Don’t mention the Church…academisation and church schools
I mentioned it once and I think I got away with it….
In all the discussions about forced academisation and multi academy trusts church schools don’t get much of a mention. However a million children in England attend Church of England schools. There are an incredible 4,500 Church of England primaries alone.
The overwhelming majority of these schools are still maintained schools known as VA (Voluntary Aided) or VC (Voluntary Controlled) schools. Many of them are rural and many of them are small, some very small indeed.
Types of Church Schools — VA and VC
The influence of the church depends on this VA or VC label as well as other characteristics of the school. Put briefly VA schools have the most church influence with a majority of their governors being appointed by the Church. The influence in a VC school is significantly less with 25% of the governors being church appointed.
These church appointed governors, known as foundation governors may or may not be particularly involved in the church. They range quite literally from Bishops through to people from other churches appointed to help keep the Christian character or as it is often called ethos going.
The same is true of the children. In some schools the majority might be of other faiths. In some schools most of the children will be in church every Sunday. These two examples are mainly true in more urban areas where church schools might be very popular and church attendance an admissions criteria.
Rural Church Schools
However in more rural areas church schools are frequently the only local schools. Sometimes there are only church schools for literally miles around. As a consequence they tend to have more mixed admissions little different from any other village school. Whilst these schools are still frequently very popular there is much less of an issue around admissions as very few rural primaries are over-subscribed due to declining numbers of children.
These schools also tend to be small with many having less than 100 children and some as few as 30 children. Whether your local village school is a church school or not is more an accident of history. You often can’t even tell from the names with some schools called after a Saint actually being community schools (for example St Edmunds Primary School in Hoxne, Suffolk). Other church schools are simply called by the name of the village sometimes with acronyms few understand like CEVCP added (Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary).
Generally these schools work really well and the links with the local church and diocese are frequently positive and the schools are part of a diocesan family of schools as well as their local County education authorities. These schools until recently felt safe, grounded and secure. Many are older than some Oxbridge colleges and they are as English as cricket or warm beer.
Insecurity Grows
More recently funding changes, declining numbers of children and a shortage of headteachers have made these schools feel less secure. Over the last decade several have banded together into small or larger federations sharing Heads and sometimes governors.
This insecurity has been added to by the ending of the presumption against closure in some local authorities (like Suffolk). This has led to the closure of a number of small primary schools that a few years ago would have been rescued by their LAs and Dioceses.
Until recently almost none of these small rural schools had become academies which I think was due to two main things. They found the support from local authorities useful rather than a burden and academisation just didn't make sense for small schools financially.
The more recent emergence of Multi Academy Trusts has seen this position change somewhat.
Academies, Land and Church Schools
At this point I need to explain a few things about academisation and church schools that many people may not know. In most church schools the land the school is on is usually owned at least in part by the church. Actually in most church schools it is much more complicated. In many the diocese might own one part of the land, a local church “trust” another and the LA the playing fields.
In addition to this land ownership church schools require the permission of the church to become academies. In practice this is granted (or not) for C of E schools by a statutory body called the Diocesan Board of Education.
Diocesan MATs and the Board of Education
Each diocese has its own Board of Education with its Chairman (frequently a senior diocesan clergyperson like an Archdeacon) and a salaried Director of Education.
So in response to the academy agenda different dioceses have done very different things. By now however pretty much all of them have decided to create their own diocesan multi academy trusts to allow them to sponsor church schools in trouble — who frequently have few other sponsorship options and also to allow their church schools to opt in and join the diocesan MAT.
The Church has understandably been keen to ensure that the existing church ethos is retained in schools converting to academy status. When most academies were single converters there wasn't much of an issue the governance structure just continued in much the same way with the same proportions of church governors as before.
It is the move to multi academy trusts that has caused problems. Even creating a MAT comprising both VA and VC church schools did not used to be possible. It can be done now but it is complicated and for VC schools partnering with a VAs it means the proportion of church influence on the MAT board increases to a majority. Quite a change for schools where 75% of the control was non-Church.
However at least the supplementary funding agreements that the DfE made with MATs protected the balance on the local governing body. This appears to be no longer the case. In some areas the diocese is using academy conversion as an opportunity to put their foundation governors in the majority. A good example of this is the Norwich Diocesan MAT (DNEAT):
Some might suggest this is somewhat sneaky and exploiting a loophole that allows a school to convert from VC to VA immediately before it becomes an academy.
Double Forced Academisation
In some dioceses Church of England schools are not being allowed to join anything other than the diocesan MAT. This has raised questions of the use by the diocese of its veto on academisation to force schools to join the MAT run by the diocese.
In most other areas this would be seen as a clear conflict of interest. Decision makers on the Board of Education using their decision making powers to force schools to join a MAT they themselves control.
With the announcement of forced academisation this means some schools left with both no choice but to be an academy and no choice what MAT to join.
This may or may not be the right choice for the school. Other local schools that might be community schools could be more suitable choices to partner with. Indeed a group entirely of church schools might prefer to set up a local MAT but not be allowed to.
Mixed MATs
Not all dioceses are doing this. For example Salisbury have adopted a very different policy:
The diocese has even produced a set of resources for schools to help with this and this has already produced some interesting “mixed MATs” such as the Wimborne Academy Trust. This consists of former VA, VC and Community Schools:
Skills Based Governance
There is a clear tension between the appointment of foundation governors and the DfE’s desire for skills based governance. Of course there are plenty of foundation governors in schools with relevant skills and experience — just like there are parents!
Interestingly Nicky Morgan hasn't made any speeches saying that there shouldn't be foundation governors in schools. This is despite the fact that certainly near here it is more difficult to recruit foundation governors than parent governors. I actually mentioned this once at a meeting and it resulted in audible gasps from some people but in many discussions about the church and academies it is the elephant in the room.
I personally think there could be a solution to this. The church is understandably keen to ensure the ethos of its church schools continues and sees the way of doing this as having control of the governing body by having a majority of governors. Ironically the situation on the ground is often quite different due to the difficulty in recruiting foundation governors and the fact that even if appointed they might not always toe the “party line”.
There are even difficulties with the ex-officio vicars and rectors who are frequently foundation governors. Some of these hard pressed clergy in rural areas have so many parishes now that they could not possibly be effective governors in all their schools and a growing number have simply not taken up their position on some or all of their schools governing bodies.
My view is that legislation should protect the status of church schools in such a way that relying on controlling the governance is unnecessary. Freed from the need to find so many foundation governors when both clergy and congregations are getting smaller I think the quality of governance could be improved partly by reducing overall numbers as there would not be a need for foundation majorities.
I would like to see foundation governors continue to play their part in school governance and I think if the church embraced more of the mixed MATs it could gain more influence across a wider range of schools than trying to ensure control of its existing schools.
But the DfE has a role to play here too. It needs to give confidence to the church that in the rush to academise that the character and ethos of church schools is retained.
Building church MAT capacity and avoiding another monopoly
The real danger would be if the DfE sees moving all church schools into diocesan MATs as a quick win. If this isn’t the right choice then it might be spending many years unpicking problems with church schools it will struggle to re-broker into other MATs.
For the system to work for church schools in the way the DfE wants there needs to be the opportunity for a number of MATs to develop that can sponsor and run church schools. Without this there will not be any capacity in the system for re-brokering failing schools.
The White Paper speaks frequently of the monopoly that the LA had over running schools. It cannot be right to merely replace the monopoly of the LA with a diocesan monopoly.
The author is the Chair of Governors of a federation formed between two church schools (one a VA and another a VC) but to be clear this represents my personal opinion.
