Talk:Local education authorities in England and Wales

Note

Should there be a note in here to reflect the government's policy of referring to LEAs as Local Authorities now (see Education & Inspections Bill 2006) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.43.216.156 (talk • contribs) 03:36, 13 April 2006.

LEA is the term used in the United States, as well. There should probably be a separate article for the American version. 96.26.223.26 (talk) 05:33, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

List of LEAs

What do people think about the list of LEAs I've added to the article? (only for England I'm afriad) I think they are a good addition as since LEAs are made up of counties, metropolitan boroughs and unitary authorities, it is hard to find a complete list of all the actualy areas which have LEAs. I think the list here will be informative to people as to which of the different types of sub-divisions in their area and different parts of the coutnry are LEAs and which are not. Please feel free to comment on this if you feel the lsit shouldn't be included so we can discuss why/why not. Evil Eye 18:55, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Local authority

According to this, they are now called Local authorities http://www.dfes.gov.uk/studentsupport/students/lea_lea_contact_det.shtml WhisperToMe 16:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

!!! is this right? Local authority already has a well-established meaning in English local government: are non-metropolitan district councils no longer local authorities? Morwen - Talk 15:40, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Also the Bill as before Parliament still calls them LEAs. Morwen - Talk 15:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

K, i've put the page back to LEA, not reverted the text, given (a) the bill refers to them as such and (b) the term already had a perfectly good meaning in a UK context, so Local Authority (United Kingdom) was the wrong place anyway. See for example here for a statutory definition of a local authority : the term is frequently used in legislation and often without definining it. Morwen - Talk 15:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Surely this is just a simplification for the promotional material. People probably kept on asking "Who is my LEA?" and they got sick of saying it is a your local council. MRSC 16:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

So, it's now "Who's the local authority that's responsible for my education?" - "Your local authority." Oh, except it's not, it's (in non-metropolitan areas) your county council, not your district council... DWaterson 22:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

If you check the article you will see that it defines LEA clearly and correctly at the outset as a committee and hence typically a department or discrete education service within a council. If you scan down you will also find another secondary use of 'LEA' i.e. the council which provides an education service. Thus Staffordshire LEA could mean the historic Staffordshire Education committee and its education service, or it could in our secondary sense mean the Staffordshire County Council itself, because that was the only council in Staffordshire, prior to 1997, which provided an education service. In this latter sense Staffordshire County council is the Staffordshire LEA. We are talking here about a country which doesn't have a constitution so the use of fuzzy, slippery concepts which elide between one meaning and another is essential. I must allow that for many practical purpose this two faceted usage is neither confusing nor problematic. Sometimes it means a specific department or service, sometimes it means the council which provides the service and usually the context provides clarification.

So why is there a problem and why has the use of 'LEA' been so effectively banned that to risk its employment in English government circles is to invite excommunication on a charge of blasphemy?

The underlying problem is as follows:-

There is no constitution and a constant tension between a highly centralised government apparatus and a local government structure which has pretensions towards autonomy, but always been designed to be weak. England contains a population of 50 million in a fairly small area that could be lost in the Texas pan handle. There are nearly twenty-five thousand schools so a degree of local administration is practically essential even if the distances between them are not great. The English historic solution is a system of local administrations which insulates the central Whitehall government from direct responsibility from events in schools, but at the same time is kept weak to permit a high degree of central control. English councils have only limited fund-raising powers. Most of their funding comes from central taxes and local taxes are set within limits set by Whitehall. Their borrowing powers are set by Whitehall. They were once required to have an education committee, now they are required to have a Director of Children's Services.

They operate under a high level of central Whitehall direction which prescribes the use of funds, their departmental structures and key elements of their budgets. The multiplicity of competing and sometimes conflicting directives and initiatives from Whitehall, all backed by statute and statutory powers, runs wholly contrary to another fundamental requirement that they conduct their affairs in an integrated, coherent way i.e. that they act and manage their affairs 'corporately'. This doctrine was strongly built into the expectations of councils at the time of the last systematic reorganization of local government in 1974 (1972 Act). References to LEA as a separate entity threaten the important fiction that the council is able to manage its own affairs efficiently and risk its portrayal as no more than a loose bundle of disparate services under one roof, the model held to have been in place prior to 1974.

The historical irony is that the banning of the use of 'LEA' coincides with the statutory requirement to have Children's Services departments which by staff numbers, finance and most other measure of scale are even greater than their predecessor education departments and because they account on these measures for the great bulk of the council's activities they weigh heavily against any prospect of corporately managed services at local level. What is the council's chief executive for if the Director of Children's Services is accountable to Whitehall for most of the budget? <Steve H (talk) 00:47, 3 January 2008 (UTC)small>—Preceding unsigned comment added by Optymystic (talk • contribs) 00:41, 3 January 2008 (UTC) Steve H (talk) 08:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Islington and Southwark

Why are individual departments given and wikilinked here? Some councils publicise the names of their departments and others deliberately obscure this information so all services appear to come under the one council "brand". Furthermore, the departments are often merging and changing names. I don't think it is a good idea to link/have articles for each council department, especially as we have very few articles on the councils themselves. MRSC 23:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

We have articles on United States school districts - e.g. New York City Department of Education WhisperToMe 02:01, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems New York City Department of Education is roughly analogous to the Inner London Education Authority. The individual education departments of local authorities lack this significance. MRSC 06:25, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

But the ILEA doesn't exist anymore (though the article should be kept) WhisperToMe 22:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, that is exactly the point. ILEA was the only instance of a distinct public body that was an LEA and is the only case that is broadly comparable with the US. The situation now is that individual departments within district councils are responsible. For the purposes of an encyclopedia, we do not need to create articles like Education Department of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The departments we are talking about do not operate in isolation from the rest of the council and will share floor space with other council departments. This is akin to creating Kensington and Chelsea parks service, Kensington and Chelsea press office, Kensington and Chelsea environmental services etc. We don't even have a Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council (i.e the council, not the district) yet (or articles for most councils in the UK) so articles about individual (often quasi) departments should really not be happening now. MRSC • Talk 22:41, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

And don't American school boards tend to be directly elected? Whereas UK LEAs are subcomponents of an otherwise elected body. Morwen - Talk 08:16, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Some U.S. school boards are operated by cities. Others are parts of counties. Others are only directly administered by the state. WhisperToMe 22:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Political control

Is there anywhere that shows the overall political control of these authorities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.253.135.119 (talk) 16:12, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

They aren't called "LEAs", they're just called Local Authorities

Someone should change this. 79.71.85.166 (talk) 02:46, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

That's not correct - some local authorities have the responsibility of being the legal local education authority; it isn't incorrect to call them local authorities, but it is not a technical description.

It's the same as the difference between a local authority and a highway authority, e.g. "local authorities look after most roads in England".

Mauls (talk) 09:25, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Initial comment is correct here - Local Education Authorities in England and Wales ceased to exist with the passage of secondary legislation The Local Education Authorities and Children’s Services Authorities (Integration of Functions) Order 2010.

185.4.156.18 (talk) 08:16, 16 October 2018 (UTC)

This discussion has clearly been here on this talk page for over 10 years (see the very first talk comment headed "Note" !) In casual language we would still talk about an LEA but the term is no longer used in official government speak. The example of a "highway authority" is a good one, defining which types of council have responsibility for roads/schools. I will try to find a way to describe this distinction in the (very short!) lead paragraph. Also I will try (at some stage!) to insert some historical context, as we all know LEAs had far greater responsibilities in the past. Sussexonian (talk) 17:14, 15 June 2020 (UTC)