At a local level, some grant-maintained church primary schools point out that if they return to the voluntary- aided fold the number of parent governors will go down from five to two because of the need to include church-appointed governors on the governing body.Many of the 2,700, mainly primary, voluntary-controlled schools are also indignant about the proposal that they should take foundation status. Politically, they feel, foundation status would be more acceptable than its Conservative predecessor. Patrick Sanders, head of Burford School in Oxfordshire, said: “We are waiting to see the fine print, but I would not rule it out. The attraction would be having control of our own buildings and that we would not have to go through various local authority departments when making decisions.”Then there are the voluntary-aided or church schools. Both the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches are concerned that some church schools which are now grant-maintained will choose foundation status and, ultimately, weaken their links with the church. Some local authority secondary schools which voted against grant-maintained status under the previous government may go for the new category.

And they worry that parental confusions over admissions will persist as some schools devise their own, different policies and pick the pupils they want.Already there are signs that both these worries may mean that schools will refuse to slot neatly into the category prescribed for them by the Government. Instead of confining the structures issue to the backburner, the White Paper may unleash a new spell of instability as governors and parents debate where their best interests lie.Take foundation status. Admissions for foundation and aided schools, crucial to parents’ hopes of securing the right school place for their children, will be decided in consultation with the local authority, with an independent adjudicator to sort out disputes.Heads, governors and local bureaucrats fear that the plans will perpetuate a pecking order of schools with foundation at the top and community at the bottom. “Standards not structures.” Of all the catchphrases coined by the Government about education, few make more sense.
For more than 30 years, politicians have talked obsessively of the merits of grammars and comprehensives. Church schools would become aided and retain similar powers over admissions and staff and local authority schools would become community with the authority employing staff and dealing with admissions.

Regional conferences on the paper have come back repeatedly to the question of structures.The proposals envisage that the 1,000 or so opted-out schools will become foundation schools, running their own admissions, owning their premises and employing their staff. For 10, they have argued about the right of schools to opt out of local authority control.The education White Paper says that schools in the future will be able to choose to belong to one of three categories, foundation, aided or community but insists: “We do not want the mechanisms for choosing to distract attention from the main purpose of raising standards and we assume that the great majority of schools will wish to choose a category which is as close as possible to their existing status.”But the consultation on the paper which ended last week shows that the Government’s good intentions may already be running into difficulties and that the English habit of fretting about how schools are organised is proving hard to kick. As consultation on government proposals to reorganise schools comes to an end, teachers, governors and local authorities are unhappy. Far from ending rows about the structure of education, they may simply lead to yet more instability and confusion for parents, writes Judith Judd, Education Editor. “They want to put us all neatly into new boxes, with no little quirks, but the fact is we are all different,” says Mr Patterson.

“I would hold up our superb Ofsted report and say `Improve on that’.”- Lucy Ward. may be tempted to pick and choose.”One alternative would be to take on aided status. But Elton has rejected that option amid concerns that it would be unable to find the resources needed to contribute at least 15 per cent towards capital spending.All in all, Elton and Derbyshire’s 78 other voluntary controlled schools agree, they would much rather shake off intervention from Westminster and stay as they are, contentedly on good terms with both diocese and LEA. “They do not want to be giving up hours of free time helping run things themselves.”The head is concerned that handing governing bodies more control over admissions could open the way to increased selection.