New powers to close academy trusts ‘must be used with caution’

New powers to allow ministers to close academy trusts for educational failure should be used “rarely” and with “caution”, sector leaders have warned.

Presently, ministers can re-broker individual schools from trusts if inspectors find them to be failing.

But trusts can only be closed and all their schools moved to other chains in one go following financial or governance failures.

The government is now poised to hand itself sweeping powers to intervene for educational failures at trust level, as part of a government amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill that would require Ofsted to regularly inspect academy trusts.

Leaders have broadly welcomed the move, arguing where schools are inadequately run “there should be a change of governance”, while others stress trusts must not be discouraged from taking on challenging schools.

New powers to terminate agreements

The proposed legislation would require Ofsted to begin inspecting academy trusts’ central teams for the first time, with inspections taking place at regular intervals from as early as next year.

It would also give the education secretary new powers to terminate trusts’ funding agreements if Ofsted finds the chain underperforming from an education perspective.

If trust leaders “are failing to lead, manage or govern” either the trust or an academy “to an acceptable standard”, Ofsted must notify the education secretary.

It must also lay out whether it feels leaders show “capacity to secure the necessary improvement”.

The education secretary may then serve a termination warning notice to the trust. If the trust fails to comply with this notice – by failing to take specified action, or respond on time – the secretary of state could terminate its academy funding agreement.

Its academies would be moved to a strong trust, and the department would support this process.

Pepe Di’Iasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said once there was “a proportionate and effective system” in place, it would seem appropriate to consider how trust level intervention might need to change.

But this must be done carefully. Trusts must not be discouraged from taking on schools in challenging circumstances, he said.

“Trust level intervention would clearly have significant ramifications and we would expect the secretary of state to use these powers very rarely.”

‘Caution will be essential’

Steve Rollett, the deputy chief executive of the Federation of School Trusts, said the power to intervene at trust level “is important, and caution will be essential as these new powers are rolled out.

“England’s education system is good and moving towards being great, so we should not anticipate these powers being used frequently,” he added. “Getting the threshold for intervention right will be crucial.”

Michael Barton, head of policy and impact at the National Governance Association, said if a trust inspection identified significant trust-wide concerns, it was appropriate that it lead to proportionate trust-wide intervention “just as it does where Ofsted currently identifies significant concerns at the school level”.

Many trust leaders have welcomed the proposals, while awaiting further detail that will be in the inspection framework.

‘Closure is to be expected if a MAT’s not working’

Sir Jon Coles, chief executive of United Learning, said “anyone with the interests of children at heart” would agree “there should be a change of governance of schools which are inadequately run, and where a governance authority is systematically failing to run schools adequately, the schools it is responsible for should be removed from its jurisdiction and run by someone else.”

Paul Stone, the chief executive of Nene Education Trust, said while “a big change”, the proposal would level the playing field between academies and maintained schools.

“There are failing maintained schools and there are failing academies,” he said. “[Closure] is to be expected, if a MAT’s not working.”

The DfE said MAT inspections “will raise standards in education” and “make the system fairer [and] more transparent”, helping to close what it described as a “gap in accountability”.

“It is not right that…the overall approach taken at trust-level by members, trustees and senior executives is not eligible for independent inspection.”

In a DfE document laying out guiding principles for the policy, the department agreed the approach “should not act as a disincentive for strong trusts to take struggling/poorly performing schools into their trust”.

There “must be an inbuilt understanding that improvement takes time, and
a focus on improvement trajectory, not just absolute outcomes,” it added.

‘We need confidence in the methodology’

Caroline Barlow and Keziah Featherstone, joint chairs of the Headteachers’ Roundtable, said they were “broadly…supportive of the move in principle.

“MATs should be accountable for the role they play in the system, especially given the transfer of funding from schools to central services. However, we have to have confidence in the methodology and implementation.

“Whilst there are still significant question marks about the new framework and subjectivity in its application, given the known influence of some big MATs there are a number of concerns and questions that remain unanswered.”

Some other leaders have raised concerns about the proposed intervention powers.

Stuart Lock, chief executive of Advantage Schools, said he was “broadly sympathetic to ministers having the ability to intervene in the genuinely rare cases where a trust is failing on educational standards.

“The issue for me isn’t the principle of intervention, but the mechanism being proposed.”

Lock said inspecting trusts as well as schools “doesn’t materially solve that problem. It creates another layer of performance measurement when schools and trusts are already subject to extensive scrutiny. We don’t have a lack of data about educational standards; we have plenty of it.

“If the amendment were focused on giving ministers clearer, faster powers to act where standards across a group of schools are demonstrably poor, I’d be inclined to support that.

“As it stands, however, this risks duplicating Ofsted’s work and increasing workload for both Ofsted and trusts, without directly addressing the underlying issue it’s trying to fix.”

Fears over ‘rushed’ policy

Baroness Barran, the former academies minister and now shadow education minister, described the policy as “rushed…with many more questions than answers”.

“If you are going to inspect all MATs, then you should inspect all school groups including LAs and federations,” she said. This is something CST has also previously argued.

Barran also questioned why the changes weren’t considered alongside Ofsted’s recent education inspection overhaul.

“A MAT inspection is largely the sum of its school inspections and there will now be totally avoidable duplication. Why wasn’t this thought through at the time of changing the school inspection framework?”