'Moving the chairs around the Titanic'

SCHOOLS will be given more freedom to run their own affairs. Parents will get a real choice in which school their child goes to, and a bigger say in how the school is run. Good schools will find it easier to expand, poor schools will find it easier to be shut down. A greater focus on each child will mean their progress will be individually monitored and supported.

On the face of it, it is hard to fault the Government's plans to transform education, published yesterday. All this extra freedom and choice would surely be good for schools, good for parents, and, most importantly, good for children.

But even as the details were being released in the House of Commons by Education Secretary Ruth Kelly, the mutterings were starting that the reality did not match the rhetoric, that the new mantra of "choice and personalisation" was an illusion, and that the Government's eighth major Education Bill in eight years was less about improving standards than a desperate attempt to ensure there is something besides Iraq on Tony Blair's political tombstone.

A central plank of the proposals is that schools will be able to opt out of local council control and become self-governing trusts. These trusts would also provide an opportunity for charities, religious groups or universities to get involved in running schools.

If this sounds familiar, it's because we've seen something very similar before. The last big education idea of John Major's Conservative government was to allow schools to opt out of local council control. The Tories called them grant maintained schools, but few took up the offer and Mr Blair scrapped the scheme anyway in 1997.

But the arguments against it then are still valid a decade on, says Mick Lyons, North-East executive member for the teaching union Nasuwt. "We're going to create a two-tier system of education again if we remove the local authority's over-arching control," he says.

"The vast majority of schools in the North-East didn't want to go down that route in the past because they valued the support of the education authority. This will go back to a system of have and have nots."

The fear is that while successful schools become more popular, those less favoured by parents will enter a spiral of decline. Fewer pupils means less money, declining morale among staff and eventual descent into a "sink" school. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is among those said to believe the plans would condemn a generation of children to collapsing schools.

Teaching unions are also naturally concerned that a splintered system will lead to the end of national agreements on pay and conditions, creating divisions between teachers at different schools. But for Neil Foster, Cabinet member responsible for education at Durham County Council, there is another objection to the plans.

"There seems to be this myth that local authorities somehow shackle schools, but if you ask the schools they would say we support them," he says. "Schools have got a lot of freedom. The question is: is there a demand out there for people to run their own schools, or for parents to get something that they're not getting now? Having talked to parents and governors, I don't think there is."

One of the local authority's roles is to ensure one school does not act to the detriment of another, a role that would be scrapped by the Government. Instead of coming under local authority control, trust schools would find themselves answerable to central government, more distant, less accountable and less responsive.

Head teachers are also cautious about independence, and wary of the possibility of breaking the school system into thousands of small units. Dr John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association, says while schools would welcome more freedom, the freedom being offered by the Government is an illusion.

"What schools need is more freedom from government interference and incessant education reform. Schools which are already overloaded with initiatives are unlikely to rush towards trust status," he says.

Increased independence for schools may end up meaning increased isolation, according to Vin Wynne, a North-East representative for the NUT. And he says the idea of choosing a school is meaningless in many rural areas, where the nearest alternative is beyond the Government's six mile free transport limit.

He says teachers are also wary of moves to allow greater interference from schools, whether it is from religious groups or parents. Trust schools would be able to opt out of the National Curriculum, raising the question of why we insist everyone else should stick to it if it isn't good enough for them.

"Do we want religious bodies dictating what the children learn? The National Curriculum has its faults but at least parents know what it is they are getting," he says. "And if parents aren't particularly interested in becoming parent governors now, why would they suddenly become interested, apart from small cabals of interest groups? Is it parent power, or groups representing small but vocal minorities?"

But if teachers and local councils have their concerns over the plans, their reservations pale beside the disquiet of parents' representatives. According to Margaret Morrisey, of the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, there may be little new and little different in yesterday's White Paper, but there is enough to cause anxiety.

"We're putting sticking plasters over very bad wounds and in two years they will be revealing new plans to put everything right that they're going to do wrong now," she says. "They're moving the chairs around the Titanic but it is already sinking."

She says the trying to provide a real choice of school for parents is almost impossible, and instead the Government should concentrate on trying to fulfil preferences, and on improving schools across the board. And ministers still have to explain why parents are finding it harder than ever to get into their preferred school despite years of falling birth rates meaning more places should be available.

"After eight years of government, you would have thought that Mr Blair's 'Every school will be a good school' might have made it so parents didn't want to move their children out," she says.

And she says proposals to help disadvantaged parents choose a school out of their immediate neighbourhood by providing free transport would end up stigmatising the children concerned, and in any case this would only apply within a six mile radius, making it all but useless for parents in rural areas.

A key strand in the Government's plans is to give parents a bigger say in how schools are run, but the evidence shows this is something few parents want. "A lot of schools are finding it difficult to recruit parent governors and another layer of bureaucracy will be counter-productive," Ms Morrisey says.

"Parents do trust schools, they assume schools know what they're doing and they're qualified to educate their children. What we want is information and to know what is going on.

"A lot of schools try incredibly hard to involve parents, and it isn't their fault if some aren't interested. At the end of the day, if a parent doesn't want to get involved with their child's education, it isn't up to the Government to make them."