Abstract
Quality education is of major public and private interest and, understandably, considerable effort is paid to the quality of schools and improvement of the level of education in society. Many governments recognize the limitations of centralized policy in motivating school improvement and turn to ‘network governance’ to coordinate school systems. Relying on school-to-school collaboration to coordinate education systems has far-reaching consequences for existing accountability structures, most of which were developed to support hierarchical control of individual school quality. This paper reflects on the accountability of networks of schools and on appropriate arrangements to improve the effectiveness of partnerships; our contribution starts with unpicking the question of ‘who is accountable to whom and for what’ in a network of schools? We discuss some common problems in the accountability of networks and describe frameworks to evaluate network-level outcomes and functioning. Examples from the accountability of Multi-Academy Trusts in England are included to contextualize our contribution.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 942-959 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Educational Management Administration and Leadership |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Early online date | 17 Jul 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Nov 2018 |
Funding
The first academies were established through an initiative from the Department or Education (DfE) in 2002 to take over local authority-run schools where aspirations and achievement were deemed to be too low. Sponsors were appointed to take these so-called struggling schools out of local authority control and ‘turn them around’. These sponsor-led academies receive their funding directly from the Education Funding Agency and are accountable to state government. Start-up costs of these original sponsored academies were partly funded by private means, such as entrepreneurs or non-governmental organizations, with all running costs met by central government. In 2010, central government expanded the role of Academies in the Academies Act (2010), in which a wide number of schools in non-deprived areas were also encouraged to become academies. These academies are referred to as ‘converter academies’. In addition, the government continued to encourage academy sponsors to take on under-performing schools, but there was no longer a requirement for non-governmental funding and the majority of new sponsors are now high performing schools; there are now over 4,500 open academies, including over half of all secondary schools in England2. Where there is underperformance in an academy school or Trust, the RSC takes their authority from the funding agreement (the contract between the Secretary of State and the Trust). RSCs however only deal with breaches of the funding agreement on the grounds of failure to deliver a good quality education. Other potential breaches of funding agreements, such as conflicts of interest or financial mismanagement, are dealt with by the Education Funding Agency. The RSCs get support from headteacher boards which are made up of experienced academy headteachers in each region who advise and challenge RSCs. These headteachers are from outstanding academies and are elected by academy headteachers in the region.
Keywords
- accountability
- inspections
- Network governance
- school networks
