The accountability system for schools should be refocused on metrics like exclusions, pupil movement and home education, post-16 participation and wellbeing and safety, a new report by a former academy trust boss has said. A new settlement for education, a paper by Centre for Young Lives visiting fellow and former academy trust CEO Jonny Uttley, makes a series of recommendations for the new Labour administration, widely expected to be headed up by Andy Burnham. Jonny Uttley The report said education reforms started in 1988 created a system “built on competition between schools, parental choice and institutional accountability”. That model “succeeded in raising standards and improving many schools. “But this 40-year-old system of education no longer works for all young people, and the challenges facing England today are fundamentally different from those the architects of the 1988 settlement sought to solve.” The report concluded the next phase of education reform “must move beyond a model based on competition and towards one based on collaboration, place and collective responsibility”. 1. Reform accountability Schools are currently judged individually and nationally. Uttley’s report said a move to a place-based model “will require national government to create a shared local outcomes framework for all young people”. School-level accountability should be retained but refocused on “factors within a school’s control” and place-level measures such as: Attendance and persistent absence Suspension and exclusion rates Elective home education Pupil movement SEND provision timeliness and sufficiency NEET rates Post-sixteen participation and completion Employer engagement Wellbeing and safety Economic participation Community resilience 2. Change Ofsted The report warned the new Ofsted framework had “doubled down on high-stakes competitive comparative judgement of individual schools”. Ofsted, or any successor inspection model, should consider “how schools and trusts contribute to wider local outcomes and the barriers and opportunities in a community or local area”. The report said this could be achieved “through a new model of area education inspection alongside revised school or trust inspection”. The paper suggests inspections could look at: Trust contribution to place-based improvement Partnership working Inclusion across a locality The school roll in the context of community SEND and alternative provision arrangements Pupil movement and managed moves Transitions between phases Employer engagement Local curriculum pathways The extent to which schools reduce, rather than export, disadvantage. 3. Reform or replace progress 8 Uttley’s report argued the current secondary accountability framework would also need “substantial reform”. The paper warned progress 8 is “too narrow to support a genuinely place-based education system because it prioritises a largely academic model and limits the space for technical, vocational and employment-linked pathways”. As a first step, the new government should pause the re-introduction of progress 8 and move instead to a “progress 5” model, “protecting a strong academic core while freeing up curriculum space for local pathways”. “This will provide schools and trusts with more flexibility from age fourteen to offer high-quality technical, creative, digital, vocational and employer-linked pathways, without closing off a full GCSE curriculum for those who wish to pursue university entry.” The reform would also help make models such as the Manchester baccalaureate, an accountability measure developed by Burnham while he was mayor, and West Midlands baccalaureate “more than local pilots”. 4. Place-based partnerships The new administration should also create a statutory duty for place-based education partnerships. This would legally require schools and other linked organisations to “work together around shared outcomes”. The new legislative framework would establish local education and skills partnership boards or children and young people partnership boards. These would bring together: Academy trusts and maintained schools FE colleges and training providers Councils Health bodies Employers Combined authorities where relevant Voluntary and community organisations Parent, youth and community representatives 5. Change funding ‘incentives’ At present, funding largely follows individual institutions or individual pupils. The report argued that some funding should support shared local priorities. This could include pooling inclusion funding, having shared attendance and family support funding, introducing NEET reduction and employer engagement grants and giving cash for local curriculum innovation. Funding reform “should empower place-based partnerships to move beyond advisory forums to become dynamic delivery bodies”.