Things get real #2: The political is personal

or, How parents can radically resist stealth academisation

In the spirit of concerned citizenship, I share with you a letter I wrote to my children’s school about concerns I and many within the education sector have about The Oak National Academy. If you find it useful, please feel free to use and adapt it as you see fit.

Dear Head and Governors

Re The Oak National Academy

I am a parent.

The first thing I want to do is thank you for the support for all the pupils during lockdown and through these times of ongoing uncertainty as a result of the pandemic. The support offered via online platforms during lockdown has been welcome and useful. We really appreciate the willingness to accommodate our son when we requested his return to class in the weeks before the holidays. This made a huge difference to him and to us. He really benefitted from reconnecting with the school and school life, and we were able to manage the increasing demands of work and life under Covid. We cannot thank you enough for that.

I have been prompted to write not only by my desire to acknowledge and thank you for the extraordinary achievement of keeping the wheels on in exceptionally challenging circumstances, but also to raise some concerns about the rapid rise and influence of The Oak National Academy (ONA). These concerns are less about the quality and content of ONA’s resources (though these have been questioned in some quarters) but about ONA’s place in the wider scheme of education (and social care) reform.

I have provided a separate information sheet which is intended to give context to the emergence and growth of ONA, which I urge you to read, but wanted to get to the point in this letter without the need for a lengthy preamble. By way of explaining the background to my concerns, I am a social worker in the NHS for adults with traumatic brain injuries, a practice educator and a sessional social work lecturer. I am active in social work forums outside of the day job and a member of the North East branch of the British Association of Social Workers. I have a keen interest in social work and education reform, which are interconnected as both are in the purview of the Department for Education (DfE). (At least children’s social work reform is; adults’ social work is in the purview of the Department for Health and Social Care.)

Concerns about ONA

The ONA appeared in April this year, as if out of nowhere, and was up and running within two weeks with the ostensible aim of supporting schools and students during the coronavirus lockdown. ONA was immediately financially backed by Google and publicly approved by the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson. Less publicised is the fact the academy received in very short order and without tender £300k of funding from DfE for start-up costs, via the same obscure legislation used by government to award, again without tender, billions of pounds worth of contracts to outsourcing firms during the Covid outbreak.

I was interested and concerned to learn that ONA was subsequently awarded — again without tender — £4.3m by DfE to provide an online version of the entire curriculum post-lockdown. This appears to fly in the face of ONA’s initial claims that it was aimed solely at supporting online learning during lockdown. The announcement roughly coincided with my reading a note received from the school that ONA would be used to support pupils on their return in September.

The rapid emergence and widespread take up of ONA is not only remarkable but in my view concerning from the perspective of transparency and accountability. Aside from the ‘backdoor contracting’ law via which it has received its DfE funding without tender, ONA’s content was not subject to any rigorous scrutiny or consultation with the education sector prior to its inception. Paul Whiteman, general secretary of NAHT, has sounded a measured note of caution regarding ONA and rightly highlights issues around the accessibility of digital platforms for children living with social disadvantage. Teachers have expressed quite a few concerns about ONA, ranging from the quality of content, diversity of teaching staff (which ONA has sought to address), the use of inexperienced teachers drawn mainly from academies, the promotion of a ‘traditionalist’ education agenda, and the influence of key figures from and proponents of multi-academy trusts who founded and are involved with ONA. This piece from Education Uncovered is also worth reading, though you will have to register (for free) to access it. It is worth reading for anyone with an interest in education reform.

The reason I am providing this information and expressing my concerns is to promote exploration and discussion of the potential implications of ONA, and the wider reform agenda of which it is part, for the school community. Having long researched public sector reform, and noting how Covid is being used by government to advance and accelerate public sector outsourcing without the checks and balances that uphold transparency and accountability in ‘normal’ times, I believe we have good reason to look closely at these things, as citizens and professionals, and invite and promote conversations within the community to aid in decision-making as the school adjusts and plans for the new realities brought about by Covid. Again, I urge you to read the accompanying information sheet on the background and policy context of ONA.

It’s fair to say that, when I saw that ONA had come to our school, as it has to a great many schools seeking ways to best support their pupils’ learning during pandemic, having already had concerns about it, and on seeing how ONA has rapidly expanded outside the bounds of its initial stated mission, my professional research and activism took on a profoundly personal aspect. As you can probably tell, I simply don’t trust private enterprises such as global management consultancies, outsourcers, Swiss banks and hedge funds to act solely in the public interest through their connections to education and social care reform and I am really very concerned about how these things will impact on our children’s education. I hope that this letter will at least raise awareness and provide useful information so that you may make up your own mind about these things. As noted, a key concern is that government is rapidly rolling out reform initiatives ostensibly in response to Covid without consultation with target sectors or the public, nor with the checks and balances needed to ensure that, for example, personal and school data will not be (mis)used to advance corporate interests in the state school system. On that point, it would be prudent to ask why Google have been so keen to back ONA and other ‘edtech’ projects introduced at pace during lockdown. Another key concern is whether initiatives like ONA constitute parts of a stealth academisation agenda. Having observed for several years stealth privatisation in the NHS I strongly believe such concerns are not without merit.

More broadly, there are growing concerns about the impact on children’s cognition and mental health of over-reliance on online learning, in addition to existing concerns about children who do not have the necessary technology or internet access to support their online learning.

It may well be that, as a community, we decide that the benefits of ONA outweigh the drawbacks. However, I would urge the community to consider what the rapid rise and growth of ONA might mean in the long term for our school and, indeed, other schools, given ONA’s early and continued backing by a government that appears intent on mass-academisation.

I hope all this makes at least some sense! While I get that all this could appear somewhat conspiricist, I believe that, having researched and written about these things for a while now, there is sufficient information to give rise to concerns and prompt questions about ONA and the wider education reform agenda. There is already widespread concern in the education sector about academisation, for example, and much has been written about stealth privatisation of children’s social care, a notable example being Ray Jones’ In Whose Interest? The Privatisation of Child Protection and Social Work, which lays out, among other things, the links between social care and education reform.

I would be more than happy to meet with the Board of Governors to discuss these matters further.

Yours, with gratitude,

Christian Kerr

I also provide the following supplementary information in a separate note:

The Oak National Academy concerns — Background and policy context

I can’t remember exactly how I first heard of ONA — it was possibly during my research for a conference talk — but I do remember it was within two weeks of its inception and I will have undoubtedly come across it due to its links with the wider education reform agenda advanced by the current government.

The principal of ONA is Matt Hood, who is married to Josh MacAlister, CEO of the children’s social work fast track training scheme, Frontline. By way of explaining what led me to be concerns about ONA, I will say here that I and others, including leading social workers and academics, have had concerns about Frontline and its implications for social work and social work education since its inception. This Guardian article I wrote with Professor Anna Gupta of Royal Holloway University provides a summary of concerns relating to the impact of Frontline on social work education, while this more recent piece summarises concerns about Frontline’s relationships with global corporations. This Community Care piece shows how the concerns raised over the years about equality and diversity among Frontline cohorts have proven not unfounded, having manifested in the experiences of some black, brown and minority ethnic participants.

Both Hood and MacAlister are alumni of Teach First, the fast track teacher training scheme which is based on the Teach for America programme that over the last 30 years has grown to be a major force in education reform in the US. Both programmes have been subject to criticisms, including that neither have led to promised improvements in teacher retention rates and that both are advancing the academisation agenda in their respective countries (known as the charter schools movement in the US). Aside from its generous funding from the DfE, Teach First is funded and backed by a plethora of corporate partners, notably global management consultancies Deloitte and PwC, transnational bank Credit Suisse and outsourcing giant Accenture.

(It’s not my intention to give a view here on the merits and drawbacks of these schemes; just as Frontline produces good social workers, Teach First produces good teachers. That’s not the point. The questions are around whether these schemes are worth the investment of public money and what they herald for our respective professions and, crucially, for the people we serve.)

Josh MacAlister was so impressed by his experience with Teach First that he left his teaching post after two years to pursue the development of Frontline, which he conceived and initially pitched as the ‘the Teach First of social work’. In addition to being Chief Executive of Frontline, MacAlister has a number of other appointments of note in the education and social care sector. He is on the board of the King’s Cross Academy Trust. He is also on the Children’s Commissioner’s advisory board, which also includes Sophie Humphreys, the founder of Pause, a charity aimed at breaking the cycle of repeat removals of children into care. In March 2019, MacAlister and Humphreys registered as directors of The Difference Education Ltd a leadership training scheme aimed at alternative provision education — a kind of Teach First for children in vulnerable situations. I mentions these links as just a few pertinent examples illustrating the intertwinement of interests in education and social care reform.

As previously stated, MacAlister is married to Matt Hood, also a Teach First alumnus, who left his teaching post after two years to enter the civil service as a policy advisor. During that time he worked on ‘a number of policy priorities including school reform, post-16 participation and special educational needs and disabilities’. Hood went on to a post as part-time assistant head teacher at Heysham High School, to ‘support the leadership of a challenging secondary school during a period of turbulence’ which he did ‘[p]art-time alongside founding the Institute for Teaching.’ Hood’s tenure at Heysham High School lasted from 2014 to 2016, during which time the school’s Ofsted rating went from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘inadequate’. In 2018, the school adopted academy status and changed its name to Bay Leadership Academy. Without putting too fine a point on it, I think in light of duties under the Education and Adoption Act 2016 to turn failing schools into academies and Hood’s profile as a key player in, and proponent of, the academisation agenda what happened during Hood’s time at Heysham could be construed as slightly dodgy. Also, as this paper shows, ‘parachuting in super-heads’ (or ‘super-assistant heads’, as the case may be) does not lead to the sustained long term change needed to turn around failing schools.

Hood then founded the Ambition Institute, a ‘graduate school for teachers, school leaders and system leaders, serving children from disadvantaged backgrounds’ which has strong links to the academisation movement through its historical involvement with the academies chain, Ark.

As I have said in the accompanying letter to the Head and Governors, ONA was immediately financially backed by Google and publicly approved by the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson. Less publicised is the fact the academy received in very short order and without tender £300k of funding from DfE for start-up costs, via the same obscure legislation used by government to award, again without tender, billions of pounds worth of contracts to outsourcing firms during the Covid outbreak, including tens of millions to global management consultancies, including Boston Consulting Group which is a founding partner of the Frontline social work training scheme, as well as Deloitte and PwC, which as I’ve said are both backers of Teach First.

I have recently forwarded this update to the Head and Board of Governors:

Teach First has recently been awarded £6.44m by DfE to act as sole recruiter of catch up mentors under the government’s £350m national tutoring programme, in the face of concern among key players in the sector. I note with interest Teach First’s approach to the task involves approaching trainees it had to drop from its teacher training programme earlier this year due to Covid. These mentors, therefore, are unlikely to have had previous teaching experience or training.