Michael Gove under pressure to allow profit-making in schools Michael Gove is under pressure to allow profit-making academies. A thinktank says they would be best to save failing schools. Photograph: Juice Images /Alamy The private sector should be asked to take over the running of chronically failing academies, James O'Shaughnessy, the former director of policy at No 10, proposes in his first piece of major research since quitting Downing Street . Michael Gove's centralised system for overseeing 18,000 semi-independent schools, including failing schools, is "simply not viable," he writes. The government's plans to allow the 25-strong Office of the Schools Commissioner to broker school improvement are "entirely unrealistic given the huge number of schools that the new Ofsted inspection regime are going to classify as failing," he says in a new pamphlet published by the Policy Exchange. He also reveals that academy leaders have revealed "a shocking level of disillusionment" with the quality of governing bodies, and proposes that governors in some areas should be paid. O'Shaughnessy warns Gove to shake up the Department for Education so that a majority of its 2,000 staff are dedicated to the success of the academy programme. A further £450m should be set aside over the next three years to help sponsors take over failing schools, he said. His proposals, including strengthening academy chains as a way of boosting the performance of coasting schools, are certain to be closely examined both by the education secretary, Michael Gove, and the schools minister, David Laws. Both men are eager to find ways to increase the accountability of failing schools, whether or not they are academies. The coalition faces increasing criticism that the huge expansion of academies, freed from local authority control, is leading to growing centralisation of education. O'Shaughnessy's proposal to introduce profit-making academy chains is bound to be controversial as Gove, until recently, has opposed any question of profit making in schools. O'Shaughnessy writes: "It is absurd, as well as counter-productive, to prevent for purely ideological reasons successful school improvement businesses from turning around these schools which have proved resistant to other interventions." His plan, if picked up by the coalition, might give political space to Labour as it would take Gove beyond following a broadly Blairite approach to improving schools. O'Shaughnessy argues that Labour's academy programme was aimed at the 5% of failed schools, but "the new task is to cope with a much bigger and more publicly contested seam of chronic failure in which mediocrity is the norm." He argues "a structure that worked well for a few hundred schools cannot cope with the demands of improving the performance of several thousand." Cameron's former policy chief suggests that 40% of schools "are providing an unacceptably mediocre education." He sets out a new framework whereby, if a failing school that has been turned into an academy has still not improved, it would then be required to join a chain of academies. If joining the chain does not lead to the necessary improvement, the private sector, both for profit and not for profit, should be brought in to run schools on performance-based contracts. O'Shaughnessy's plan for education is likely to be seen as more than a piece of radical kite flying, partly because of his past proximity to David Cameron, but also because Gove himself is becoming more open to the idea of profit-making chains operating in the UK - as they do in the US and Sweden. O'Shaughnessy insists that international studies show chains of schools - with as many as 20 schools in a chain - are the best way to raise standards and spread good practice. To encourage such chains, he proposes the Department for Education creates a new fund to help it set up a new collaborative schools network. He also recommends: Allowing academies to jettison existing governing bodies and form smaller paid bodies that mirror the boards of private companies. The Office of the Schools Commissioner should be given greatly enhanced powers, including oversight of every aspect of the academy programme. New local commissioners should be set up to apply a failure regime for all weak schools that are not in chains of three or more schools. But in his most controversial proposal he suggests the private sector is given a foot in the door by allowing profit-making "education management organisations" to run the worst schools. He writes: "Any ethical and political objections to the private sector attempting to succeed where the state and voluntary sectors have failed should be dismissed for what they are - ideological prejudice." O'Shaughnessy adds: "There is no reason whatsoever in my view for local politicians to have anything to do with what goes on in schools. Indeed, all the evidence of history suggests that politicians of any sort should be kept out of well-run, effective schools.