Government’s education reforms could be ‘significant backward step’ for pupils
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The Government’s proposed education reforms could be a “significant backward step” for pupils’ outcomes, MPs have heard. Luke Sparkes, leader of Dixons Academies Trust, warned that the current proposals for teachers’ conditions in the Government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill could “stifle innovation” across schools.
Academies, which are independent of local authorities, currently have the freedom to set their own pay and conditions for staff, and some academies exceed the national pay scales for teachers. But under the Bill, all teachers will be part of the same core pay and conditions framework whether they work in a local authority-run school or an academy.
Last week, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told MPs that there would be “no ceiling” to what academy leaders can pay their teachers. But during the committee stage of the Bill, Mr Sparkes, whose trust runs 17 schools in Bradford, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, said he still had “significant concerns” about the Government’s plans for staff conditions.
He said Dixons Academies Trust has tried to “overcome the rigidity of the job” with its introduction of a nine-day fortnight for teachers. Addressing MPs on Tuesday, Mr Sparkes said: “Most complex schools, the kind of schools that we lead, have become, in many ways, the fourth emergency service and that’s by stealth, not by choice.
