Revealed: RISE adviser expansion planned for new school year

Labour’s army of turnaround experts in its school improvement unit is set to have more recruits.

The Department for Education is looking to draft in 12 “experienced sector leaders with a strong track record in early years, primary, SEND or secondary education” to bolster its RISE adviser ranks.

The advisers are appointed to struggling schools in their region to identify priorities and propose an outside organisation to deliver the support over two years.

So far, 419 schools have been given support following negative Ofsted reports – but eligibility is due to be widened in the coming months.

“We are expanding our RISE adviser workforce across most regions to support programme delivery from the new academic year, with a particular focus on early years expertise and addressing regional capacity and specialist skills gaps,” the DfE said.

12 new recruits

Sixty-five advisers – who are usually seconded into the department for two days a week – were brought into RISE last year.

They started with an initial batch of more than 200 schools.

This summer’s recruitment drive will increase their number to 75. Schools Week revealed in November how the expansion was originally planned for January.  

All but one region – the east of England – will take on at least one more £600-a-day adviser.

The south east will hire the most, bringing in three with early years, primary SEND and secondary SEND expertise.

‘My workload has gone up’

One adviser, who asked not to be named, noted RISE has “taken time to ramp up” and that it’s “only ever adding schools to the programme”.

“We’ve not taken any out because they’re in for two years of support, so my workload has gone up incrementally over the years,” they said.

“We’re all part-time – we’ve got day jobs. We’re pretty much up to capacity now, so you couldn’t really give us more schools until some come out of the programme.”

The DfE stressed the new roles were “the same” as those already in place, but it had decided to recruit differently as it wanted “to bring in particular specialisms in certain regional teams”.

More RISE schools

Officials have so far focused on providing mandatory targeted support to so-called “stuck” schools.

These are settings rated below ‘good’ at their last inspection that then receive ‘attention needed’ for ‘leadership and governance’.

But eligibility will be widened from September to those rated ‘requires significant improvement’. Schools in this position were previously ordered to academise.

In January low attainers will also join the programme.

At primary, those with fewer than a quarter of children meeting the expected standard in reading, writing and maths will be in line for support, unless they “have made sufficiently strong progress across all core subjects”.

Secondaries with an average attainment 8 score – which measures measure of pupils’ performance across eight GCSE-level qualifications – below 35 will be eligible.