Should we trust Blair's plan?

IN a classroom at Oaklands School's learning support department, a group of youngsters is learning how to attack a medieval castle.

It's pretty gruesome, as you would expect. Teacher Brenda Fletcher has handed out worksheets describing the weapons and siege engines which could have been used, and she is quizzing pupils about them.

The discussion has reached the trebuchet - a kind of giant medieval catapult used to throw objects over the castle walls, including dead animals, which would spread disease and demoralise the defenders.

"Who knows what else they put in apart from dead animals?" asks Brenda.

There is a chorus of answers. "Horse poo!" shouts one boy. "People's heads!" calls another.

Brenda nods encouragingly. "Bodies?" suggests a third.

"A whole body might be a bit big," Brenda says.

"Maybe a kid's body?"

"I would hope there weren't too many kids about..." Brenda says.

The pupils are having great fun but there is a serious point to the lesson, too. This is a literacy class and the pupils are building their vocabulary and learning how to use it. The aim of the lesson is written on the whiteboard: "By the end of this lesson, you will be able to describe weapons that would be good for attacking a castle."

Lessons such as this recently earned the school's learning support department, which works with pupils who have learning or behavioural problems, an "outstanding" rating - something very few school departments anywhere have achieved.

The learning support department, known at Oaklands as The Base, specialises in what Mathew Soal, the school's special educational needs co-ordinator, describes as personalised learning. That involves assessing the needs of pupils and then teaching them individually or in small groups so they receive the attention and the specialised teaching they need. It represents, says Mathew, a big step forward in education.

Under the reforms being proposed by the Government's controversial White Paper on education, this kind of model would be extended to schools across the country. It would be applied not only to children who are falling behind in English and maths - but also to gifted and talented children who need to be stretched to reach their full potential.

It sounds great. So why is Carol Runciman, the Liberal Democrat City of York councillor and executive member for education in York, so dead set against Tony Blair's latest educational reforms?

In an impassioned speech to fellow councillors recently, Coun Runciman declared that the reforms could "destabilise education" in York, and lead to some schools expanding while others "went to the wall".

A greater emphasis on the individual needs of children isn't going to do that. It is some of the other measures in the White Paper that have Coun Runciman worried.

There are a number of these (see panel), but essentially the White Paper would allow schools to opt out of local authority control, set their own admissions policy (and hence expand by taking in children from outside their old catchment area) and even, within limits, write their own curriculum. Parents, but also businesses and faith groups, could also be much more involved in the running of their local schools.

Privately, Coun Runciman concedes that the White Paper is a curate's egg. Parts are good, such as the emphasis on personalised learning, but other sections are bad, such as the proposals to allow schools to become their own admissions authority.

That, she insists, is a recipe for disaster.

But surely, allowing good schools to expand and open their doors to children from further afield is only right? It would allow parents to send their children to the school of their choice. Isn't the truth of her opposition to the reforms simply that the bureaucrats in local education authorities don't want to see their little empires taken away?

Not at all, says Coun Runciman stoutly. Local authorities such as York, she says, play a vital role in co-ordinating and supporting education in local schools, and in ensuring that standards are maintained and admissions stabilised.

Her big fear is that if popular schools were able to open their doors to more pupils, they would expand at the expense of less popular schools. There would be a free-for-all in which some popular schools would become so big they were unsustainable, while others would be forced to close.

"I'll tell you how it will work," she says. "Some schools will fall by the wayside: they will become so small that they won't be viable and... the choice will get less and less, rather than more and more."

But if there are schools that parents perceive as being better, shouldn't they be given the right to send their children there, rather than being forced to send them to a school they perceive as less good?

"I want all schools to get better. I don't want one school to get better at the expense of another school," says Coun Runciman. "Local children should have the right to go to a good local school and not have to trek across the city to find what they want."

It is right that parents should be involved in their children's schooling, she concedes. But she fears Mr Blair's trust schools could, like the Tories' grant maintained schools before them, create a two-tier education system in which schools which have the backing of educated and articulate parents flourish at the expense of others.

"Who will speak for the children whose parents do not or cannot speak for them, or for those pupils who do not raise their school up the league tables?" she says. "Are they not entitled to a fair deal, a good education and equality of opportunity?"

She is also concerned about the involvement of businesses and faith groups in the management of schools. Corporate sponsors of a trust school may have a business agenda which would be inappropriate. While faith groups might have an agenda of their own.

"If the new schools can shape the curriculum... then what are we going to see taught in schools?" she says. "I don't want creationist theories taught."

Coun Runciman is not alone in her concerns.

Oaklands headteacher David Ellis agrees that there are "some good things" in the White Paper. He would welcome the flexibility to tailor his school's curriculum to the needs of his pupils by, for example, introducing more vocational-style courses in subjects such as health and social care, engineering, leisure and tourism and applied ICT.

But he agrees the proposals would introduce competition between schools for pupils, which could lead to some going under while others expanded hugely.

"The logical ultimate consequence of the White Paper would be that you might end up with one huge school serving the whole of the city," he says. "How many parents would want to send their children to a school with 10,000 pupils?"

He would also miss the support and advice provided by the local authority, he concedes. "You have a limited range of resources and specialists available to you in a school."

The effect of the support provided by York council can be seen at Oaklands, he says. Following a "disappointing" Ofsted report two years ago, Oaklands has been subject to monitoring by the schools inspectorate. Since then, following the retirement of the previous head, Mr Ellis - a former deputy head of Archbishop Holgate's School - was brought in. The education authority co-ordinated the move, and arranged for Mr Ellis to work closely with his old boss at Archbishop Holgate's, John Harris, to raise standards at Oaklands. It is early days, he says, but all the signs are that it is working and the school is moving forward.

He fears that without a local authority to co-ordinate the sharing of skills and experience between schools, and in a situation where local schools were competing against each other for pupils, that might never have happened.

Despite saying, in her recent speech to councillors opposing Mr Blair's reforms, "when it ain't broke, don't fix it," Coun Runciman accepts that our childrens's education isn't perfect. The national culture of 'I can't do maths' is one sign of that - the slump in the numbers of pupils studying science, and problems in recruiting enough physics teachers is another. Coun Runciman believes the latest reforms don't address these problems.

So, bottom line: if Mr Ellis were given the chance of opting out of local authority direct control to become a trust school, would he take it?

He thinks long and hard. "I would not be the first," he says. "I would prefer to continue with the local authority." But at the end of the day, he says, if other schools went down the trust route, his own school may be forced to do so.

Hardly a ringing endorsement.

Key provisions of the White Paper

Schools could apply to become trust schools with greater independence and freedom. They would be able to operate their own admissions policy to accept children from a wider catchment area (though without a return to selection by ability) and vary the National Curriculum to suit their own pupils.

Trust schools could be backed by businesses, faith groups, universities or parent and community groups, who could contribute to the school's ethos and direction.

Parents would be given more say in running schools. They could even ask for new schools to be set up to meet local demand.

Instead of running schools directly, local authorities would adopt a strategic role, and focus on driving up standards and championing parents.

A greater focus on the needs of individual children.

New measures to tackle school failure and to impose discipline.

A new "schools commissioner" to help get trusts up and running, and to identify backers and match them with schools.

Updated: 10:31 Thursday, November 24, 2005