1. education
2. school

MAKING SURE EVERY CHILD
HAS A PLACE AT A GOOD
LOCAL SCHOOL
MAKING SURE EVERY
CHILD HAS A PLACE AT A
GOOD LOCAL SCHOOL
Schools have been given increasing
freedom since they gained control
over their budgets and staffing in the
late 1980s. Councils no longer ‘control’
schools and have no desire to do so.
In our report 'Investing in our
nation's future: the first 100
days of the next government'
we set out what the new
government will need to do
to secure a bright future for
the people of this country.
We pledged that if a radical
and devolved model for
public services is put in
place, councils will be able to
commit, over the course of the
next Parliament, to offer every
child a place at a good school
close to home, to give them
the best possible start in life.
The growing number of academies
directly accountable to ministers
in Whitehall has accelerated this
trend, creating a two-tier system of
accountability, with the majority of schools
still accountable to democratically elected
local councils, but more than 4,000 able
to opt out of local scrutiny and decisionmaking.
As schools are given more freedom, it
becomes more, not less, important that
they are effectively held to account. We
do not believe that Whitehall has either
the capacity or the local knowledge to
exercise the oversight of academies and
take the swift action that parents have a
right to expect when standards start to
slip.
We are concerned that the interests
of the most vulnerable pupils are not
well served by two-tier accountability,
with some crucial decisions affecting
individual children taken by civil servants
in Whitehall with no real knowledge of
their needs and circumstances.
Councils have a unique responsibility to
make sure that there is a school place for
every child and face a huge increase in
demand. But decisions about funding new
places and opening new schools have
also been increasingly centralised.
2
We are calling on the government to mend
the broken system of two-tier school
accountability and decision-making by:
• supporting the creation of local
education trusts to drive school
improvement, building on the successful
school/council partnerships already
developing across the country
• streamlining top-down Ofsted
inspection and putting peer challenge
by local heads, senior leaders and
governors at the heart of school-toschool improvement
• restoring to councils the powers to hold
all local schools, including academies
and free schools, to account for
education standards and to intervene
when they start to slip
“The oversight and intervention
systems for English state schools
differ according to whether they
have academy or maintained status.
Both major political parties have
suggested that all state schools
may be brought under a single
regime in the future. Any future
government should consider
whether the existing dual system
is beneficial in encouraging the
development of more effective and
earlier challenge to and remedies for
underperformance.”1
Commons Education Committee
report on Academies and Free
Schools 28 January 2015
• returning to councils responsibility for
safeguarding and special educational
needs provision in academies and the
power to direct them to admit hard-toplace pupils
• allowing councils to open new schools
and paying schools capital into single
local capital pots to allow councils and
schools to work together to make best
use of scarce resources.
3
Background
Schools are independent, autonomous
institutions and have controlled their
own budgets and managed their own
resources since 1988 when Local
Management of Schools (LMS) came
into force.
Although they are no longer providers
of schools, local authorities exercise a
vital role as the ‘middle tier’ between
schools and central government. They are
responsible for oversight of educational
standards and of financial propriety in
schools which spend billions of pounds
of public money. They act as champions
of local children and young people and
their families and are democratically
accountable to the communities which
schools serve.
The combination of a democratic mandate
with statutory responsibility makes the
council role vital ensuring that every child
gets access to a good education. They
have no incentive to game the system in
pursuit of targets at the expense of some
children. They have a clear responsibility
for outcomes for all children and for
ensuring fair access for all local children
to a good local school.
The independent, democratic voice of
local councils is the guarantee for all
children that even if a school gives up
on them, there is still someone to act as
champion and advocate of their interests
in getting access in the education system.
4
The growing number of academies directly
accountable to Whitehall has broken this
vital local connection and safeguard. It has
created a two-tier system of accountability
and funding which is not joined up around
the needs of children, young people and
their families.
Local councils are responsible for
oversight of around 17,000 community,
faith (voluntary aided) and foundation
schools. The Secretary of State for
Education is responsible for keeping an
eye on more than 4,000 academies.
We do not believe that the Government
has either the capacity or the local
knowledge to exercise effective oversight
of the educational performance and
finances of such a large number of
schools from the centre.
Its recent creation of a new bureaucratic tier
of eight Regional School Commissioners
is an admission of the impossibility of
the task. In a system where increasing
autonomy has been given to schools,
Ofsted is effectively the front-line of school
accountability, particularly for academies.
Even for councils, the limitations on their
powers brought in by the Government
to ‘protect’ school autonomy means
they usually have to wait for poor Ofsted
judgments before they can intervene to turn
around underperforming schools.
But Ofsted’s credibility has been damaged
by last years’ events in Birmingham. The
re-inspection and downgrading of the
schools involved in the Trojan Horse affair
from outstanding or good to inadequate
following intense media coverage has
dented the confidence of councils and the
public in the inspectorate.
It has called into question the wisdom
of just leaving good or outstanding
schools alone and potentially isolated until
problems become serious and radical
intervention is required to turn things
around.
Local parents want to be sure that
someone who knows their child’s school
is keeping an eye on its performance and
is able to take action before standards
start to slip. Councils know their schools
and the communities they serve and
are locally accountable, so strong local
oversight by councils is needed to spot
warning signs and tackle problems before
it is too late.
Local authorities need powers to intervene
in all underperforming schools, including
academies, quickly and effectively, without
the need to ask permission from Whitehall
or Ofsted.
One of the biggest challenges facing
councils is to make sure that places
are there for the 880,000 extra pupils
expected by 2023, at a cost of £12 billion.
But the Government’s insistence that
all new schools should be academies
undermines local accountability and takes
decision-making away from local areas.
Powers and funding need to be restored
to councils if they are to deliver on
their commitment to make sure all local
children and young people have a good
school place.
So the new government must:
In the first Queen’s Speech
• Announce a Public Services Bill that
will include provisions to extend councils’
powers to challenge underperforming
academies and free schools so that they
can act as the champions for parents
and children to drive up standards and
ensure all local schools are rated ‘good’
or better by Ofsted.
• The bill will also announce the setting
up of local ‘Education Trusts’ for all
schools, including academies and free
schools, which bring together head
teachers and governors, supported and
held to account by councils, to share
expertise and support self-improvement.
• Announce a reform of the current
two-tier system of accountability so that
councils have the power to intervene
when they are not satisfied with Special
Educational Needs provisions or
safeguarding arrangements put in
place by an academy.
• In the first Budget, allocate indicative
five-year capital budgets to councils
across the lifetime of the Parliament,
paid into a single, local pot. This will
help councils to meet the sharply
increasing demand for school places
and ensure every child gets a place at a
good local school.
If a radical and devolved model for public
services is put in place, local government
will be able to commit, over the course of
the next Parliament, to offer every child a
place at a good school close to home, to
give them the best possible start in life.
5
In September 2013, Hertfordshire
County Council launched Herts for
Learning, a new schools company to
deliver school improvement services
with and for schools. Schools own
80 per cent of the company and the
council owns the remainder.
The move came in response to
the local authority’s changing
relationship with schools, a changing
financial and political context and
the wish to co-produce with schools
a sustainable model of school
improvement support. Gillian Cawley,
Assistant Director and Commissioner
for Education Services, says: “We
looked at all the alternatives including
outsourcing and social enterprise.
Given that school-to-school support
is the way of the future, we decided
on an option that enabled
the users to own the service and the
council to commission high-quality
services from it.”
6
School-to-school support is thriving
in Wigan thanks to an embedded
collaborative approach. By the end
of 2015 all secondary schools are
expected to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’
along with most primaries, and
achievement at primary and GCSE
level is well above the national
average. Schools work together
in eight autonomous consortia to
support self-improvement and share
expertise (three for the secondary
sector and five for the primary
sector). They are accountable to a
school improvement board which
monitors the effectiveness of the
consortia and ensures all schools are
getting the right support.
Kirston Nelson, Assistant Director
for Education at Wigan Council, says
this shared accountability is key to
the borough’s success. The system is
founded on real partnership, with the
council and schools working together
to find the best local solutions
for issues ranging from school
improvement to place planning
(where, for example, a consensus
agreement has been reached to
expand secondary schools rather
than create new ones). Nelson says
that the partnership has “rigour and
real collective responsibility.”
Local Education Trusts
The council role in school improvement
is to support, challenge and hold schools
to account for the quality of education
that they provide to local children and
young people.
As schools have been given everincreasing autonomy under successive
governments local authorities have
had to adapt their role. Councils no
longer ‘control’ schools and have no
desire to do so. They believe that real
improvement can only be achieved when
public services are freed up to work
collaboratively at a local level, focus on
the needs of users and allowed to drive
their own improvement.
As the case studies accompanying
this report show, local authorities have
adapted to the increasing autonomy of
schools by working with them to establish
local school-to-school improvement
partnerships.
These take many forms but at their heart
is a shared commitment to improving
outcomes for all local children, not just
those in a single school; and a belief
that school-to-school improvement is
the best way to achieve this. Some of
the Government’s reforms have worked
to make this objective more difficult.
One example is the concern that Chief
Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw expressed
in his Annual Report that some academies
were becoming isolated:
“More than 2,000 academies are
not part of a Multi Academy Trust
[chain] and some have become
isolated. Isolation can lead to
underperformance. Our analysis
of academies that experienced a
sharp fall in inspection grade last
year shows that most had not made
arrangements for external support
and challenge until it was too late
and serious decline had set in.”
Sir Michael Wilshaw2 in his 2013/14
Annual Report
We do not believe that it is in the interests
of children and young people that some
schools should be able to ‘opt out’ of
locally accountable arrangements to drive
improvements in academic outcomes for
all local children.
We want to see the partnership approach
already developing in the best-performing
areas embedded throughout the
education system. Education Trusts
should be set up in every area with a
clear expectation that all schools should
participate in a positive way. Trusts would
operate at arm’s length from councils, but
would be accountable to them.
Councils’ experience of sector-led
improvement shows that legislation and
top-down prescription is not the best way
to support front-line improvement.
This would cut across the good work
already being done by partnerships
across the country and impose a ‘one-size
fits all’ model mandated by Westminster.
7
Democratically accountable councils
and front-line professionals in schools
should be allowed to develop solutions
that fit local needs and priorities. So to
encourage the participation of all schools
in Local Education Trusts we want to
see an additional Ofsted judgment on
whether a school it inspects has a positive
relationship with other schools through the
local Trust.
The council role in
Local Education Trusts
A variety of school improvement models
are developing, but all the successful
partnerships in the case studies have been
facilitated and supported by local councils.
In each case councils retain their oversight
and accountability role with schools and
provide challenge to the partnership and
to individual schools. In many models
the council’s powers of intervention are
integrated into the ‘toolkit’ available to
tackle school underperformance.
We want to build on the models of schoolto-school improvement that are already
developing and would not want to see a
single model imposed on local areas.
8
But at a minimum we would expect:
• All the schools in an area to take part
in the Trust – those not participating
would be subject to regular full Ofsted
inspections with a specific judgment
about how they are working with local
schools. For schools in a Multi Academy
Trust (MAT), that receive support from
their sponsor, the relationship would
be different from schools that use the
Trust as the main form of improvement
support.
• Formal partnership arrangements
which include a clear and substantial
role for the council in holding the trust
locally accountable for its effectiveness
in improving standards.
• Clear and transparent processes
for risk-rating the performance of
local schools and sharing timely
and effective data across the Trust,
including data for parents.
• A clear separation between the
functions of the Trust and those of the
council which reflects councils’ statutory
duties and formal powers of intervention
and avoids duplication.
The two London boroughs of
Kingston and Richmond have more
than 100 schools across a relatively
small area. Most of the secondary
schools are academies, as are
a couple of primaries. The need
for more cost-effective provision
was behind a decision by the two
local authorities to set up a social
enterprise community interest
company, Achieving for Children, to
provide all children’s services across
both boroughs.
The company, set up in April 2014,
is wholly owned by the two local
authorities. Graham Willett, Director
for Education Services, says the need
for financial efficiency was a key
driver but they were also keen to use
the opportunity to pool expertise and
design better services. Kingston’s
safeguarding services had been
rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted but its
education support arrangements
were strong, so the partnership has
allowed both councils to share best
practice. Setting up a community
interest company has also provided
greater freedom in terms of
operational ability.
Reform of school inspection
We are not proposing an additional layer
of costly bureaucracy. Trusts should build
on the existing partnerships that are
already developing across the country.
Once a Trust is established in an area a
much more light-touch inspection process
would be possible.
An increasing reliance on the judgment of
serving frontline professionals should replace
top-down inspection as the main way to
reassure parents about school standards.
This needs to be supported by easily
understandable performance data about
each school, designed with parents in mind.
Ofsted would then inspect the support and
challenge provided by the Trust and the
validity of the judgments being made about
schools, rather than itself carrying out an
inspection of every school in the area. This
could include a full inspection of a sample
the Trust’s schools, or of those causing most
concern, to provide further reassurance.
Any school in the area choosing not to cooperate with the Trust would be subject to
a separate inspection which would focus
on the external support and challenge that
it was receiving to improve standards and
its collaboration with other schools. If these
schools were part of a MAT, they would be
subject to inspection through regular Ofsted
inspections of MATs.
Peer review and peer challenge is at
the heart of sector-led improvement
and the LGA would like to see it given
a much greater role in driving school
improvement. The core function of Local
Education Trusts should be to support a
system for school peer review which uses
local heads, senior leaders and governors
to raise educational standards.
9
Liverpool is involved in peer challenge
programmes with other local authorities
across the North West region through
which they review the effectiveness
of each other’s school improvement
services. Sue Shinkfield, Head of School
Improvement for the council says: “It
is really useful for our own judgements
about how effective we are to be
challenged. It also assists authorities
to be prepared in the event of a formal
inspection of their school improvement
arrangements.”
Council powers
of intervention in
underperforming schools
Councils should have the same
intervention powers for all the schools that
educate children in their areas, including
oversight of the spending by schools of
billions of pounds of public money.
10
The only power that councils can currently
use without reference to Whitehall or
Ofsted and without a right of appeal
from underperforming schools is to
remove financial delegation – the power
of governors and staff to set the budget
and spend money. All the rest of their
intervention powers are heavily qualified:
• Councils can issue maintained schools
with a ‘notice to improve’ but governing
bodies are allowed to appeal against
the notice to Ofsted. This can introduce
a delay of eight weeks or longer and
will often trigger an inspection by Ofsted
– which takes responsibility out of the
hands of the local council.
• Councils can appoint additional
governors or direct an underperforming
school to work with another school, but
only if it issues a ‘notice to improve’ and,
if the school appeals, Ofsted has upheld
the notice.
This should include powers to intervene
in academies and free schools
causing concern. Without this, two-tier
accountability will continue to allow some
schools to escape local scrutiny of their
educational and financial performance.
• Councils have to apply to the
Department for Education to remove
the entire governing body and replace
it with an Interim Executive Board (IEB),
even if Ofsted has rated a school as
Inadequate.
Councils’ powers of intervention in schools
must also be freed from the unnecessary
restrictions put on them over the years
by successive governments to ‘protect’
schools from interference by councils.
These stop them from acting quickly and
decisively to nip problems in the bud in the
interest of local children and parents.
• Councils have no powers over the
appointment or removal of school
governors. They only have the power
to propose and remove a single local
authority governor and the school can
refuse to agree to appoint the person
nominated by the council.
The Government and Ofsted have criticised
councils for not using their formal powers
of intervention often enough. If councils
are to make greater use of their powers,
they must have the same powers in relation
to all local schools and they must be able
to use them quickly and decisively, without
the need to ask permission from Whitehall
and Ofsted.
In particular, schools under pressure to
meet targets can be reluctant to admit
when things are beginning to go wrong.
Recent reports by the Public Accounts
Committee (PAC) and the Commons
Education Select Committee3 have raised
serious concerns about the DfE and
EFA oversight of the financial affairs in
academies and free schools.
Financial scrutiny of schools is a vital
council function. The council role is to
challenge schools and hold them to
account for what they do with millions
of pounds of taxpayers’ money. However
good Education Funding Agency (EFA)
or Whitehall officials are, they cannot
reasonably be expected to keep an eye
on what hundreds of highly-paid public
servants are doing in schools and parents
have every right to expect better.
The NAO’s Comptroller and Auditor
General also recently issued an adverse
opinion on the DfE’s accounts after
concluding it failed to meet Parliament’s
accountability requirements on academy
spending.
The DfE routinely issues statements to the
effect that financial oversight arrangements
for academies are “more robust than in
council-run schools”. However, whatever
the formal requirements, councils
proactively check the draft budgets and
outturn for maintained schools.
11
We are concerned that the DfE and
EFA do not have the capacity and local
knowledge to make similar checks on
academy financial statements and have
to rely on whistleblowers before concerns
are picked up.
Councils already oversee the finances of
the more than 80 per cent of schools that
they still maintain. They are best placed
to also exercise day-to-day oversight of
the financial affairs of academies and
responsibility for such oversight should
be returned to councils in the light of
the concerns expressed by the Select
Committee and PAC.
Councils require the vast majority of schools
to submit accounts at the financial year
end, rather than the academic year end,
which is a key reason the Auditor General
refused to certify the DfE accounts. Putting
academies on the same financial basis as
maintained schools will also allow them
to maintain smaller balances as risks
are reduced and shared by strong local
authority oversight.
12
This will ensure that scarce public money
is used to improve educational outcomes
for children and young people, rather than
sitting in academy bank accounts.
Protecting the interests of
the most vulnerable and
disadvantaged pupils
We are concerned that the interests of
the most vulnerable children are not well
served by the current two-tier system
of accountability.
This means that councils have no powers
to intervene in academies to require
them to admit vulnerable children;
ensure adequate provision for those
with Special Educational Needs and
disabilities (SEND); or if they are unhappy
with safeguarding arrangements in an
academy. Decisions about the needs of
individual academy pupils now have to be
taken by bureaucrats in Whitehall or by
DfE-appointed academy proprietors.
One example is the power to direct a school
to admit a particular child. In most cases if
a child is excluded from a school, another
local school will agree to admit the child for
a new start on the basis that other schools
will return the favour with any children they
exclude. This system works well and in most
cases academies play their full part.
If the system for local agreement breaks
down, a council can direct a maintained
school to admit a pupil and it must
comply. However, if the school is an
academy, councils have to apply to the
EFA to make the direction.
The EFA has taken this opportunity to
second-guess local decision-making and
of the 76 requests for directions to admit
since April 2012 the EFA has agreed to
just five. So an academy refusing to admit
a vulnerable child has a more than 90 per
cent chance of avoiding having to do so.
Another area of concern is the inability of
councils to require academies to improve
the quality of education provided to children
with SEND. The Children and Families
Act 2014 puts councils in the lead role of
ensuring that Education, Health and Care
plans of SEND children are implemented.
But councils have no powers to intervene
in an academy if they are not satisfied with
the SEND provision. They have to raise their
concerns with the EFA or move the child to
another school.
It is simply unacceptable that decisions
about the most vulnerable children and
young people should be taken away from
councils in this way.
Councils have a particular responsibility to
protect the interests of these children, so
decisions about individual children should
be taken locally, based on local knowledge
of children, families and schools. We want
to see a return to councils of the powers
to direct an academy to admit an excluded
pupil and intervene where they are not
satisfied with the Special Educational
Needs provision or safeguarding
arrangements in an academy.
There is a well-evidenced link between
poverty and disadvantage and low
educational attainment. The latest figures
show just 37 per cent of disadvantaged
children achieved five good GCSEs,
including English and Maths, compared
to 63 per cent of all other pupils.4 Closing
the gap in attainment between children
from disadvantaged backgrounds and
their peers must be a priority for Local
Education Trusts.
Councils should have a clear role in holding
schools to account for their success in
improving the life chances of the most
disadvantaged pupils and making sure they
have fair access to the best local schools.
Finally, although councils are responsible
for dealing with individual cases where
there are child protection concerns in
an academy, it is the responsibility of
academy proprietors and EFA if there are
concerns about the overall arrangements
for safeguarding children.
13
In Devon there is some concern that
a more autonomous and fragmented
education landscape could impact on
the most vulnerable children. Although
‘statemented’ children, children
in care and those on free school
meals are very visible in the system,
of greater concern are children in
highly mobile families and those with
behavioural or emotional difficulties
who are vulnerable to being pushed
out or refused admission. If a child is
excluded, the funding should follow
them. However, some academies have
been reluctant to pay when billed, as
an agreement to passport funding
with the excluded child was not in
their original transfer agreement.
Dawn Stabb, the council’s School
Improvement Strategy Manager,
says: “As the educational landscape
becomes more diverse, the local
authority has to be more vigilant in
respect of these vulnerable children.
However, the further removed we
are from the data on them, the more
difficult it is to establish where they
are, how well they are doing and how
they are being supported.”
Making sure there are
sufficient school places
Councils have a unique responsibility
to make sure there is a school place for
every local child and young person. No
other local or national body shares with
them the duty “to secure sufficient primary
and secondary schools5”, although they
increasingly have to work with schools to
deliver the 880,000 extra places that will
be needed by 20236.
14
The current system for distributing schools
capital is a classic case of Whitehall
fragmentation, bureaucracy and central
control. The capital pot is first divided
into three, with separate allocations for
rebuilding schools, school maintenance
and new school places.
The money is then allocated through a
variety of central and local programmes
with different bureaucratic reporting
requirements for each. Maintenance
funding is split again into separate pots
for council-maintained schools, faith
schools and academies.
In April 2011 the Government
commissioned the independent James
Review of schools capital which found
that “the capital allocation process is
complex, time consuming, expensive and
opaque.”7 A key recommendation was:
“The Department should avoid
multiple funding streams for
investment that can and should be
planned locally, and instead apportion
the available capital as a single,
flexible budget for each local area.”
This recommendation for a single capital
pot for each area must be implemented
if councils are to meet the challenge of
providing new school places and repairing
and rebuilding crumbling schools.
In the last Spending Review a £21 billion
schools capital allocation for 2015-2020
was announced and the Government now
needs to make a corresponding five-year
allocation to local areas, paid into local
capital pots. This will allow councils to plan
ahead with schools to meet local needs
and priorities and use scarce capital
resources flexibly and efficiently.
The majority of secondary schools are now
academies and increasing demand will
feed through to the secondary sector from
2015. But councils are unable to require
academies to expand to meet local need.
We would hope that the expansions
needed can be achieved by negotiation
with schools, but councils must have the
same powers to require academies to
expand as they do for maintained schools.
The hands of councils are further tied
by top-down central control in building
new schools, which have to be opened
as academies, with all the final decisions
about proposals and sponsors resting
with the Secretary of State for Education.
Decision-making on the provision of new
schools must be returned to local level, as
it was prior to the Academies Act 2011.
Where academies are preferred,
decisions about sponsors should be taken
locally to meet the needs and wishes of
local parents and communities.
The process for establishing and funding
free schools is entirely run from Whitehall,
although councils are increasingly trying
to engage potential free school sponsors
to make sure that new schools are
established in areas of need. If the free
schools programme continues following
the General Election, councils should
have the role of judging and approving
free school proposals to ensure that new
free schools are established where they
are needed to support councils in their
place planning duties.
This includes the flexibility to deliver
whatever new type of school is required
to contribute to the local education offer,
including the option of establishing
community schools if that is the locally
preferred option.
15
CASE STUDIES
Gill Weston, Assistant Director for
Education, Learning & Skills, says
Leicestershire County Council has
deliberately moved from ‘control’
to ‘influence’. She says: “We have a
relatively loose self-improvement system
that is growing and developing without
us controlling it, but we have clear
protocols so that we can tighten it if we
need to.” The council is currently looking
across the various school networks to
identify what is working well and which
schools may need to be linked into
stronger partnership arrangements. “The
aim is to develop an accurate picture of
effective partnership working, including
where schools are linking across county
boundaries.”
The vast majority of schools in Brighton
& Hove are still local authority maintained
– all but five of its 73 state-funded
schools. There are three academies
(two secondary and one primary) and
two free schools (a Christian secondary
and a bilingual primary school). Another
secondary school recently consulted on
becoming an academy but the governors
voted not to go ahead with it.
The council is developing the notion of
the ‘City Child’ as a reminder that all
children should have access to good
quality education and services, wherever
in the city they live, and is encouraging
schools to work together to achieve
this. It is adapting its role in the new
educational landscape and there is
a strong emphasis on schools taking
responsibility for their own improvement.
16
In terms of GCSE performance, the
direction of progress in Sandwell’s
schools is positive, with the gap to national
performance narrowing, but there is
no clear link to show that becoming an
academy guarantees Ofsted success.
In fact, recent inspection outcomes
demonstrate a decline in the proportion
of good or better secondary schools here,
despite the high proportion of academies.
As a result, the council is changing the
way it works with academies. Previously
there was a ‘hands off’ approach which left
responsibility for academy improvement
with the DfE. Now, the council is adopting
a new and far more challenging protocol
for working with academies, sponsors, the
regional school commissioner and the DfE.
Most academies and sponsors engage
well with the council and have welcomed
this new way of working together.
Most schools in North East Lincolnshire
are academies – all secondaries, special
schools and pupil referral units and 68
per cent of primary schools. Some are
recent convertors while others have been
academies since 2007. They include
stand-alone and sponsored academies
and members of multi-academy trusts.
North East Lincolnshire Council has
seen the education landscape shift
dramatically towards autonomy; as a
result it has developed a very different
relationship with all local schools.
Academies here recognise the council’s
ongoing role and responsibility for all
local children, and so far they have been
keen to maintain a strong relationship
and build new working relationships.
However, these relationships are built
on mutual trust and respect rather than
formal obligation.
A range of forums and meetings are
facilitated by the local authority with full
representation and/or engagement from
local schools, academies and colleges
where appropriate. Roz Danks, Head of
Access Services, says: “No matter how
autonomous the schools are or how our
role changes, we have to work together
for the benefit of all of our children and
young people.”
Oxfordshire has identified a need for
more robust processes at a national level
to identify effective sponsors. There have
been situations where a sponsor on the
approved list has turned out to be less
than ideal, and the council does not have
the resources to take on due diligence
that the government should
be exercising.
Roy Leach, the council’s School
Organisation & Planning Manager says:
“I did not get the impression that the
Department for Education was well
set up for approving recommended
sponsors in a timely fashion. With a
number of new schools needed in
Oxfordshire over the next few years this
is an important issue for us.”
Although not an education authority,
Tamworth Borough Council takes a
broader interest in the local community
than simply providing core services. The
borough has a strong place-shaping
agenda and is working with partners to
deliver on a range of key priorities, which
include improving educational attainment.
17
Wandsworth has successfully met the
demand for additional school places,
both by expanding existing schools
and promoting new schools through its
innovative Academies and Free Schools
Commission. This encourages wouldbe providers to meet with the council
and develop robust proposals which
can then be successfully endorsed to
the DfE. Wandsworth has also worked
actively to secure sites, reflecting this
Conservative council’s robust approach
to encouraging diversity and choice of
schools for parents while ensuring that
every child has access to high quality
education, whatever the provider.
As a result of this work, three new
primary free schools opened in 2013 and
two primary academies will open by 2016.
Wandsworth took the lead in creating one
of the free schools in a council-owned
building in Tooting, securing sponsorship
from a local secondary school, which has
been a success. Although the council is
only consulted by the DfE once a free
school has been approved, it has worked
closely with all the free schools as they
developed their bids and was confident
in the quality of the proposals as a result.
Being involved at an early stage also
helped to ensure that the schools are in
the right location and meet demand for
places.
18
In Peterborough not all academy
conversions have led to improvement.
One primary academy was previously
outstanding but unfortunately, two
years after converting, went into special
measures. The council believes it has
a responsibility to intervene as part
of its duty to promote “high standards
and fulfilment by every child of their
educational potential,” outlined in
the Education Act 1996, so two
senior officers joined the governing
body to help turn the school around.
Peterborough’s longstanding good
relationship with all schools means
its academies are happy to accept
challenge and will approach the council
for feedback on their improvement plans.
On occasion the council has issued
academies with warning notices, even
though they have no formal status. It will
approach the DfE and local MP if there
are grounds for concern.
In 2014, an Ofsted inspection of
Peterborough’s arrangements for
supporting school improvement noted
that its strategies were “bearing
positive results”, such as a significant
improvement in GCSE results. The
inspectors recognised the key role
the council has played in attracting
and working with academy sponsors.
Jonathan Lewis, Assistant Director for
Children’s Services, says the challenge
is to sustain this improvement and move
up the league tables. “We are happy for
schools to be autonomous but we will
still provide leadership, an approach that
is well received by all our schools.”
NOTES
1. http://www.publications.parliament.
uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/
cmeduc/258/258.pdf
2. https://www.gov.uk/government/
uploads/system/uploads/attachment_
data/file/384707/Ofsted_Annual_
Report_201314_Schools.pdf
3. See note 1 above and http://www.
parliament.uk/business/committees/
committees-a-z/commons-select/
public-accounts-committee/news/
report-sshool-oversight-andintervention/
4. http://educationendowmentfoundation.
org.uk/about/what-we-do-and-why/
5. Education Act 1996 Section 14(1)
6. The Ofsted annual report 2014, p22:
https://www.gov.uk/government/
uploads/system/uploads/attachment_
data/file/384699/Ofsted_Annual_
Report_201314_HMCI_commentary.
pdf
7. https://www.education.gov.uk/
consultations/downloadableDocs/
James%20Reviewpdf.pdf
19
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