“Troubleshooters are needed to spot failing academy schools around the country and sack incompetent headteachers, the new chief education inspector has said.” So reported the Daily Telegraph on 28 December. The article continued:
Sir Michael Wilshaw said ministers must set up regional early warning systems because by the time his Ofsted inspectors discover an institution is in trouble, it is too late.
As more and more secondary schools gain independence from town halls and become academies, it will also be difficult for the Department of Education to focus on improving individual schools.
Sir Michael said that to maintain standards, dozens of local commissioners should be employed across England who could decide whether to merge failing academies or replace their head teachers or governing bodies.
It is hardly surprising that the Local Government Association gave these happy thoughts a political raspberry. Leaving aside the normal absurd language about schools gaining “independence from town halls”, the interview shows up the nonsense of the Government’s stance on education: in the year in which councils got back some powers under the Localism Act, the agenda for schools is one of ever greater centralisation.
If the Department for Education had been able even for a few minutes to get over its normal hatred of councils, they would have recognised that the key role for what we used to all local education authorities is to support schools and to act early, and discreetly, when a school begins to fail.
It has long been obvious that the key factor in any school is the Head: school governors are largely irrelevant, as are tweaks to the national curriculum. But if a Head is not coping the performance of the school will swiftly decline.
As legislation currently stands after the hasty enactments in the first few months of the current government, councils still have a role in schools which are neither academies nor free schools. They can intervene when a head is underperforming, either to provide management support or in extreme cases to help move on a Head who is clearly never going to make the grade – although the Government is rapidly cutting the resources for these functions.
These powers do not exist for academies. So what happens if an academy begins to totter? Tory thinking is that academies won’t totter because of the wonderful freedoms they have been granted. But the reality is different. A change of status alters remarkably little: a weak head does not suddenly, in the absence of the support network offered by a local authority, become a human dynamo.
Currently, the first sign of trouble will come when the Ofsted reports start to show the school beginning to stumble. But by then it may be too late for those whose education has begun to suffer.
We can thank the Sir Michael for pointing out the silliness of the government position. But his centralising solution is wide of the mark.
Sometimes, when there is an elephant in the room, it pays to say so.
* Chris White is a former Leader of the Liberal Democrats on St Albans Council, Councillor for Hertfordshire County Council and Regional Chair: East of England
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
#interrail2025: Day 6 - turning for home... but how?
Two Lib Dem gains in council by-elections
Lochee Park - free family fun day #dundeewestend
Labour failing on social care reform
Photo gallery
Raven (1977) - by the writers of Children of the Stones
Learning from the Zen masters
John Grout
David Evans
Richard Flowers
expats
13 Comments
Not just head teachers but also class sizes are key factors in schools.
It’s time to put VAT on private school fees and to use the proceeds to reduce class sizes in state schools.
This will discourage opting out and encourage opting in by the wealthy and influential. In turn this will improve state schools still further, thereby encouraging more opting in, better education for all and a less divided country.
Just to encourage a little New Year controversy!
I agree with Dane – get rid of the charitable status too while you are at it. If the Establishment actually used the State system they might get their act together and make it work.
There are mechanisms before Ofsted reports, which also take effect after Ofsted puts in an unfavourable report.
Headteachers, staff and governors should be aware, or be made aware by HMI and Ofsted (ot auditors) that things are not running as they should. Sometimes this is feedback from parents, which may or may not be well-founded. (Remember also there are parent governors.) What should happen then is seeking help from the local authority, which may either put in their own staff to get things working, or arrange help from another local authority school.
You can see what may undermine this – if the system takes too many schools, especially good schools, away from the local authority, it reduces the resources for schools in trouble. Sorry, Mr Gove!
What really causes educational disasters, is the inability or unwillingness of school management to ask for help. A former colleague of mine had his daughters in a private school which suddenly shut because of financial difficulties. He, and other parents, were very cross, because they felt that they could have provided the help that could have avoided this. Sooner or later, some private, academy or free schools will get into these sort of difficulties. They will need a safety net. Sorry, Mr Gove!
On the other hand much generalised criticism of schools (as opposed to noting specific problems with individual schools) is ill-founded, and some critics are working on the circular argument ” we know they are bad; the system isn’t showing this, so the system is wrong.” Some criticism is based on expecting the task of a particular school to be different from what it actually is.
Even allowing for the “hotel” part of the fees (for boarders), there is a profound difference between the per pupil sums paid for private and state education. There is a need for some private and some boarding (not the same thing) education, but it is too powerful a sector. If you’re thinking of VAT, you also need to examine the effect of charity status on private education.
““Troubleshooters are needed to spot failing academy schools around the country and sack incompetent headteachers, the new chief education inspector has said.””
Birkdale High School (11-16, boys), Southport, went ‘Academy’ in the summer and is now reported widely as being in ‘Special Measures’.
Chris White is right that the solution being suggested, of greater centralisation, is not ideal. But I think we also have to question whether all local authorities are up to the task.
Some sort of intermediate level between Whitehall and the individual academy is required to monitor and deal with underperformance. Where there are chains of academies this might be provided by the ‘parent sponsor’ – though this has the disadvantage of lack of democratic accountability. Whilst some of the larger education authorities eg Kent may well be up to the task, are the smaller ones eg some of the London Boroughs?
Initiatives under the last government, such as London Challenge, which operated at a pan London level, had a discernible impact in turning around the performance of London schools so that they now out-perform those in the rest of the country, as shown by Gill Wyness’s recent CentreForum paper http://www.centreforum.org/assets/pubs/london-schooling.pdf
Why don’t groups of local authorities (eg based on city regions) or at a London wide level, come forward with their own proposals as to how this monitoring and intervention should occur? (apologies if they have done but Chris White’s post does not mention it).
“Alistair” and Ian Sanderson
Quite agree about ending charitable status. Private schools are socially divisive institutions. Useful when there was no free education. No longer useful to anyone other than those who attend them and their parents who opt out of direct concern for state schools – while sniping from the sidelines to justify the money they are spending and complaining about paying tax because they are doing so.
Smaller class sizes are crucial – and cost money.
Chris Nicholson says “Chris White is right that the solution being suggested, of greater centralisation, is not ideal. But I think we also have to question whether all local authorities are up to the task.”
The inevitability of some LAS being worse than others and indeed some failing is NOT a basis for centralisation or quangocraisation since on the basis that there will always be some poor performing areas or LAs in every areas of public service, that is an argument against have any localisation or and/or democratic accountability.
You can – these exist – have inspectorates for local authorities, but we should never defend centralisation or the creation of more local or national quangos to run local services on the basis of “a few bad apples”, like the Tories do.
Next it’ll be “council tax capping is needed because some council s spend money unwisely”.
Non-local authority schools already have a range of local quality monitors with a stake in ensuring that the school is successful – in no particular order some of these are:
1) Governors
2) Parents
3) Shareholders where the school is run by a private company
Unless you think all of these are motivated by seeing educational standards fall then there’s no reason we need a costly and disputably effective state bureaucracy.
Taking Chris Nicholson’s point, in my area one reason why schools are falling over each other to become academies is dissatisfaction with the LA. Local schools who have joined a Trust – perhaps because Ofsted only judges them Satisfactory (which isn’t satisfactory of course) – are delighted by the improved support they receive from the Trust compared to the LA.
I’m afraid inspectorates for LAs don’t solve the problem. I can remember when the Thatcher government introduced the Grant Maintained system – in my area there was the same stampede away from the LA and for the same reason.
I sadly have to concede that not all local authorities are up to the task. What has struck me about my own (Hertfordshire – Tory-controlled, but gets this right at least) is the degree to which the schools which are seeking academy status are anxious to preserve their relationship with the local authority. Intervention has been successful. But senior officers acknowledge that some others are hopeless. This is a big challenge for the local government family: to get powers you have to demonstrate credibility. Perhaps an inspection regime for the LAs could solve this – if you get a certain grade you have intervention powers.
According to the more radical supporters of Gove’s policies, academies failing is all part of the system. It’s this threat of failure that is part of the discipline that will keep them up to the mark. Bad luck for the pupils if the schools that fail of course.
While it is easy for us to dismiss this argument, Evan Harris’s argument that we should just accept that some local authorities will fail is actually just another variation on the same theme.
In many cases (and certainly in London) local authorities do not have the critical mass to do the job, and many parents send their children to a neighbouring authorities’ schools anyway, diluting already weak democratic accountability. Chris Nicholson’s suggestion that we look for regional intervention systems strikes me as sensible.
An excellent post.
Proposing a new regulator to supplement a failing Ofsted strikes me as being akin to the introduction of epicycles to reconcile Ptolmey’s geocentric astronomy with observational data. That plan ultimately failed because the theory was fundamentally wrong and so would this proposal.
A better plan would be to start from Chris’ observation that, It has long been obvious that the key factor in any school is the Head. So the most effective – and also the cheapest if done properly – way to improve a school’s performance is to make sure it has the best possible head.
So instead of yet more monitors (and more bureaucracy) why not so arrange things that those with a direct interest in and knowledge of each school, namely parents, teachers and the local authority (or other funder) have a vote every three or four years to reappoint their head for another term with each group accounting for one third of the votes. Problems would be more easily nipped in the bud and, for the teachers, it would be a useful exercise in industrial democracy.
One school I know of would have been saved years of underperforming due to a weak head under this scheme. I knew many parents and teachers and all alike seethed with helpless rage at the uselessness of the head but Ofsted reports were good (entirely due to a high quality intake) and he had one crucial talent – for BS of bureaucrats – so he survived for years.
Evan Harris has, I think, misinterpreted what I was advocating. I am not supporting centralisation but as Matthew Green says I do not think many local authorities have the critical mass and expertise to do this properly. What I was suggesting was that local authorities get together with their alternative, bottom-up, solution to this problem, rather than letting Michael Gove impose his, top down, solution. Isn’t that what localism and general powers of competence should be all about?