Academy over-expansion was the real Trojan horse scandal

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/16/academy-schools-trojan-horse-extremism-park-view

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The “Trojan horse” affair last year put Birmingham schools in the spotlight. Sadly, the spotlight and all the hysteria that went with it failed to reveal the real problems. These were partly the flaws in the government’s academisation policy.

In my school, Park View, the difficulties were nothing to do with religion or extremism, as was alleged. The main problem was one of too much, too soon, when we expanded to take over nearby schools as an academy sponsor. It’s this lesson the government should heed. But in Nicky Morgan’s new education bill it is clear that it has been missed or ignored, with its intention to convert 1,000 failing schools into academies in this parliament.

Related: Ofsted's slur on the Muslim community of Park View School | Lee Donaghy

Park View was a terrific success story. It emerged from special measures in the early noughties. By 2012 it was one of the top performing non-selective schools, and the most oversubscribed, in Birmingham. So, with the expansion of academisation, it was a natural impulse for us to share our message and take over other schools. But as our trust expanded, our operation was weakened.

Within 12 months of Park View’s conversion to an academy in April 2012, following an outstanding grading by Ofsted, we had expanded to become a multi-academy trust of three schools, with another conversion in progress. Neither of the schools we took over was inadequate but they were in need of intense support to arrest falling results; the proposed fourth school had recently been placed in special measures. To try to turn these schools around we seconded members of our senior leadership team, as well as key staff in areas where specialised intervention was needed, such as special needs.

Unfortunately, this weakened the “mothership” (as we called it) of Park View, where I was an assistant principal. At one point, with secondments and retirements, we had a leadership team of just three, including a newly appointed acting principal. Having achieved our best ever set of GCSE results in 2012 – 76% 5 A*-C including English and maths – we were determined that our headline figures would be maintained. But this inevitably meant some things, such as quality assurance and policy reviews, regrettably fell by the wayside.

And it was these that Ofsted cited when it condemned us in March 2014. I’ll maintain until my dying day that these weaknesses were in no way serious enough to place us in special measures. Nevertheless, we left ourselves open to criticism as a direct consequence of stretching our talent thinly and neglecting – partly as a result of the sheer pace of expansion – to pay enough attention to succession planning.

Nicky Morgan is pressing her legislative pedal to the academising metal, oblivious to the lessons of Trojan horse

At the same time, we began the task of developing the architecture of a multi-academy trust. One of the results of the Trojan horse letter and the government’s panic about it was a tsunami of investigations. One was by the Education Funding Agency, which controls academy finances. I would say the EFA report on Park View was four parts hatchet job to one part justified criticism. But it was correct in saying that this expansion was beyond the capabilities of those leading the trust and that “the trust [did] not abide … by the terms of the academies financial handbook … [and the] governance arrangements for the trust [were] inadequate”.

Those well-meaning and sincerely passionate people never got to grips with the transition from running one school with local authority oversight to being in charge of three schools, some of which needed major change.

After the brokering of each takeover by civil servants or consultants, we were left by the Department for Education to improvise. We were essentially handed the academies financial handbook and told to get on with improving outcomes for some of the poorest pupils in Birmingham.

Michael Gove was busy recreating the wild west in the English educational landscape: those with the fastest horses won the most land and who cared what danger you faced when you got there? The administrative mess that followed was inevitable.

And now Morgan is pressing her legislative pedal to the academising metal, seemingly oblivious to the lessons of Trojan horse – or the over-expansion of other larger academy chains such as AET, United Learning Trust and E-Act.

To achieve her aim of conversion for every school in special measures she will need lots more schools like Park View – not just big chains – willing to risk diluting what they do best in order to help more pupils, whilst presumably still fumbling about in the dark to construct an appropriate trust structure. Far from preventing pupils from “languishing in underperforming schools”, as is her stated intention, a further acceleration of forced academisation without sufficient funding and support, has the potential to backfire, weakening high-performing schools as they take on a greater burden without the necessary support, thus jeopardising the education of more pupils, not fewer.

Lee Donaghy was assistant principal at Park View school. He left this year to be a full-time parent