly unlikely in practice — if just under half of all these MPs voted against the legislation, it would fall.
- Many of them have big majorities. The average majority for the 78 seats is a shade over 14,000, but 21 of them have super majorities of 20,000 or more. Although that isn’t bomb proof, it’s reasonable to assume that they could handle some loss of popularity.
- Conversely, 19 of them have skinny-ish majorities of 8,000 or less, are at real risk of losing their seats next time round, and will be nervous about controversy.
- A few of these MPs are bound by collective responsibility — Shapps, Sharma (for now) and Dowden are in the Cabinet and there’s a handful of other Ministers here (and the chair of the No10 Policy Unit Andrew Griffith). Joy Morrissey is the PMs PPS. Short of resignation, they can’t oppose legislation.
- There’s also a lot of people on here who I know deeply support the principle of the government’s education legislation. One Nick Gibb is among them.
- But there’s a lot of names on here who are MPs who have no great love for this current administration, and definitely or probably voted no-confidence in the Prime Minister very recently. Some of them are noted ringleaders and very effective at organising rebellions— Baker, Davis, Harper for example.
- Hampshire more or less single handedly brought down the Morgan attempt to academise schools in 2016, and not much has changed in the intervening 6 years — it has a lot of MPs on this list.
- Again, this list only includes the very least academised LAs and constituencies. A number of other Tory MPs might be concerned from quartiles 1 and 2 and 3, I just haven’t pulled them out here.
To be clear, this absolutely doesn’t mean the legislation won’t pass. Many of these MPs named may be in favour of the Bill, or vote for it because they’re whipped to, or because they get changes elsewhere. And, unlike 2016, there is no proposal which compels all schools to force convert by a target date, which was the cause of so much anguish last time. But this analysis does strongly suggest that in a time of an almost unwhippable backbench party, the government is in for a rough ride when the Schools Bill reaches the Commons.
