Wales needs local education authorities

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ViewsDecember 3rd, 2013

With the PISA results due out today, the role of education authorities is likely to come under scrutiny.

There are those who believe there is no role for Local education Authorities (LEAs) and all that is needed is to directly pass all public funding to schools and then let the head-teachers and governing bodies decide how to spend it.  Such a view shows a lack of understanding of how the education system operates.  As anyone who worked in Further Education before and after they were taken out of local authority control can tell you that what occurred was a huge increase in administrative staff and in the cost of contracts required to replace the services previously carried out by the local authority.

I believe there are several roles for  an LEA – without such a body the cost to the education budget would be higher or the number of teachers and teacher support workers reduced as each school attempted to duplicate the functions currently being carried out by the LEA centrally.

The first is the organisation and funding of school transport, not only for rural areas but also for Welsh medium and denominational schools and children with special educational needs. To delegate the money would be complex because it would have to be delegated per child to avoid creating major winners and losers. Each school would then have to tender for bus and taxi contracts in isolation or join together and create an equivalent of the LEA transport department – albeit one run jointly by the schools and not by the LEA.

The second is investment in school buildings.  Who is to decide which schools should be either rebuilt, remodelled or have extensions? How is the cost to be allocated if there is not a LEA to make these decisions and who would choose where the building work would to be done? How would such a decision be made and if the cost was allocated to each new school then unless it was reflected in the school budget then each new school would have problems funding the development.

The third is specialist services.  Surely services such as ethnic minority language services, services for travellers, Welsh language services, psychological services (including SEN statementing and support) and education other than at school are better dealt with by a LEA.  For individual schools to attempt to provide these services would be both expensive and time consuming for senior managers. So either individual schools would seek to contract such work out or they would form a consortium to contract out the work. I remain highly sceptical that this would actually save money or allow more money to be spent in the classroom my expectation is that the reverse would be true.

We know that some schools are not performing as well as others so there is a need for support and intervention by local authorities.  I am critical of the failure of LEAs to intervene when schools are underperforming, but without an LEA who would be able to support teachers and help achieve the improvement that all our children deserve? It is not clear why LEAs are waiting for poor inspection reports from ESTYN before intervening – surely what they should be doing is intervening when school performance at the key stages is poor. I would like to see intervention early so that schools can improve prior to their inspection rather than wait for a poor inspection result before taking action.

How would pupil referral units and special teaching facilities work without the LEA organising and running them – or would they just disappear?

There are strong and compelling reasons to keep LEAs. This is not to say that they don’t need to change – there is a need for greater collaboration between LEAs and, more importantly, earlier intervention when schools are continually under-performing.  The improvement role of LEAs is the vital one – they must use their intervention powers when schools as needed rather than awaiting an inspection result. We need LEAs driving up standards, ensuring that buildings are fit for purpose and most importantly that every child has the best possible chance to fulfil their potential during their time in education.

If LEAs did not exist they would simply be reinvented – but without democratic control and at substantial extra cost.

Mike Hedges is Assembly Member for Swansea East. 

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