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Sociological perspectives onfailing schoolsSally Tomlinson aa University of London , United KingdomPublished online: 04 Mar 2011.

To cite this article: Sally Tomlinson (1997) Sociological perspectives on failing schools,International Studies in Sociology of Education, 7:1, 81-98

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Sociological Perspectives on Failing Schools

SALLY TOMLINSONUniversity of London, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT This paper explores the genesis of the failing schools movementwhich developed in Britain in the 1990s. The failing schools legislation waspolitical in origin in that it was intended to create more grant-maintainedschools in Labour-controlled local education authorities. It was also the obverseof the effective schools movement which became, in the 1990s, a pervasiveinfluence on politicians, educational policy-makers and practitioners. The paperuses the case of Hackney Downs, a school closed in December 1995 on theadvice of the first Educational Association to be set up under the 1993Education Act, to indicate the way in which complex social, political andeducational issues could be reduced to the ‘demonisation’ of one school and itsteachers. Sociological perspectives can illuminate the attempts to present anormative view of schools as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and suggest that a coercive conflictmodel is more appropriate to understanding what happens to failing schools.

Introduction

At the end of the 20th century a new educational phenomenon appeared inBritain. This was the failing school, a demonised educational institutionwhose Head, teachers and governors were deemed to be personallyresponsible for the educational underperformance of its students, who, in theemotive language of a Department for Education White Paper “have only onechance” (Department for Education, 1992, p. 48). By extension, the failingschool was castigated for failing local communities, particularly thoseresidents of disadvantaged communities where “pupils have only a slim chanceof receiving challenging and rewarding teaching throughout their educationalcareer” (Ofsted 1993, p. 43), and for seriously weakening the wholeeducational structure (Barber, 1996, p. 132). Press coverage of failing schoolswas negative and derisory, as journalists competed to discover “the worstschool in Britain” (Brace, 1994). Politicians, particularly as the 1997 GeneralElection approached, competed to demonstrate their “zero tolerance of schoolunderperformance ... and school failure” (Blair, 1996, p. 12), and someacademics enthusiastically embraced the idea of “moving towards the creation

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of schools which are absolutely successful and which have eradicated failure”(Reynolds, 1997).

This paper explores the genesis of the failing schools movement whichdeveloped in Britain in the 1990s, which in some ways was the obverse of theschool effectiveness movement. It raises questions as to why a small numberof schools – some 200 out of 25,000 by 1997, were identified as in need of‘special measures’ under the 1993 Education Act, and became the target ofoften vitriolic political and media attack. The case of Hackney Downs, thefirst, and to date, only school closed on the advice to the Secretary of State forEducation by an Educational Association, is used to illustrate the waycomplex social, political and education issues were reduced to thevictimisation of one school and its teachers, and the activities of the EducationAssociation appointed under the provision of section 218 of the 1993Education Act, are examined.

Sociological Perspectives

Sociological perspectives on failing schools allow for the exploration ofconflicts and vested interests which bring about change and modifications inschool systems. White schools open or close, win or lose in competition forwhich students, whether schools compete or co-operate, and which schools,students and communities lose out if labelled as failing, cannot be understoodwithin any normative consensual framework. Functional perspectives havelimited value in analysing educational events, since functionalist-orientedconcerns with order, balance and social equilibrium (Parsons, 1952)encourage the view that any conflict or problem in education simplyconstitutes deviance from a commonly accepted norm. The politicalpresentation of the results of post-1988 educational policies in Britain, whichhave set in train acute conflicts, has been in terms of a functional analysis,attempting to persuade the public that there is a consensus about norms, andthat good and bad schools are easily recognisable and their differentialtreatment is therefore unproblematic.

Political and media analysis of failing schools is at the microscopic level.Individual schools and their personnel are discussed as though divorced froman historical position, and from basic social, economic and educationalstructures. Sociological perspectives accept that the questions raised aremacroscopic. An over-arching question must be how do we account for thecharacteristics of national education systems at any historical period andexplain processes of change and resulting conflicts (see Archer, 1979). Thegoals and characteristics of education systems in the late 20th century Britainhave changed considerably over the past 20 years and new educational goalshave been pursued with vigour, often in the face of considerable opposition.The changes typify Archer’s contention that change occurs when new goalsare pursued by those who have the power to modify previous practices. Thenew forms that education takes are rarely the product of any one group’s

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wishes. Power struggles over education “bear the marks of concessions to alliesand compromise with opponents” (Archer, 1979, p. 3) although there aresituations where the coercive power of one group can prevail. Currenteducational structures are the political and ideological products of powerstruggles, vested interests, and battles over resources, and inevitably there arewinners and losers. As Archer has noted, “to understand the nature ofeducation at any one time we need to know not only who won the struggle forcontrol, but also, not merely who lost, but how badly they lost” (Archer, 1979,p. 3).

In the 1990s there continues to be intense conflict between central andlocal government, and among interest groups at the local level, as centralgovernment, local authorities, schools and communities grapple with theconsequences of competitive markets in education (see Gewirtz, Ball & Bowe,1995). For schools to be designated as failures means they have lost badly.The education system has been encouraged to fragment, and schoolsencouraged to develop divergent interests, claim differential resources, andliterally compete for survival in a social Darwinist scenario in whichcompetition for students and resources can lead to extinction for the losers.This kind of social situation can only be understood via a conflict paradigmwhich starts from the assumption that societies are characterised byfundamental social, political and economic conflicts (Burrell & Morgan,1979), and that structural inequalities are sustained by both the developmentof ideologies and other modes of legitimation, and also by forms of coercion(Dahrendorf, 1959).

Education systems and their parts do not develop in an evolutionary oradaptive manner, they develop out of conflicts, power struggles, overt andcovert coercion. Winners and losers emerge not so much because of individualmerit or deficit, but because they belong to groups who have or who lackaccess to power and modes of legitimation. Weaker social groups can becoerced into accepting decisions that they would, if they were equal, prefernot to accept. The staff, students, parents of students and the localcommunities of ‘failing’ schools, resented the blame and victimisation, butwere at this historical period powerless in the face of decisions made bypoliticians, and central government policy-makers.

Educational Markets and Failure

The notion of failure is not new in school systems, but has hitherto beenprimarily associated with individual student failure. Indeed, in competitiveschool systems failure is a necessary part. In England and Wales the secondaryeducation system set up 50 years ago was premised on the assumption that80% of students would fail at the age of 11 to indicate any potential foracademic learning. This was not initially perceived as a problem by politiciansor the general public. In the post-war climate, the priority was to hurry asmany young people as possible through their schooling and into the waiting

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labour markets (see Simon, 1991). Far from regarding the 80% of youngpeople, who in the late 1940s, never attempted any course that would lead toa school certificate (O and A levels from 1951), as a problem, the then Labourgovernment unashamedly set up secondary modern schools to cater for thosestudents “whose future employment will not demand any measure of technicalskill or knowledge” (Ministry of Education, 1946). In present day terms allthose secondary modern schools were failing schools.

The comprehensive school movement and the expansion of access toexamination courses from the 1960s began to allow larger numbers of youngpeople access to equal opportunities, and success as measured by numberspassing O and A levels (GCSE from 1986), steadily increased through to the1990s. The number leaving school with no examination passes decreased andby 1990, the 1940s figures were reversed with over 80% young peopleattempting and achieving examination passes in academic courses. Thenumber of qualifications gained on vocational courses also increasedexponentially. Indeed, in 1995 63% of young people had achieved theexamination level that less than 10% achieved in 1945 (see Dearing, 1996).

This success has never been of interest to most politicians or the media,and has seldom been brought to the attention of the public. Prime Ministershave led the way in holding schools responsible for economic and social ills. In1976, James Callaghan (then Labour Prime Minister) in the wake of a worldrecession and the collapse of the youth labour market, blamed schools fortheir failure to provide the nation with vocationally skilled young people whocould lever up the economy (Callaghan, 1976). In 1987, Margaret Thatcher,a Tory Prime Minister with an agenda based on creating a market inschooling and reintroducing selection, expressed her “deep personaldissatisfaction with Britain’s standards of education” which she blamed on“teachers who are less competent and more ideological than theirpredecessors” (Thatcher, 1993, p. 598). The views of business leaders andemployers, consistently negative about the capabilities of school leavers sincethey were first sought over a hundred years ago, are regularly offered asevidence of decline in educational standards and of school failure. Evidencefrom international surveys, particularly in maths and science, is gloomilyrecounted as evidence of failure to keep up with global competitors no matterhow flawed the survey evidence (see Brown, 1997, for a discussion of theproblematic use of international achievement indicators).

By the late 1980s, dissatisfaction with the whole educational system andits standards had become a routine political pitch with all parties competing toproduce solutions. Local education authorities, particularly Labour-controlledauthorities, and their bureaucracies were targeted as contributors to lowstandards. Schools and teachers, particularly in urban areas, were alsotargeted (Ofsted, 1993). Disadvantage, migration, second language speaking,and a public culture that did not value education were all, at times, identifiedas contributing to under-achievement. Less attention was paid to lack ofresources, crumbling buildings, under-paid teachers and the spread of poverty

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and unemployment. By the early 1990s, the focus of dissatisfaction shifted toidentifying and pillorying individual schools as emblematic of an educationsystem in crisis.

From a sociological perspective there was not so much an educational asan economic crisis. Schools in industrial societies always producedunder-achieving students, but from the 1970s the collapse of the unskilledlabour market brought into sharp focus the absence of a link between schooland employment for an increasing number of students. Rather thanrecognising an employment crisis, the political response was to attack theschool system. By the 1990s, politicians were targeting individual ‘bad’schools as responsible for a situation whereby large numbers of young people,especially from urban disadvantaged areas had few qualifications of the kindthat were deemed necessary for a post-industrial society (see Hargreaves et al,1996).

The introduction to market forces in education was a pre-condition forthis attack. The devolution of budgets to institutional level was intended tocreate a culture of competition in which market forces would ensure that goodschools survived while ‘bad’ schools would disappear. Parental choice was tobe the mechanism by which schools gained or lost pupils and the losers in themarket place would have no one but themselves to blame for failing to attractcustomers. Schools which lost desirable customers - and therefore money – ortook in less desirable customers, were to become easy targets for the ‘failing’label. The Education Acts of 1988, 1992 (Schools) and 1993 effected thetransition of schools in the United Kingdom into the market place. Fundingwas linked to enrolment, although local authorities could also allocate funds,if they had any, on the basis of other factors such as deprivation and specialeducational needs but had little control over capital spending allocations.Information to consumers was provided by a new framework for schoolsinspections. Inspectors’ reports were made public and test and examinationresults were published annually from 1992 in the form of league tables.Newspapers eagerly published percentages of pupils achieving the five A-Cpasses at GCSE level required for entry into higher education, and otherperformance indicators, in rank order. These ranking or league tablesencouraged competition rather than collaboration and under-mined theopportunity of schools to cooperate and learn from each other. Schools oftenhad a vested interest in seeing other neighbourhood schools labelled asfailures and closed.

Failing Schools Legislation

The legislation concerning school failure and the creation of EducationAssociations was political in origin and was designed as a way of making moreschools in urban Labour-controlled authorities become grant-maintained,although it was presented in ideological terms as part of a “drive for higherstandards” (Department of Education, 1992, p. iii).

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Failing school legislation was signalled in the Conservative governmentwhite paper Choice and Diversity – a new framework for schools (Department forEducation, 1992), in which the then Education Secretary, John Patten, took aclose interest. The new framework was, in fact, a continuation of the policiesfor a diversity of schools set in train by the 1988 Education Act – privateschools boosted by the Assisted Places scheme; grant-maintained schoolscreated by parental votes to opt-out of local authority control; and CityTechnology colleges supported by business and industry. This diversity wasintended to remove control of schools and school admissions policy from localeducation authorities, as was open enrolment – the policy of allowing schoolsto expand and for parents to ‘shop around’ for the best schools. PrimeMinister Thatcher was quite clear that the move “significantly widened choiceand prevented local authorities setting arbitrary limits on good schools just tokeep unsuccessful schools full” and “If parents vote with their feet and schoolsgained resources when they gained pupils ... The worse schools in thesecircumstances would either have to improve or close” (Thatcher, 1993, p.591). She appeared convinced that there was a conspiracy by someLabour-controlled authorities to keep open schools they identified as poor orfailing.

She was also convinced, in 1988, that most schools, given theopportunity, would want to leave local education authority (LEA) control,especially in Labour authorities, and along with other ministers, was surprisedwhen there was no rush of schools to opt-out. By 1993, it was clear that thegovernment’s policy was failing. Only 337 schools out of a total of 25,000 hadbecome grant-maintained (with 836 in the process of doing so), and themajority were in Conservative authorities. Nor were ‘poor’ schools closing atthe intended rate. As research carried out a decade previously in Scotlanddemonstrated (Adler et al, 1989), schools not ‘chosen’ by more affluent oraspirant parents lost resources but often had to remain open while offering aless well-resourced education to the remaining students. Indeed, this Scottishresearch demonstrated that schools which lost pupils through parental choicewere those in areas with a high incidence of social problems, and that theschools, which remained open to serve their remaining clientele, “had to pay aheavy price as they became even more stigmatised than previously” (op cit, p.215).

The failing school legislation of 1993 was designed to kill several birdswith one stone. Since schools with low levels of achievement were largelylocated in Labour-controlled, disadvantaged, inner-city areas, legislationcould be designed to remove schools from the LEA – further weakening theirinfluence – and also boost the grant-maintained figures without any parentalballot. The Education Association, as pp. 50-52 of the White Paper(Department for Education, 1992) explained, was the chosen instrument toeffect all this. Schools at risk of failure which had not been improved by theirgovernment bodies or the local education authority, would be put under themanagement of a body appointed by the Secretary of State which would

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“effectively be in the position of a grant-maintained governing body”(Department for Education, 1992, pp. 50-51). The Education Associationwould receive a grant for maintaining a school they had taken over on thesame basis as a grant-maintained school and “at the end of its stewardship ...the normal expectation is that the school will become grant-maintained.” AnEducation Association was also envisaged as a body controlling “as manyschools in an area including neighbouring LEAs as were found to be failing”(p. 50). The Education Association was to be the mechanism through which centralgovernment took many more schools in urban Labour-controlled authorities out ofLEA control and into grant-maintained status. Legislation was enacted in 1993to enable schools to opt for grant-maintained status more easily and also to setup the ‘special measures’ which would hand over financial and other powers,first to the LEA, then to an Education Association if a school was failing.

Special Measures

The failing schools legislation is set out in Department for Education circularNo. 17/93 (1993). This explains that the Education Act (Schools) 1992 andthe 1993 Act provide for a new system of ‘regular independent inspection’ (byprivate teams of inspectors) and for special measures to be taken wheninspection shows that a school is “failing or likely to fail to give its pupils anacceptable standard of education”. Inspectors work from their Framework forthe Inspection of Schools para.13 of which sets out the criteria for failure; furtherinformation about the identification of failing schools and the procedures tobe followed being found in Technical Paper 13 of the Ofsted Handbook for theInspection of Schools (Ofsted, 1990).

Failing schools have one or more of the following deficiencies:

P poor standards of achievement in national curriculum subjects and religiouseducation, examination results and other key skills

P poor quality of education as measured by limited pupil progress,unsatisfactory teaching, low expectations, demoralisation anddisenchantment among staff, high levels of staff turnover and absence

P inefficiency in running the school – inefficient use of resources and poorbudgeting, inefficiency of the Head, senior management and governors, lossof confidence in the Head and poor management of accommodationseriously impeding educational progress

P poor provision for pupils, spiritual, moral, social or cultural development,disruptive behaviour, confrontational relationships, high levels of truancyand exclusion, high levels of racial tension.

If, after inspection, the Chief HMI declares a school to be in need of specialmeasures, the following procedures are put into operation:

P the school responds by preparing an action plan

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P the local authority also prepares an action plan, can appoint additionalschool governors and takes control of the school budget and staff.

If ultimately the Secretary of State considers that the action plans producedby the school and the LEA are unlikely to be effective, the school can betransferred to an Educational Association. The Educational Association takesover the management of the school – displacing the governors and the LEA –and is responsible directly to the Secretary of State. It is empowered to“conduct a school” under regulations applying to grant-maintained schoolsand can propose that the school, without any parental ballot, becomesgrant-maintained or it can recommend closure.

It is important to ask what kind of schools have been subject to specialmeasures and publicly identified as failing since 1993. Information on thisquestion was provided in 1995 by the Department for Education andEmployment (DfEE) and the Office for Standards in Education, whoprepared a paper for a seminar organised by the Organisation for EconomicCo-operation and Development in November 1995 (OECD, 1995) on Failurein School. At this time, 33 secondary schools, 48 primary, and 11 specialschools were deemed to be failing. The major characteristic of these failingschools was that they served areas of socio-economic deprivation (poverty)and of the 33 secondary schools, 17 were in London and 15 in other urbanareas. The DfEE/Ofsted paper did not single out ethnicity, but most had highnumbers of minority, migrant and second language speakers. Nor did itexplore the historical origins of the schools, the majority of the secondaryschools being former secondary modern schools which had never been‘comprehensive’ in that they admitted pupils of all abilities, and there was noacknowledgement of well-documented problems such as high teacherturnover and staff retention which affect schools differentially.

Overall, the official literature and comment on failing schools since 1993locates the blame firmly with the personnel in the school. The DfEE/Ofstedpaper blames pupils (poor standards of achievement, behaviour andattendance), head teachers, senior teachers and governors (poor leadership),teachers (poor teaching), and everyone for inefficient use of resources.Similarly, a public lecture given in 1996 by Anthea Millett (Millett, 1996),Head of the Teacher Training Agency, on Combatting Failure in Schoolsblamed teachers (poor classroom practice), deficiencies in management(Head, senior teachers) and lack of support from governors. She analysed 58Ofsted reports on failing schools for her lecture and logged “failure in allaspects of policy and practice from whole school level to the individualclassrooms”. Failing schools are thus officially regarded as operating divorcedfrom historical, social, economic, political and educational contexts. From theofficial point of view, heads, teachers and governors bear a heavy burden.They are not only personally failing children, they are also failing localcommunities and the whole nation. Basil Bernstein once famously wrote that“education cannot compensate for society” (Bernstein, 1970, p. 344). The

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message in the 1990s appeared to be “if your school cannot compensate forsociety it will go under and you will be personally blamed”.

Although there is currently little academic research on failing schools,Riley (1996) has studied a sample of schools designated as failing. She locatesthe failing school firmly in the context of the post-1988 education reforms andthe competition among schools which had led to some schools losing ‘able’students and others attempting to exclude the ‘troublesome’. Others madethemselves vulnerable by accepting these students and those with learningdifficulties, and this was certainly the case of Hackney Downs School which isdocumented below. There are also some suggestions that doubts have beencast on government policy on ‘failing’ schools. In 1995 Ofsted inspectorsvisited schools in New York, and their resulting unpublished report, labelledas ‘secret‘ by the press (Young, 1997), indicated that schools stigmatised asfailing became further demoralised and unable to improve, particularly whenno concession was made to assessing the progress the schools had enabledstudents to make.

School Effectiveness

The failing school can be seen as the obverse of the effective or ‘improving’school. Academic researchers have, from the 1970s, in both the USA andEurope, been concerned to identify characteristics of effective schools andmake their findings available to practitioners to improve schools. However, bythe 1990s school effectiveness research had become a political tool and thebasis for the denigration of particular schools (see Slee et al, 1997).

In the United Kingdom, the major school effectiveness studies (Rutter etal, 1979; Reynolds, 1982; Mortimore et al, 1988; Smith & Tomlinson, 1989)were all carried out before the effects of post-1988 competitive policies beganto take effect. The studies were undertaken from the initial hypothesis thatschools with similar intakes of students in terms of prior attainment, socialclass and ethnic origin, might differ in the extent to which they helpedstudents to progress in school. The intention of the studies was not to pillory orderide schools that did not appear to be as successful as others in helping allgroups of students to progress, but to suggest reasons for this, and encouragethe translation of good practice from more ‘effective’ to less ‘effective’schools.[1]

However, by the 1990s, the school effectiveness research had beenhijacked by politicians who used evidence which indicated that some schoolswith similar intakes of students appeared to be ‘doing better’ in GCSE leaguetables, or at key stages, to castigate less effective schools (see Hofkins, 1993).Some academics who had an interest as political advisors joined in this activity(Barber, 1996). The Inspectorate (HMI) also used school effectivenessresearch to blame schools. The Ofsted Deputy Director wrote in a newspaperarticle in 1997 “The mix of socio-economic background of pupils inLEA-maintained schools is not widely different across all schools, poor

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schools cannot parade this as an excuse for low standards” (Tomlinson,1997). Ofsted also commissioned a review of international comparisons onschool performance and this has been used this to denigrate the state ofUnited Kingdom schools generally (see Reynolds & Farrell, 1996).

The School effectiveness movement, together with the effects of marketcompetition between schools, has encouraged a Social Darwinist view ofschools. Politicians now appear to believe that only the fittest should surviveand encourage a pathological view of schooling. Hamilton has suggestedpoliticians think that:

Some schools have become sick institutions, they are a threat to the health ofthe economic order ... Such schools need shock therapy administered by outsideagencies. Terminal cases need organ transplants – new Heads and governingbodies. (Hamilton, 1996, p. 1)

Policy-makers and the inspectorate demand, simplistically, ‘lists’ of factorswhich make for effective schools – not to develop policies to assist weakerschools but to castigate those which do not measure up on ‘effective’ factors(Sammons et al, 1995).

Reliance on school effectiveness research to discover and isolate failingschools is simplistic and dangerous as several researchers have pointed out.Goldstein, reviewing school effectiveness studies from a methodologicalstance, has shown that they do not allow for the kind of inferencepolicy-makers want (Goldstein, 1996). Rowe et al (1995) have pointed outthat current policy initiatives are poorly supported by evidence – there are noclear messages emerging to show how school effectiveness research cantranslate into school improvement policies which will produce the kind of‘failure-free schooling’ David Reynolds and his colleagues assume can bedeveloped (Reynolds & Stringfield, 1996). It is not acceptable,methodologically, educationally or politically, to ignore two major differencesbetween the 1980s, when the UK school effectiveness research was carriedout, and the 1990s. The first is the effect of market forces – which have hadsevere, as yet unresearched, effects, turning particular schools not just into‘sink’ schools (as the media describes them) but into special schools, with thecharacteristics and intakes associated with special schooling. The secondfactor is a rapid increase in poverty, unemployment and deprivation and theirwidespread effects, far in excess of that taken into account in the 1980sresearch.

Hackney Downs: a case study

Hackney Downs school in north-east London was a school experiencing thesetwo effects. It was a school included in a major school effectiveness study inthe 1980s (Smith & Tomlinson, 1989). In 1986, the students achieved highergrade examination passes on a par with other London schools studied, andhigher than five Midlands schools in the research. Yet already the school was

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experiencing staff and resource shortages, maintenance problems, and theincreased effects of social and economic disadvantage. The section belowdocuments the way in which this school, whose decline can only beunderstood within a macro-context of historical, social, economic and politicalfactors, and the interplay of vested interests, was vilified at the micro-level andclosed on the advice of an Educational Association in 1995, the acting Headand teachers who had the misfortune to be in post in 1995 being blamed forcircumstances and situations absolutely and completely beyond their control.The criticisms of the school and its teachers are a matter of public record viathe report of the first Education Association appointed in England under the1993 Education Act (North East London Education Association, 1995). Themethodology by which this school was studied in the 1990s was via a measureof participant observation, informal interviews with the Acting Head, deputy,previous heads, members of the ‘old boys’ club, parents and students, and theuse of documentary sources which included council minutes, schooldocuments, documents relating to the activities of the Education Association,press reports and DfEE press releases. The ‘Hackney Downs Story’ ispublished in full in O’Connor et al (1997). Tomlinson attended the HighCourt in December 1995 when a Judicial Review of the decision to close theschool was granted, and presented two affidavits on behalf of the school insupport of the attempt to prevent closure.

Hackney Downs boys’ school, a foundation of the Worshipful Companyof Grocers, was opened in 1876. By the early 20th century it conformed to theeducation offered in Victorian grammar schools, although it always retained atheatrical and English literature specialisation. The school took in largenumbers of Jewish students and had a long history of multicultural education.Post-war, the school continued as a selective grammar school until 1974 whenit became a comprehensive school under the Inner London EducationAuthority with a headteacher who served from 1974 to 1990. The school thenhad one substantive Head to 1993, followed by three acting Heads until itclosed in 1995.

By the mid-1980s the school was taking in large numbers of minority,migrant and second-language speakers, and also boys expelled from otherschools. In 1990 at the handover from the Inner London Education Authorityto Hackney LEA, it was one of eight Hackney schools regarded as ‘at risk’ byHMI and the local authority inherited the problem of a substantial backlog ofrepairs and maintenance. The Chair of the new Hackney EducationCommittee in 1988 [2] and its first chief education officer intended thateducation in Hackney should be run as a partnership by all participants.However, the period from 1990 to the school’s closure in 1995 was a periodof conflict rather than partnership. There were fundamental differencesbetween the councillors, education officers, school governors and staff; therewere problems between parents, the local community and the LEA. Some ofthese issues were:

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P maintenance: the school buildings were allowed to deteriorate by, first,ILEA and then Hackney LEA until the decay and neglect made teachingimpossible in some areas. Despite constant complaints and attempts to getsomething done by the staff, the Education Association eventually gave theclear impression in their report that the dilapidation was the responsibility ofthe staff (see Barber, 1996, p. 115)

P race and gender: at the end of 1980s, a women’s staff group, a black staffgroup, and a black parents group had formed independently, although thelast two did merge in 1990. The groups created discord in the school andthe unusual situation arose of a black chief education officer attempting tomediate between black and white staff and governors.

P LEA vacillation: local authority inspectors visited the school in 1991 and1992 and were critical of the management and the teaching. Despitepromises of assistance, extra help was minimal. A review of Hackney schoolsin 1993 recommended that Hackney Downs should become co-educational,with the year seven intakes frozen for two years. The proposal was rejectedby the Secretary of State but the intake was frozen by the LEA in 1994. Thisresulted in the loss of 140 pupils and the school was subsequently criticisedby the Education Association for lack of enrolments!

P headteachers: the school had four headteachers from 1990 to 1995 – three ofthem acting Heads. During most of the last acting headship, the school andits finances were under the management of the LEA and the EducationAssociation, yet the Head and senior staff were criticised as though they hadsole control.

In May 1994, the school was inspected by Ofsted who recommended that itrequired special measures because of poor teaching, achievement, and pupilbehaviour. The report noted that over 70% of boys has English as a secondlanguage; half came from households with no one in employment; half theintake had reading ages three years below average; and a high proportion ofpupils had been expelled from other schools or had statements of specialneeds. Despite all this, in 1995 11% of students achieved GCSE passes atgrades A-C and 82% of pupils a pass at A-G. Ofsted made 10 proposals foraction which mainly required action by the LEA rather than the Head or staff.The LEA continued with its refusal to appoint a permanent Head, and inOctober 1994 began consultations on closure which caused considerableantagonisms between the LEA, governors, parents, and the local community.

A sympathetic article in the Independent in November 1994 notes that “amodern ritual of education politics seems to be in motion. From tabloiddecrying to damning inspection to shutdown, with the school sliding to its endalong rails set up and greased by Conservative educational reforms” (Beckett,1994).

The LEA was determined to close the school and published its plans inMarch 1995. Despite a community campaign to “Save Our School” andstatutory objections going to the Department for Education from the

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governors and staff, closure seemed inevitable. But in March, HMI visited toassess how far action had been taken to improve the school. They foundsignificant improvements had been made and praised the staff and actingHeadteacher, Betty Hales. In their discussions with the staff after the visit, theHMI were of the opinion that Betty Hales and her staff were “turning theschool around” and that it was, despite lack of LEA support, an improvingschool. In June 1995, the elected local authority withdrew plans for closure.This action was disputed by the Chief Education Officer. The former Chair ofHackney Education Committee, who returned to the school as a member ofthe Education Association, wrote in a book published in 1996 that “This(HMI) team has a lot to answer for. Its judgments were questionable” (Barber,1996, p. 114).

Despite the decision to keep the school open, LEA officers, to thedismay of National Union of Teachers officers, continued to press parents totransfer their sons to other schools. When the decision to close the school hadbeen made, parents were given no choice in the matter of where to send theirsons.

The Education Association

The activities of the first Education Association to be appointed by theSecretary of State were not auspicious. Indeed, since its advice to theSecretary of State ended up being scrutinised in the High Court and theCourt of Appeal, it could be deemed to be a ‘failing association’. DespiteHackney Council deciding to keep the school open on 28 June, and theSecretary of State indicating on 7 July that she had no further interest in theschool, a mere seven days later, on 13 July, she notified the LEA that she was‘minded’ to establish an Education Association under the 1993 Act. TheNorth East London Education Association was set up at the end of July 1995.It remains an interesting question as to what happened between 7 and 13 Julyto change her mind. Relations between the LEA officers and the Departmentfor Education officials had become close during the Ofsted visits and it maybe the situation was an illustration of Rex’s (1986) contention that conflictsituations often involve a truce between vested interests. The membership ofthe Education Association was guaranteed to deliver the decisions required bythe government and the local education officers and ignore the demands ofthe elected local authority, parents, students, governors, teachers and the localcommunity that the school remain open. The members included abusinessman with an interest in grant-maintained schools and technologycolleges; the former head of a private school; a chartered accountant; theformer Chief Education Officer of a Conservative-controlled Londonborough; and a former Chair of Hackney Education Committee. TheEducation Association produced a report on the school on 31 October –recommending closure – which gave the clear impression that the school hadlong functioned in favourable financial and staffing conditions without

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improvement (North East London Education Association, 1995; Tomlinson,1995). Although the Ofsted report of May 1994 had reported teaching groupsizes of 18.5 and a pupil expenditure of £2900, the Education Associationclaimed that by 1995 the teacher-pupil ratio was 8-1 and expenditure £6486per pupil. A member of the Education Association, has, in severalpublications (Barber, 1995, 1996) claimed that this amounted to “daylightrobbery from other Hackney pupils” and both the Secretary of State andopposition politicians have used Hackney Downs school to claim thateducational problems are not solved by “throwing money at them”(Department for Education, 1995). The correct figures for 1995 (expenditureand staffing), which will probably never be known, were fundamentallyaffected by the denial of a year 7 intake by the LEA and the fact that theschool’s finances were managed under special measures by the LEA and notthe school. Also, it was clear by 1995 Hackney Downs was a special school inall but name, having taken in large numbers of students with severe learningand behavioural difficulties. Needless to say, it did not receive the extraresources that special schools are given.

The school was closed with precipitate haste, the Secretary of Stateallowing only 10 days ‘consultation’ after the publication of the EA report.Two pupils and their parents took the decision to the High Court for judicialreview on 8 and 12 December 1995, and subsequently to the Court of Appealon 21 December, but both courts upheld the Secretary of State’s decision andher right to make it. It is important to note that, despite attempts by theplaintiff’s legal team to place all the facts before the courts, the High Courtjudge and the Appeal Court judges were only able to consider the mechanismsby which the Secretary of State had made her decision, and not the EducationAssociation report itself or the evidence on which it was based. In hissumming up of the Judicial Review, the High Court judges noted that therewere no rules of conduct for this or any other Association. This was, forexample, no bar to members publishing articles in the press while carrying outtheir task.

The boys were transferred to a neighbouring school, Homerton House,stated during the court hearings to be doing better than Hackney Downsalthough the evidence of its examination results did not bear this out, and thetotal cost of closure were eventually estimated to be the same as keeping theschool open and putting it in reasonable repair.

It later transpired that three independent Ofsted inspectors had beencommission by the Education Association to examine the quality of theschool’s teaching and learning, during the time the Education Associationwere in control of the school. Two of these reports were very favourable to theschool, but were not mentioned in the Education Association report. Had theAppeal Court had access to these documents, which were favourably disposedto the school, the outcome of the review of the school’s closure might havebeen different.

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Conclusion

By 1996, Hackney Downs had been superseded in the mythology of the‘worst school in Britain’ by the Ridings School in Yorkshire (O’Connor, 1996)– a school with many of the characteristics of Hackney Downs but where thestaff refused to take in more students with learning and behaviouraldifficulties. Hackney Downs, the Ridings School and most of the otherschools which have been labelled as ‘failing schools’ illustrate, if they illustrateanything at all, the failure of simplistic, politically motivated education policiesto get rid of bad schools’. It could, perhaps, have been foreseen that theassumptions that failing schools could be divorced from their historical andsocio-economic context, and their intake of troubled or troublesome studentswas doomed to failure. It was also unlikely that the policy intention to increasethe number of grant-maintained in areas of deprivation and disadvantagethrough the mechanism of Education Associations would be realised. In 1996a school in a neighbouring borough to Hackney was threatened with atake-over by the North-East London Education Association, but wasreprieved. An article in The Times Educational Supplement noted that “Thedecision by Education Minister, Robin Squire, not to send an EducationAssociation into Langham School has been interpreted as a governmentclimb-down. Haringey Council had been threatening to seek a judicial review”(Gardiner, 1996). The threat of judicial review, which Hackney DownsSchool carried out, appeared to have stiffened the resolve of other LEAs tofrustrate the take-over of their schools by Education Associations, and thesubsequent loss of control to grant-maintained status.

The treatment of failing schools and the coercive powers put in place toenforce closures cannot be explained in normative functionalist terms. Thereis no consensus that failing schools can be unproblematically recognised andthat there will be agreement on special measures and closures. It is becomingclearer that post-1988 market policies in education have helped to createschools which are subsequently regarded as failing, and that schooleffectiveness research is used unjustifiably, as a tool to support the politicalfiction that good and bad schools can be easily identified. Conflictperspectives are needed to suggest that attacking the supposed deficiencies offailing schools and their personnel, is an ideological deflection by those whocontrol economic and political structures, from more basic concerns.Structural changes in the economy, not failing schools, have led to the need toensure, for the first time in Britain, that all students are educated to higherlevels than hitherto. It has become easier to blame schools than to re-structurethe economy. Spurious choice policies are ensuring that more schools areattended only by students who are poor, from minority or refugeebackgrounds, are second language speakers, or are considered to have specialeducational needs. It is these schools which are at risk of acquiring the ‘failing’label.

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There is now a serious possibility that the competitive policies andresulting conflicts surrounding schooling in Britain may actually encouragesocial disintegration and economic instability rather than the reverse, and thatthe ‘failing schools’ policies may exacerbate this situation.[3]

Correspondence

Professor Sally Tomlinson, Department of Education, Goldsmiths College,University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, United Kingdom.

Notes

[1] This was certainly the intention behind the Department of Education funded study of 20multiracial comprehensive schools, carried out by David J. Smith and Sally Tomlinson,between 1981 and 1987 and published in 1989 as The School Effect: a study of multiracialcomprehensive. Policy Studies Institute, London.

[2] The Chair of Hackney Education Committee, and the Committee which took over whenthe Inner London Education Authority, was discontinued in 1989 was Michael Barber,appointed in 1995 as a member of the first Education Association.

[3] The Labour government, elected in May 1997, produced a White Paper (DfEE, 1997).Grant-Maintained schools are to become Foundation Schools. LEAs will be inspected byOfsted and will prepare education development plans for their schools. There will continueto be ‘zero tolerance’ of under performance and the government will take powers to forceLEAs to close failing schools.

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