School improvement teams ‘will offer support to all’

All schools will be able to call on the government’s new school improvement teams for support, regardless of their Ofsted status, Schools Week has learned.

Ministers announced this week that regional improvement teams – made up of the “best leaders and teachers in the country” – will start to be rolled out early next year.  

Labour pledged before the election that the new teams would “work as partners with schools in responding to areas of weakness identified in new school report cards”.

But the Department for Education has now confirmed the teams will offer support to all primaries and secondaries, with those deemed to be struggling getting enhanced assistance.

The department said it would engage with the sector on the best way to recruit the advisers – but experts have warned officials not to drain capacity from schools. 

“We already have a limited supply of people who are really good at improving schools and most of the time we want them working in schools,” said Loic Menzies, a visiting fellow at the Sheffield Institute of Education.

“We don’t necessarily want to be draining a whole load of people away from doing the job, particularly as there’s already a certain amount of school improvement infrastructure within multi-academy trusts.”

Warren Carratt, the chief executive of Nexus Multi-Academy Trust, said that it could also compound recruitment and retention at Ofsted as “it just reduces the size of the pond they’re fishing in”.  

Who can ask for help?

All schools will be able to call on the teams’ help in accessing and understanding improvement and training programmes that are proven to make an impact, the government said.

“Struggling” schools will then be given enhanced support to develop plans to address areas of weakness. 

Schools Week understands that in these circumstances the teams, which Labour previously said would answer to the DfE’s regions group, could be similar to interim executive boards. 

They could be sent into a school before any decision is made about whether it has improved, needs further action or requires intervention. 

However, the DfE has not revealed how it would identify struggling schools in the absence of headline Ofsted grades.

Under the last system, a school’s lowest sub-judgment tended to equal its overall rating.

David Lowbridge-Ellis, the director of school improvement at the Matrix Academy Trust, said the programme’s efficacy could rest on how much schools trusted the teams.

“They can’t be seen as Ofsted, an external body coming to impose some judgment.” 

Steve Rollett, the deputy chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, has previously questioned where accountability would rest in such a system. 

“What if actions are not taken? What if the actions suggested are the wrong ones? How do you avoid this triggering a bunch of workload-sapping, quasi-inspection activities as external actors try to work out the school improvement issues in the school?”

Existing support 

Officials are already performing roles similar to the proposed improvement teams. 

Schools Week analysis of regional director board minutes in May showed numerous chief executives, chief finance officers and chairs of expanding academy chains had been advised by DfE officials to secure support.  

The National Leaders of Education programme offers help to underperforming schools by sending in headteachers or trust bosses to address governance, leadership and finance issues in underperforming schools.

The programme offers up to 15 days of help, with £10,000 to help establish necessary service-level agreements. 

Julie McCulloch, the director of policy for the leaders’ union ASCL, believes “there is a role for regional teams to … build up networks of support and professional development in local areas”. 

“It’s vital that a holistic approach is taken, in collaboration with [the] sector, to ensure these changes produce positive results.” 

Menzies said the best way to solve capacity was for the teams to focus on “brokering in the right support”, rather than delivering school improvement themselves.  

“The infrastructure often already exists, whether in MATs or existing improvement networks.

“The issue is that you could create a whole new architecture that will suck up a lot of capacity, without any guarantee that it will be any better than what we’ve already got. 

“It would be better to boost existing capacity where there are cold spots and improve the way that support is allocated by using the proposed regional improvement teams as brokers who work with schools.”