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Plans to allow more academies to opt out of paying for council support services could exacerbate budgetary problems for local authorities from next term, says Robert Hill. Schools policy is, as I have pedicted, shaping up to be one of the flashpoints for the coalition government. New boy : Education secretary Michael Gove could clash with local authorities To be fair, the issue would have been contentious even if the Conservatives had won the election outright – the presence of the Liberal Democrats has just brought added complexity to the situation. Even during the election campaign, the Conservative leader of Kent CC, Paul Carter, warned that his party's policies could have a negative impact on local authorities and maintained schools. There are three areas where education secretary, Michael Gove, could find himself at loggerheads with local authority leaders. The most pressing issue concerns academies. The Academies' Bill, currently being debated by Parliament, provides a framework for all schools over time to become academies. Although the plan is to start by offering outstanding schools the chance to become academies, the legislation is more widely drawn, and allows the secretary of state to invite all schools to opt out of local authority control. This has huge implications for local government – not least financially. Schools which opt to become academies have been led to believe they will gain around 10% extra funding, as they will no longer have their budgets top-sliced to help pay for local authority-provided education services. However, a number of authorities have said that the figure is likely to be nearer 4-5%. Councils are worried that the budget loss – which will kick in from this September – will result in a diseconomy of scale, as they will have a smaller pupil-funding base to pay for services such as school transport, education welfare, special needs and back-office services. School admissions, including hard-to-place pupils, and exclusions are other areas of concern. The second clash could involve free schools. The policy might see new schools opening up in areas where there are already sufficient school places. This could destabilise school admission arrangements and collaboration between schools. It also looks likely that previously-planned – and even agreed – Building Schools for the Future projects will be cancelled to help pay for the free schools. The third area of conflict relates to funding. Local authorities already have relatively-little discretion over their education budgets. But, contrary to what the coalition government is promising in other areas, such freedom, as they have, is being further eroded. The pupil premium for deprivation, introduced from April 2010, will go direct to schools. And, as more and more schools – including primary schools – become academies, then a 21st century version of the Funding Agency for Schools will become increasingly influential in determining funding formulae for schools. Logically, such an agency might also end up with being responsible for schools' capital. Underpinning these issues is the lack of a clear government view on the role of local authorities in relation to schools. Ironically, given that Mr Gove criticised his predecessor for his centralising, interfering tendencies, there are signs that the new Department for Education is being turned into a giant education authority. Curriculum policy has been brought back inside the department with the abolition of the arm's length specialist agency. The secretary of state is taking, for himself, powers to turn any failing school into an academy. And, the decision on whether outstanding schools should ever face re-inspection from Ofsted will rest on data – determined and monitored by the secretary of state. But ministers cannot seriously believe they can control everything from Whitehall. A local presence is needed to make sure that every child gets a school place, that pupils with special needs are catered for, and that there is someone to pick up the pieces when things in a school go wrong. Urgent thinking on the future role of local authorities is no doubt under way as a result of pressure from LGA chair, Margaret Eaton, and backbench Liberal Democrat MPs. The problem that they have in making the localist case is that local authorities' track record is variable. At their best, local authorities work closely with school leaders to support schools, broker partnerships and challenge underperformance. At their worst, they provide a bureaucratic brake on school innovation. So, the question over coming weeks will be whether a combination of Tory council leaders, Conservative peers and Liberal Democrat MPs can muster enough support to put a brake on Mr Gove's free market ambitions. Robert Hill is an independent public policy analyst and former Number 10 advsier

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Trouble brews in the classrooms

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