The answer is both. It is a sign that concentrating all power to the centre with virtually nothing between governors and government is no way to run a publicly funded institution such as education. It is a symptom of what can happen when you do.
It all goes back to the Thatcher era reforms which sought to remove responsibility from local government for education management. These were popular and predicated on the belief that parents were more sensible that loony left councillors, and could be trusted with a greater say in the way schools were run. With that generation of parents and councillors there was a popular truth in the idea, even if in practice it was flawed. A few years ago I became a school governor for the second time. My first experience was in the sixties when the District Education Officer was in charge. When I was again appointed, forty years later, nobody was actually in charge in the old sense; many were the people who exercised various specified responsibilities limited by statute, but all power rested with the Secretary of State. This included the removal of the chairman of governors.
The Tories are ideologically opposed to big government and centralized power, yet they have been responsible for the greatest advances in Whitehall control over the last forty years. Labour now proposes that someone should be in charge of all schools locally, whatever their definition; Faith, Free, Academy, Local Authority, C of E or whatever. They talk of a Director of Standards. This is one of Labour’s few good ideas.
The balance between religious freedom, faith and the general good is not easy to organize in a truly multicultural society. In a society governed by adherence to one faith, as used to be the case when the Church of England retained its standing, which allows and is tolerant of other faiths, it is relatively easy. Now we have to move forward with a much more clearly defined and regulated secular platform, to which every citizen of whatever faith is subject and which every public institution is required to uphold. This is tricky territory for politicians. They will have to pluck up their courage and advance into it.