What does a ‘locally democratically accountable’ school system mean?

Professor Richard Hatcher, BCU

We need to open up a discussion about what local democratic accountability means. The fundamental principle should be that every citizen has a stake in, and therefore should have a voice in, their local school system as well as their local school. An elected local authority can make that possible. But local authorities aren’t very democratic. In fact they tend to exclude popular participation in strategic decision-making. So the discussion about a genuinely democratically accountable local school system has to go hand in hand with a discussion about participatory democracy in local government.

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