Lib Dems hit back at Nick Clegg

The deputy prime minister and Lib Dem leader told Channel 4 News today that delegates at the party’s conference in Liverpool who voted against free schools and voiced misgivings about academies “slightly misunderstand what the government policy is going to do”.

But Peter Downes, a councillor and retired headteacher who proposed yesterday’s motion, said: “It sounds presumptuous, but I don’t think Nick Clegg has understood what academies will mean for local authorities and local authority planning and oversight in this country.”

Professor John Howson, a former teacher and Liberal Democrat Education Association president who spoke in favour of the motion, said: “I think whoever is briefing Nick, he is either failing to get the point or is himself being slightly disingenuous.”

Evan Harris, a former Lib Dem MP who also backed the motion, said: “I don’t believe conference misunderstood our existing policy or the coalition agreement on the one hand and the effect of the legislation on the other.”

Embarrassment

The decision by Lib Dem delegates to approve the motion was an embarrassment for Mr Clegg, whose education spokeswoman Baroness Walmsley had tabled an amendment that was rejected.

He told Channel 4 News: “I think there is a misunderstanding bluntly between what the free schools proposal is alleged to be trying to do and what it will actually do.

“It won’t be taking resources and people and attention away from other schools …… and crucially, as I stressed in my speech yesterday, it won’t do what would be genuinely divisive. It won’t be introducing selection through the back door, which I’m staunchly opposed to.”

Classroom stabbing

But Professor Howson, who came to national prominence in 1977, when he was stabbed in a classroom, said he did not want to “wreck the coalition”, but there was an important issue at stake.

“The issue is who runs education, the secretary of state or locally-elected councillors. If it’s the secretary of state, that is effectively nationalising the running of education in this country.”

Referring to free schools, which need Education Secretary Michael Gove’s approval before they are set up, Professor Howson added: “If you take a decision that you need an extra school and can afford it, that is fine, I’ve no problem with that.

“But if the secretary of state decides a group of parents, who have social capital and can work round the system, can trump the will of locally-elected councillors, that is taking it out of the hands of the local community.”

Privileged pupils

Mr Downes, whose former comprehensive school in Cambridgeshire was the first in the country to manage its own finances, said the problem with the new academies being created under the Conservative/Lib Dem government was that money was being directed at the most privileged pupils.

Free schools would siphon money away from other schools, and if they were not big enough, they would not be able to offer a full curriculum – a “lose-lose situation”.

Mr Downes said the country could not afford free schools. “In a time of great wealth, they might be an option, but in a time of massive austerity they would be a massive waste of public money.”

Coalition policy

Coalition legislation allows schools to opt out of local authority control and apply directly to the education secretary for academy status. Schools rated as outstanding are fast-tracked.

Parents, charities and businesses are able to set up independent schools within the state system – so-called free schools. Mr Gove announced this month that 16 of these schools had been approved. They could open next year.