Responding to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson’s speech to
the Confederation of School Trusts and his comments on the
government’s vision for MAT growth and on behaviour and
discipline, Geoff Barton, General Secretary of the Association of
School and College Leaders, said:
“We support the aim of increasing and strengthening collaboration
between schools but we are concerned that the government is
obsessed with the narrow idea that this has to be done through
MAT expansion.
“The reality is that the government’s policies have created the
fragmented system which exists in England and we think that it
would be more productive to look in a broader sense at how
collaboration and partnership working can be strengthened across
all types of schools.
“The try-before-you-buy proposal for schools to partner with a
MAT on a trial basis before deciding whether or not to join is a
good enough idea but this already happens informally and we are
not sure that the government’s proposals really add up to very
much at all.
“We note also a vague intention to bring schools with three
consecutive Ofsted judgements of ‘requires improvement’ into MATs
and we would caution the government about the unintended
consequences of new forms of compulsion such as further
stigmatising schools in this category.
“The Secretary of State is right about the importance of good
behaviour and discipline in schools but his solutions of a
behaviour survey and encouraging schools to ban mobile phones are
thin gruel.
“The government would be better off reinstating the local support
services for struggling families that were lost through its
austerity cost-cutting programme and providing sufficient funding
to schools for the pastoral support which is so important in
preventing behaviour problems from escalating.
“Contrary to what the Secretary of State appears to think,
schools are actually very good at managing and dealing with
challenging behaviour, and they already have robust policies on
mobile phones in place.
“Perhaps most dispiriting, as we emerge from a national crisis
that has further widened the gap between advantaged and
disadvantaged children, is that the Secretary of State for
Education thinks that tinkering with structures, issuing surveys
and fixating on mobile phones represents any part of the
solution.”
