Such a policy would include GM schools in a wider settlement of issues affecting the governance of all publicly-funded schools and be based on four principles: First, that there must be no disruption to the education of the thousands of pupils in GM schools. These schools have, in effect, been nationalised and the way they function is the direct responsibility of the Secretary of State or his or her agents. So, in a smooth and equitable transition to any new arrangements, there is no place for actions motivated by thoughts of revenge. That principle needs emphasising and re-emphasising.

Second, that as rapidly as possible, to modify the degree of direct control exercisable by a Secretary of State, there needs to be an alternative form of democratic engagement in establishing fair ways of dealing with GM schools both locally and nationally.

Third, that as part of a wider settlement of outstanding issues, the principle that parents choose schools for their children, rather than schools choose the children they prefer to teach, needs to be universally and unambiguously applied to all schools maintained by public funds.

Fourth, that the governance of all publicly-funded schools, of which GM schools are one element, needs re-casting. This will take time and, if for no other reason, means that there can be no automatic or immediate return of GM schools to the status and relationship with local education authorities (LEAs) that they had before acquiring GM status.

In relation to the first principle, to settle everyone’s nerves, the Labour Party should commit itself to ensuring that, by the start of a fourth year of a Labour administration at the latest, all schools, LEA or GM, would be treated on an equal footing. The era of politically-motivated hand-outs would be brought to a close.

Such a time-scale would give the Department for Education (DFE) and School Funding Agency (SFA), always mindful of the need to avoid damage to the education of pupils in GM schools, three years in which at least partially to redress the preferential funding from which GM schools benefit. No “claw-back” of revenue funds should be contemplated but, over the three-year period, the balance of capital funding and of any additional reserve funding available could be suitably adjusted.

In relation to the need for democratic participation in the management of GM schools, during the limited lifetime of the SFA, this could be achieved by inviting LEAs, through their associations, to nominate members to it. Councillors from the different parties could take up places in proportion to the balance of council membership countrywide.

It may be argued that existing LEAs should be invited to carry out SFA functions immediately. Surely not. The funding complexities to which GM schools have given rise need settling nationally and equitably and, besides, what Secretary of State in command of his or her faculties would wish to return any GM school, to, for example, the London borough of Wandsworth under its present political direction?

In relation to admission arrangements, since the 1944 Act there have been persistent, though usually controllable, problems with a few voluntary aided schools. It is already clear that the present hotch-potch of admission arrangements is increasingly taking control of admissions away from parents and handing it to schools, notably some league table-conscious GM ones. The notion that the resulting free-for-all increases parental satisfaction is not shared by anyone who has had to deal with the results. So the matter now needs to be dealt with decisively. Most LEAs have clearly articulated and democratically approved arrangements for ensuring that parental preferences, when a school is over-subscribed, are dealt with openly and equitably. To ensure that such arrangements, including the right but not the duty to have a child admitted to a local school, apply universally might require the Secretary of State to provide appropriate and enforceable guidelines. Enforceable? So far as GM schools are concerned, conforming to such guidelines might simply be made a condition of grant from the SFA: pupils admitted in accordance with the appropriate criteria would attract grant - others would not.

Re-casting the governance of all schools, including GM ones, enables an opportunity of historic significance to be taken. Local management is now well-established in all schools, we have a national curriculum, and admission arrangements need settling on nationally agreed principles. So how important now, in their day-to-day management, are the distinctions between county, voluntary aided, voluntary controlled, special agreement and, for that matter, GM schools? Not very, despite the complex issues of property rights and obligations enshrined in the 1944 Act.

So there is much to be said for replacing these distinctions with a new form of governance that reflects the relationship between school, local authority and the Secretary of State that now needs to be established. No one existing form of status wholly meets the case, but if county schools and GM schools alike were to acquire or, in some cases, re-acquire a form of governance close to voluntary aided (not controlled) status, this would reflect the arm’s-length but continuing relationship between schools and locally-elected representatives that seems the likeliest prospect for the future. The future relationship between schools and locally elected representatives is something a Labour government, with its regional arrangements still to be worked out, might need all of three years to establish. So those years could be used to settle which functions of the Secretary of State could be devolved to regions and which educational functions the regions might acquire from, or in some instances share with, local authorities within each region.

Such are the bare bones of one approach a Labour government might take to incorporate GM schools into a future school system.

In practice, the political debate over the future of GM schools is likely to be confused. Opponents and supporters of GM status seem to share an illusion concerning the independence of GM schools. Despite the freedoms afforded to GM schools by recent Secretaries of State, the truth of the matter is that the Education Act 1993 has placed GM schools almost wholly in the power of one individual: the Secretary of State of the day.

Does anyone still doubt this? By “in the power of” I mean, to take a few examples, that a present or future Secretary of State appoints an SFA and that SFA “must comply with any directions contained in an order made by the Secretary of State.” The Secretary of State can “by order modify the instrument of government for the governing body of any grant-maintained school” and do the same for its articles of government.

He can fund GM schools, favourably or unfavourably, in accordance with grant regulations he lays down and if he does not like what a particular GM school is doing he can withdraw or cause the SFA to withdraw grant and even, in the absence of any genuine appeals procedure, cease to maintain a GM school altogether. And so it goes on. No LEA has or has ever had powers over a school it maintains comparable to those a Secretary of State can exercise over the ones he or she now maintains. That is not a garland each GM school has placed round its own neck; it is a readily tuggable noose.

It must be in the long-term interests of GM schools to find a secure relationship with some form of intermediate and influenceable body which, by being locally elected, is at least partially independent of successive Secretaries of State. Conversely, it must be in the interests of any Labour Secretary of State, intent on “dealing” with GM schools, not to be in any hurry to “abolish” (ie surrender power in relation to) GM schools.

It remains to be seen who will be the first to understand the realities of political power afforded by the Education Act 1993.

Sir Peter Newsam recently retired as director of the Institute of Education, London University, and was formerly education officer for the Inner London Education Authority.