Whose job it is to improve schools has been the subject of a great deal of debate since the government published its schools bill. While there is much in the proposals to welcome and to support, my greatest concern is that the strategy about how we improve schools is muddled.
It’s easy for the adults to get distracted by focusing on who delivers school improvement. However, it should sharpen our wits to remind ourselves that children in poor schools continue to get a worse deal than their peers who attend successful schools.
The quickest way to fix this is to move a failing maintained school or academy into a strong and successful trust. No one will be surprised to hear me say this, but there are three reasons why I believe it to be true.
First, from the day that the school joins the trust, accountability is clear: it is the trustees and trust leaders who carry the responsibility for improving the school – not just to carry out due diligence and make recommendations, but to carry out the hard-edged, gritty process of improving standards from the classroom up.
Second, a successful trust by now will have enacted their improvement process on more than one occasion. They will know how to do this. They will have staff expertise across their schools and trust leadership teams, and highly-skilled professionals in their central team who can help with the processes that underpin improvement, namely finance, HR, IT networks and more.
Third, a successful trust will already have teams of trained and developed leaders and teachers who can support those children in year groups where time is running out. I am thinking of current year 5 and year 10 children who have 18 months to go before they move on to the next stage of their school careers.
I am confident that the secretary of state will retain these powers and deploy them if she wishes. However, the inconsistency, arguments and legal actions that will arise if a school in Cumbria is told to join a trust while a school in Cornwall just gets arm’s length support will only add delay to delivering a fairer and better offer to children.
We need to build on the trust movement and put children first in this debate
The proposal to create regional improvement (RISE) teams is not without merit; it is just not the same as brokering and delivering support to a school that you are not professionally related to. There is a totally different function to the process.
One of the strengths of the improvement model in trusts is that those delivering the support are employed by the same organisation as those receiving it. There is a mutuality here that cannot be delivered by people who have a daily role elsewhere.
I was a National Leader of Education (NLE) more than 15 years ago. I well remember the conversations I had with school leadership teams and governing bodies about what steps they needed to take to speed up the improvement process, only for them to choose the bits they liked and ignore the bits they thought would be too challenging.
It was only when some of those schools joined the Cabot Learning Federation that deep and sustained improvement could take place.
Over the past decade, standards in our schools have improved without doubt. The concept of leading school improvement at scale is understood and is being replicated across the country. The well-known, big-name trusts do well in this space but so do many others in more modest locations, with more modest budgets.
The academy trust movement has been a success story. Not everywhere, admittedly, but in many more locations than we have ever seen before in my 40-year career.
We need to build on the trust movement and put children first in this debate. A 14-year-old has no agency or ownership of how their school is led and managed. It is the adults who decide this, and it is the adults who need to make the right decision in the political, local government and school leadership spaces.
This article raises some valid concerns about the muddled strategy behind school improvement initiatives. I agree that a clear, accountable structure—like moving struggling schools into strong trusts—could lead to faster and more consistent progress. The point about the mutuality of trust leadership, where those delivering support are closely involved, is particularly compelling, as it fosters a sense of shared responsibility and commitment to real, lasting change.