Nuanced Understandings of Privatisation in Local Authorities’

Services to Schools Ruth Boyask

ruth.boyask@plymouth.ac.uk

A presentation on ‘Emerging models of service relationships with schools’ from the BELMAS Structural Reform Research Programme funded study: New Relations between Local

Authorities and Schools

Overview

• In response to economic and ideologically driven reform, LAs have developed privatised models of service to schools;

• This study identifies ideological and value-based differences between models of service to schools adopted within four case study LAs.

• While they are all forms of privatisation, there are subtle differences between the models that I term: cooperative; entrepreneurial; community engagement; and corporate.

• In this presentation I describe the differences between these models, and their underpinning values.

Privatisation in English Schooling

• Secondary schools in England n = 3320 – Academies 54%

– Free schools n = 116

• Primary schools in England n = 16788 – Academies 11%

– Free Schools n = 72

• Independent schools in England n = 1913

(source: Department for Education EduBase2 Retrieved 27 March 2014 http://www.education.gov.uk/edubase/glossary.xhtml?letter=A)

Context of structural reform for LAs

• Financial loss through expansion of the academies programme, with funding redirected from LAs to academies and chains;

• In the four years from 2011 LAs are subject to funding cuts to their formula grants amounting to a national average cut of 27% (Stabe & Jones, 2011).

Privatisation of services

• Privatisation in education is commonly explained as withdrawal of the state from public provision and movement towards private or market-based provision (Starr, 1988; Robertson et al, 2012; Wilson, 2012), but this conflates public with the state and private with market – private interests are different, and privatisation is a relation not separation between public and private;

• The models of service are all similar in that they represent a retreat from public provision, yet there are qualitative differences in how they orientate themselves towards the market and dominant discourses of good government;

• Economic theory most influential in current government reform is based on distinctive views of the state and market. – In this view the market, classified with private interests, is a vehicle for innovation; – The state’s role in protecting the public interest is to respond in the exceptional

circumstance of the market’s failure to provide for all interests, acting as a safety net for society’s most vulnerable (Robertson et al., 2012; Mazzucato, 2013).

The Research

• The study focused on four LAs selected for differences their demography, geography and constituencies: – LA1 is a large borough authority;

– LA2 is a small, non-metropolitan authority;

– LA3 is a large unitary county authority;

– LA4 is a unitary authority in an average sized city.

• The LAs also selected because a preliminary review showed they each responded differently to changes in policy.

Data collection included: 1. review of publicly available documentary evidence on the interface

between the LAs and schools (including traded services and joint ventures)

– that included minutes of meetings, catalogues of services, media reports, newsletters, policy documents, action plans, inspection reports and others (limited for LA2);

2. interviews with 11 senior managers and service providers (only 1 participant from LA2 agreed to be interviewed);

3. a survey of state-funded primary and secondary school service users in the LAs that had an overall response rate of 14%.

4. Supplementary demographic data from government statistics (e.g. 2011 census and 2010 multiple deprivation indices).

5. Further data provided by interview respondents, who in some cases supplied policy documents, pamphlets, and other internal publications.

Data were collected in 2012 - 2013. The project was granted ethical approval at Plymouth University.

Privatisation as common response

• The LAs have all made profound structural change, with two stipulating they’d been on the path of change before recent funding cuts and expansion of academies programme;

• Privatisation of services include commissioning from other private providers, traded offer to schools from arms length or LA based services or some combination of both.

LA 1

Corporate

LA 2

Community

Engagement

LA 3

Entrepreneurial

LA 4

Cooperative

A fully corporate

model,

developing a joint

venture with a

multi-national

corporation.

Community and

stakeholder

engagement,

commissioning

services from

schools.

A small statutory

provision

(although under

threat of closure),

and an

entrepreneurial

business unit.

Aspirations for

cooperative

models of

business,

following the lead

of their Council.

Table 1. Differences in Models of Service: LAs

Corporate Model

• Main partnership is through a joint venture between the LA and a FTSE100 index company;

• Minimal LA based service – admission and some transport services;

• Core work of the joint venture are services commissioned by the LA from their “£10.5 million commissioning pot” (LA1 interview, 11 April 2013) – includes school improvement services, learner services (including educational psychology and

SEN) and school support services.

• The commissions fulfil the LAs statutory responsibility to schools, children, young people and their families, and focus particularly upon “vulnerable kids” (LA1 Interview, 11 April 2013).

• It is expected that the traded service will grow beyond the LA’s limited commissioning of statutory service, and the joint venture increase its income through selling services directly to schools. – So, we commission on behalf of some schools and we provide in a sense a trading platform;

and then they go out and trade with those schools who are buying extra educational psychology beyond our statutory function; they’re buying additional welfare services; they’re buying additional support around school improvement if they need it. (LA1 Interview, 11 April 2013).

Community Engagement Model

• Limited data from LA2 with most publicly available documentation pre-dating the reforms and only one interviewee;

• LA2 considerably reduced service provision and no longer directly provides school improvement services, yet retains some provision for the most vulnerable children (including educational psychology and SEND services);

• Main partnerships are with local schools and school leaders, having contracted school personnel to the local authority just prior to the 2010 change of government: – The director of Children’s Services in about early 2010 took the view that it would be useful to have heads

working and paid to work part-time within the local authority, to build that bridge between the schools and the local authority…. And so we had a primary head of school leadership and a secondary head of school leadership. And through those two heads working initially two and a half days a week for the local authority and then two and a half days a week back in their schools we started to develop this journey (LA2 Interview, 10 April 2013).

• As service model moved from provider to commissioning agency, the LA maintained relationships through short term contracts with these and other heads and ‘expert’ teachers to deliver improvement services, more recently through close relationships with their primary teaching school.

• Model presented emphasises partnership between the LA and schools, helping to build community amongst schools, and encouraging schools to work together with the teaching school acting as a hub for: – joint practice development, research and development, leadership, and initial teacher education (LA2

pamphlet, N.D.).

Entrepreneurial Model

• LA3 retained service units within the local authority, shifting the majority of service to a traded rather than statutory offer.

• Retained a small unit for the provision of statutory school improvement services • The main unit was a traded service at arm’s length from the core work of the LA;

– expected to function independently and generate income – staff contracted on commission rather than paid a salary.

• Their service model is driven by both economic and social values, apparent in the following extracts from their statement of Vision, Values and Principles: – We ensure efficiency and value support the quality of our services. – Research and cutting edge practice support innovation in our services and products. – We value and respect all. – We value the abilities of all our learners and encourage them to develop their potential (LA3

pamphlet, N.D).

• LA3’s traded service unit drives new projects and seeks new sources of revenue, including initiatives and products that they market beyond the region.

Cooperative Model

• LA4 had also become a traded service, with a full catalogue produced and distributed amongst schools.

• Concerned their provision was not sustainable and proposed to establish a joint venture with one of the community interest companies already developed by schools in the locality or create their own joint venture company.

• Preferred corporate model for the proposed venture was a cooperative mutual, meshing with the council’s commitment to cooperative values.

• Respondents from LA4 recognised that working cooperatively would be challenging, because the structural reforms had created a hostile and competitive environment amongst schools: – And they [the schools] felt that they’d become very competitive, and I actually

used the word to a couple of them that they’d become combative, because there were some quite unpleasant strands out there, and some non-collaborative behaviours. And a couple of Heads said to me, ‘If you do nothing else but hold us together and point us in the direction, you’ll absolutely have earned your salary’ (LA4, Interview, 2 April 2013).

Values in Privatisation

Corporate values • LA1’s corporate model is a manifestation of ‘new contractualism’ in

local government that separates policy making from policy delivery and potentially weakens the “…traditional values of public service, personal responsibility, and professionalism” (Curtis, 2008, p.282).

• LA1 attempts to meld its responsibility to the public interest with corporate values of competition, efficiency and profitability has the capacity to generate considerable tension between its business and social goals.

• Senior managers within LA1 recognise difficulties of attending to social need, and publicly accessible documents like inspection reports and news media also show that the LA is struggling to meet its statutory duty, as critics of privatisation would expect.

Values in Privatisation cont…

Community engagement/partnership • Discourses of partnership are common in recent public policy, identified by Ball

and Exley (2012) as a demonstration of network governance that promotes a utopian vision where: – “…mutual respect, equal power and shared goals between parties are presupposed and

‘disciplinary and other differences are elided over in an organizing structure which emphasizes “community”’ (Frankham cited in Ball and Exley, 2012).

• Even in models emphasising partnership and community, like that described in LA2’s model of service, hierarchies and competition are built into the model with only some schools and individuals granted status as ‘experts’ and ‘improvers’ by organisations like Ofsted and National College, and these statuses rewarded through commissions from the local authority.

• Further research is required to better understand how power and participation operate within a community engagement model, and the extent to which the relationships within this environment are mutual ones.

Values in Privatisation cont…

Entrepreneurial spirit • An alternative to conceptualising the role of the state as a safety net is to

conceive of the state as a confident, innovating and entrepreneurial force for driving economic growth that will benefit all (Mazzucato, 2013).

• The will for an entrepreneurial state is most evident in LA3, but also in the traded services offered by LAs.

• Almost half of schools in LA3 thought the values of the LA differed from their own. A headteacher whose school used LA3’s school improvement services felt that the current provision did not meet demand, but suggested that pressures on the LA were applied from outside. – I believe they are being asked to do an almost impossible job re school

improvement with limited resources and so many schools needing support due to the recent spate of Ofsted judgements (LA3 Headteacher, survey response).

Values in Privatisation cont…

Cooperative values? • 75% of school survey respondents perceived LA4’s approach as close to their own

values; this may suggest LA4 has retained elements of a traditional notion of public service, as it is suggested by this head teacher: – I believe that the same public service ethos that the LA operates from is one that schools

should also have (LA4 Headteacher survey response).

Alternatively, it might suggest schools share with the LA new entrepreneurial values rather than the cooperative values the LA wishes to promote.

• Schools in LA4 suggested that the LA faced similar problems more business orientated authorities, such as describing LA4 as “occupied by self-survival”, and noticing gaps in provision for even the most vulnerable schools – for example, “very little challenge and support available to those schools in a vulnerable

position“.

• There is growing interest in the potential of mutuals and the cooperative movement for furthering social goals within a social context dominated by economic discourses (Webster et al, 2012), yet there is also evidence of large scale market failure of cooperative models of business and governance (Kelly, 2014).

Conclusions

• There are similar tensions and challenges arising for LAs and schools as a result of trying to achieve social goals through market models of service;

• These services are subtly different from one another as LAs construct them from different value bases, yet each represents a different kind of compromise between their statutory responsibility for the public interest and the political economy in which they operate;

• There remain questions on the extent to which in the long term the different value bases can achieve more than an expression of difference.

Question for reflection

• Do differences in these models mean anything beyond the symbolic?

References

Ball, S, & Exley, S. (2010) Making policy with ‘good ideas’: policy networks and the ‘intellectuals’ of New Labour, Journal of Education Policy, (25)2, 151-169 Curtis, T. (2008) Finding that grit makes a pearl: A critical re-reading of research into social enterprise, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour & Research (14) 5, 276-290. Department for Education (DfE) (2010) The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper 2010, London: The Stationery Office. Kelly, C. (2014) Failings in management and governance: Report of the independent review into the events leading to the Co-operative Bank's capital shortfall, Retrieved 29 May 2014 http://www.thekellyreview.co.uk/final_report_2014.html Mazzucato, M. (2013) The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, London; New York: Anthem Press. Robertson, S. & Dale, R. (2013) The Social Justice Implications of Privatisation in Education Governance Frameworks: A Relational Account, Oxford Review of Education, 39(4), 426—445. Robertson, S. Mundy, K., Verger, A & Menashy, F. (Eds) (2012) Public Private Partnerships In Education: New Actors and Modes of Governance in a Globalizing World, Cheltenham, UK; Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. Stabe & Jones (22 March 2011) Council cuts: UK LAs respond to budget cuts, Financial Times, Retrieved 15 May 2012: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f11f1a48-40d3-11e0-9a37-00144feabdc0.html Starr, P. (1988). The Meaning of Privatization, Yale Law and Policy Review 6, p. 6-41. Webster, A., Brown, A., Stewart, D., Walton, J.K. and Shaw, L. (Eds) (2012) The Hidden Alternative: Co-operative Values, Past, Present and Future, Tokyo: United Nations University Press. Wilson, T.S. (2012) Negotiating Public and Private: Philosophical frameworks for school choice, In G. Miron, K. Welner, P. Hinchley and W. Mathis (Eds.) Exploring the school choice universe: evidence and recommendations. Information Age Press, 2012.