Local Accountability in Schools

The Labour Party wants to restore local accountability to schools, including the ability to open community schools.  This is all to the good.  Whereas growing independence for schools may have been the right move in the days of LMS, it has now reached a point of disintegration, with the only oversight provided by civil servants in Whitehall.  Whitehall simply hasn't the ability to monitor individual schools all over the country.  Some sort of "middle tier" is inevitable unless school standards are going to be subject no accountability whatever.  It is a shame that policy makers in Whitehall have taken so long to realise this.