The government says it has taken “leaps forward in plans to drive up school standards” with more school improvement advisers named this week.
So, who are they, how will they operate, and will it all work?
Schools Week investigates…
Who are the ‘best of best’ advisers?
Regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) teams will commission support for ‘stuck’ schools from bodies such as trusts, councils and federations.
This week, 45 new advisers were announced to join the 20 who have been in post since the start of February.
Our analysis suggests 54 (83 per cent) are from trusts. Eight (12 per cent) work for local authorities, their school improvement arms or council-run schools, while three (5 per cent) are either consultants or from school-led organisations.
Most (52 per cent) are women.
But there is also a big overlap with headteacher advisory boards. More than one in four trusts with RISE advisers also have someone advising regional directors.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, said this week that “no child should be spending precious days, let alone years, in schools that are underperforming”.
“Our new RISE teams, made up of the best of the best in school improvement, can be the spark that turns around the life chances of tens of thousands of children.”
But our analysis suggests 18 of the trusts and five of the councils involved with RISE have 46 so-called “stuck” schools, those rated ‘requires improvement’ following an earlier below-good inspection grade and now in line for support.
‘Weak managers avoiding reckoning’
And the wider approach of advisers driving improvement has also been criticised.
Lord Nash, a former academies minister, told Parliament on Thursday the teams “will be ineffective”. Advisers were “temporary” with “no skin in the game … the complete opposite to a MAT”.
One of his successors, Lord Agnew, labelled the advisers “65 people brandishing clipboards who will run around the country offering advice”.
“If weak managers can avoid a reckoning through procrastination without penalty, that is what they will do. It’s the Damaclean sword of consequences that will drive change in failing schools.
“It seems you’re not prepared to allow the hard edge of intervention to sweep out mediocrity and failure.”
Agnew pointed to the beacon schools initiative, launched by Labour in 1998, which saw high-performing schools being given extra cash to pass on their expertise to others. But it was later “abandoned… because there was a lack of clear evidence that the initiative improved weaker schools. My question to the minister is: what has changed 20 years on?”
But skills minister Baroness Smith rebuked the language used, adding: “I’m not sure that noble lords in this place want to be referring to successful school leaders as clipboard carrying bureaucrats, as some have.”
How they will work…
The first 20 advisers have been working with 32 schools that were previously in line for structural change. The expanded team is set to start working with more than 200.
RISE advisers – most of whom are devoting two days a week to the role – have told Schools Week those in line for the targeted support will initially be contacted by DfE officials.
Advisers are then expected to arrange an initial meeting with leaders, before visiting the school again.
Using Ofsted reports and figures on attainment, behaviour and attendance, they will then produce action plans detailing the support needed, and which trusts or local authorities are best placed to help. Officials have final sign-off.
The teams have been allocated £20 million, with up to £100,000 per school.
Paul Haigh, a Sheffield headteacher appointed to the Yorkshire and Humber RISE team in February, and one of “six or seven” working in the region, is working with four schools.
He expects to have completed all his schools’ action plans by the end of next week.
“This is not a wham, bam, thank you ma’am process that is done to you – it’s done with the recipient schools. Doing it too fast means you’ll trip over yourself and do it wrong.”
Haigh added that advisers could also recommend against brokering support for schools, should they appear to be on an upward trajectory. In such cases, they could arrange termly meetings “to see if we still think they’re still on track to get ‘good’”.
‘Done with, not done to’
Some of the new recruits have already been assigned schools, too. Tim Coulson, the chief executive of the Unity Schools Partnership, has been given three.
He expects to contact them next week and to submit his recommendations in the next four weeks. Coulson will sound out officials already working with advisory boards to help him decide which trusts or local authorities to broker support from.
Schools Week understands all 65 advisers were invited to an “induction” event at Church House in Westminster before the Easter break.
They were addressed by Phillipson, school standards tsar Sir Kevan Collins, DfE officials and Sir Michael Barber, the head of the Prime Minister’s delivery unit under Tony Blair.
According to one adviser, Barber detailed the “work in education over time” and compared this with “international approaches”.
Barber is now advising Number 10 on delivering its “missions”.
Phillipson and Collins stressed the process of brokering targeted support had to be “done with and not done to”, the adviser added.
First improvement partners announced
The DfE said this week that “the first schools we began working with in February have started to be paired with supporting organisations, including high-quality [MATs]”.
These include the Mulberry Schools Trust, L.E.A.D Academy Trust and Northern Education Trust (NET).
A full list is expected to be published next week. But school improvement plans will not be made public.
Haigh noted on his “first day in a school” he would ask: “What schools or trusts or federations do you admire as you can see they’re having success in a similar context to you?”
This will allow civil servants to “test the water to see if they have availability or capacity” and can inform decisions around which organisations to broker support from.
Andrew Jordon, NET’s deputy chief executive, said his trust was selected to work with two schools before Easter. There will be “an initial assessment … to see what the best way forward is, and that hasn’t happened yet”.
He suspected the MAT was paired with his trust “because of its track record [in schools] with [a high proportion of] white British, high levels of pupil premium, deprivation”.
Haigh said he will be “quality assuring” progress made at his schools through termly meetings against targets set by the incoming supporting organisations.
How RISE could grow
DfE analysis suggests the schools the RISE teams are now supporting have spent an average of 6.6 years rated below ‘good’ by Ofsted.
This amounts to “a child spending their whole primary or secondary school years in an underperforming school”. Forty-two have been considered “stuck” for more than 11 years.
When asked if more advisers may be hired, the DfE said it will “will review the capacity we need to support RISE schools” as the programme expands.
The government is also proposing to give RISE teams the power to “engage with schools”, including those with “large year-on-year declines” in results.
But the National Governance Association said it “would be opposed to any intervention based on a single year’s performance data, where unrepresentative issues with the cohort or its teachers could have a major impact”. It suggested using a “three-year average … as a minimum”.
From 2026, schools deemed “requiring significant improvement” would also face “mandatory” intervention from RISE teams. But the Confederation of School Trusts said a review of RISE effectiveness should happen first.
The definition of a ‘stuck’ school also risks putting trusts in an “unenviable position”. They will either have “to move the most broken schools in the system to good (or equivalent) within two years, or otherwise choose not to take on the school in the first place”.
You can view the full list of advisers here.
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