Save council-run schools! It’s time for local authorities to open free schools

In part of his Budget manspreading this week, George Osborne stole Nicky Morgan’s announcement that councils will be forced to relinquish control of all schools, so every single one is an Academy. As Philip Collins says in the Times today, this doesn’t mean they’ll all get better – he rather scorns the idea. But his old boss, Tony Blair, had precisely the same idea: to (in effect) privatise every single state school, so each one is independent of the council and has a direct financial relationship with Whitehall, cutting out local authorities entirely. Blair was vetoed by Brown and had to settle for a few hundred Academies. But in this, as with so much else, the Tories are finishing what Blair started. Councils must get out of education by 2020.

I cheered Blair’s proposal, but it’s not the case that all councils are rotten. Some are excellent at running schools, and it would be a shame to lose them.