Education Institutions: Autonomy and Accountability

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for receiving permission to speak in the gap. I was interested in speaking in this debate because at the moment, as the governor of a fairly newly converted primary academy, I am in negotiations with our academy chain over the scheme of delegation between the local governing board and the academy chain. That has thrown up an interesting conundrum about the role of the local governing board in relation to the academy chain.

That is first illustrated by who appoints the head. If the academy chain appoints them, and delegates responsibility for management and organisation of the school to the head, the local governing body has very limited responsibilities; it becomes a very largely advisory body. Yet when Ofsted comes along, it will look to and examine the local governing body, which will be held responsible. Therefore the relationship between the local governing body and the academy chain is an extremely important one.

If one takes the traditional local authority model, the local governing body appointed the head and was responsible. It set the scheme of delegation and had broad strategic responsibility. However, if the head did not perform, the local governing board had to make sure that it was accountable. When Ofsted came along it would examine the local governing board for doing that. If, however, the academy chain is to appoint the head, and sets the scheme of delegation and organisation, there is a very considerable fuzziness there, and it is not clear whom Ofsted should examine and hold responsible. You also lose the link between them, as the local governing body represents the local community. That is an interesting issue, and not one that we have fully resolved, although we are discussing it. However, I thought it was worth raising in this debate.