Nicky Morgan’s retreat on total academisation by 2022 is a humiliation. Like Gove before her, she now has to face reality: right wing ideology does not make good education policy. All the rhetoric about choice, markets and autonomy are really just hot air. The market cannot be trusted to deliver high quality education for all.
We have won a partial retreat – it is an important victory. But piecemeal academy conversion will continue unless parents and teachers fight every attempt to convert.
Too many heads and governors are using bogus excuses to convert. There is no good reason to convert. Even where schools are struggling, the evidence shows they are turned round faster if they remain with local authorities.
Nick Gibb and Nicky Morgan will now have to explain how they will make this chaotic system of different providers work. How will academy chains and MATs be made accountable? How will the needs of SEN children be protected?
When promoting the White Paper, Gibb and Morgan argued that it was not possible to sustain this unaccountable and chaotic mixed economy. They said full academisation was the answer. Now that has been rejected, are we going to move to an accountability framework that applies to all schools equally and administered locally?
Nicky Morgan has crashed the gears into reverse in order to avoid defeat. But she is still not fit to drive the car. #nickymustgo
