Schools to gain greater freedom as National Strategies scrapped

Schools are to be given greater freedom over how they teach with the scrapping of the Government's National Strategies for education, it emerged today.

The move will end centralised prescription of teaching methods and oversight of literacy and numeracy hours in primary schools and save the Government up to £100 a million a year currently spent on private consultants.

Money will be redirected to encouraging successful schools to forge networks with lower-performing neighbours and to buy in their own advisers to help drive up standards, The Guardian reported.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families confirmed that the Education White Paper expected to be published next Tuesday will set out a new approach to provide more "tailored" support to schools, based on their individual needs and circumstances.

A spokesman insisted that the changes were a mark of the success of the National Strategies introduced after 1997, which were the flagship of Labour's education policy under Tony Blair.

He stressed that the reforms were not about scrapping the daily literacy and numeracy hours, introduced in the early years of the Blair administration to boost standards in core subjects at the start of children's school careers.

Schools are expected to continue having daily maths and English lessons, but there will be no central bureaucracy to support it.

"Building on the successes we have seen since 1997, the White Paper will set out our new approach to local authority and school accountability and support, making the support that schools can access even more tailored to their individual needs and circumstances," said the DCSF spokesman.

"The confidence that such a shift is viable is in many respects testament to the success of the National Strategies.

"All primary schools will continue to have daily English and maths lessons because strong school leaders know this is the right thing to do. We must continue to do the very best to ensure that all children get the reading and writing skills they need to succeed in later life.

"This is not about getting rid of the literacy and numeracy hours but a renewed push to raise standards and provide new forms of support and challenge for schools who need it."

Tuesday's White Paper is also expected to include new US-style "report cards", giving schools grades on a scale of A to F as well as information about truancy levels, behaviour and sporting achievements.

The Guardian today quoted sources close to the White Paper as saying that the Government's national strategy contracts with consultants Capita will be wound down from 2011.

The company currently provides materials and training to standardise teaching across schools as well as management advice.

A report from the Commons Schools Committee in April criticised the "degree of control" exercised by Whitehall over the curriculum and said lessons were too prescriptive and failed to take account of the needs of pupils in different areas.

"At times schooling has appeared more of a franchise operation, dependent on a recipe handed down by Government rather than the exercise of professional expertise by teachers," said the report.

The move was welcomed by Association of Teachers and Lecturers general secretary Mary Bousted.

"It ends a period of centralism of education delivery where the Government in Whitehall has said that it knows best how teachers in schools up and down the country should teach literacy and numeracy," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Commons Education Committee chairman Barry Sheerman said it would mark a major policy reversal by the Government, just weeks after it rejected similar proposals by his committee.

"The astonishing thing, if this is true, is what an about-turn. When our national curriculum report came out, we understood that the Secretary of State didn't like it very much, and indeed the Government's response was very negative indeed," he told Today.