Schools oversight and intervention report published
30 January 2015
There are significant gaps in the Department’s knowledge of performance in individual schools according to the Public Accounts Committee's report published on Friday 30 January 2015.
- Report: Schools oversight and intervention
- Report: Schools oversight and intervention (PDF 93KB)
- Inquiry: Schools oversight and intervention
- Public Accounts Committee
Chair's comments
The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, today said:
“The Department for Education has focused on increasing schools’ autonomy but it has done so without a proper strategy for overseeing the system. Its light touch approach means that problems in some schools can go undetected until serious damage has been done.
Confusion about the roles and responsibilities of the Department, the Education Funding Agency, local authorities and academy sponsors has allowed some schools to fall through gaps in the system, meaning failure can go unnoticed.Of the schools rated ‘inadequate’ in 2012/13, 36% had previously been rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, and there are still 1.6 million children being educated in schools in England that are less than ‘good’.
Early action to prevent decline or continuing poor performance in schools is rarely achieved. Oversight bodies need to work together to identify problems and intervene earlier in time to challenge and support schools.
The Department does not know enough about the effectiveness of the sponsors who are supposed to improve schools through the Academies Programme. Some have expanded too fast and a significant number are failing to improve standards in their schools. The Department has currently ‘paused’ the growth of 18 sponsors because of concerns about their performance; these sponsors are currently educating almost 100,000
children.
The Department also does not know whether local authorities have the capacity to improve their schools, or what interventions they use and at what cost.
The Department emphasises performance as measured by exam results and Ofsted inspections. But it relies heavily on whistleblowers to identify significant risks of failure, such as in safeguarding arrangements, financial integrity or governance.
Whistleblowers were involved recently in Birmingham, where two of the schools at the centre of the ‘Trojan Horse’ allegations had been rated ‘outstanding’ and were therefore exempt from routine inspection.
The failure of the Department and the local authority to identify problems with governors at some Birmingham schools highlights just one risk of not knowing enough about governors.
Worryingly, some local authorities do not understand their safeguarding duties towards pupils in academies.
Local authorities are responsible for monitoring safeguarding arrangements in all schools. However, out of the 87 local authorities surveyed by the National Audit Office, 13 said they did not monitor academies’ safeguarding arrangements, and 13 said they would not intervene directly in an academy if pupil safety was threatened.
It is likely that some local authorities, because of wider messages about academy autonomy, felt that safeguarding in academies was no longer their responsibility.
We hope that the Department will respond to our recommendations fully in order to reduce the likelihood of further unforeseen school scandals, like the ‘Trojan horse’ affair in Birmingham.”
Margaret Hodge was speaking as the Committee published its 32nd Report of this Session which – on the basis of evidence from Russell Hobby, General Secretary, National Association of Head Teachers, Emma Knights, Chief Executive, National Governors Association, Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary, Department for Education, Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills, Ofsted and Peter Lauener, Chief Executive, Education Funding Agency – examined schools oversight and intervention.
The Department for Education (the Department) has had a clear focus on improving standards in schools. It has created more academies as autonomous institutions based on the view that this is the best way to raise educational standards. Nonetheless there are still 1.6 million children being educated in schools in England that are less than ‘good’. The Department takes a light touch approach to school oversight, and is reluctant to collect enough information to be effective at identifying and responding to risks to school performance. In particular, early action to prevent decline or continuing poor performance in schools is happening rarely. The Department emphasises performance as measured by exam results and Ofsted inspections. But it relies heavily on whistleblowers to identify significant risks of failure, such as in safeguarding arrangements, financial integrity or governance. Local authorities also have a role in intervening when schools fail, but the Department does not know enough about local authorities’ oversight activities.
The Department does not know whether they have the capacity to improve their schools, or what interventions they use and at what cost. In addition, the Department does not know enough about the effectiveness of the sponsors who are supposed to improve schools through the Academies Programme. Research by the Sutton Trust and evidence from Ofsted suggests performance of sponsors is variable. Some have expanded too fast and a significant number are failing to improve standards in their schools. Over several years, we have recommended that the Department improve the way it supports and regulates the autonomous schools system.
We hope that the Department will now respond to our recommendations more fully in order to reduce the likelihood of further unforeseen school scandals, like the ‘Trojan horse’ affair in Birmingham.
The Department for Education is accountable to Parliament for the overall performance of the school system in England. There are 21,500 state-funded schools, of which 17,000 are maintained schools overseen by local authorities, and 4,500 are academies directly accountable to the Secretary of State. The Department’s overall objective is for all children to have the opportunity to attend a school that Ofsted rates as ‘good’ or better. To achieve this, the Department expects school leaders, along with governors and trustees, to manage resources effectively in an increasingly autonomous system so as to raise educational standards.
The Department presides over a complex and confused system of external oversight, sharing responsibility for oversight with the Education Funding Agency (the Agency, which is part of the Department) and 152 local authorities. The Department has set up frameworks that specify how it and other bodies should assess school performance and when they should intervene. The main formal interventions are: warning notices to raise formal concerns about a school’s performance; changing a school's governing body; and for local authority maintained schools and converter academies, turning the school into a sponsored academy. There are 460 sponsors which support and manage 1,900 academies.
Conclusions and recommendations
There are significant gaps in the Department’s knowledge of performance in individual schools. The Department’s narrow set of indicators means that it has not spotted important failures until too late and is over-reliant on whistleblowers. The Department focuses on educational performance but schools can change very quickly. Ofsted does not currently inspect ‘good’ schools for up to five years and ‘outstanding’ schools are exempt from routine inspection. Both Ofsted and the National Association of Head Teachers consider more regular inspections of ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ schools are necessary to ensure high standards. Also schools can have safeguarding or governance and financial management issues while still performing well in terms of educational attainment. In such circumstances, the Department is reliant on whistleblowers to contact them, as happened recently in Birmingham, where two of the schools at the centre of the allegations had been rated ‘outstanding’ and were therefore exempt from routine inspection. The Agency has developed a risk analysis tool, which has some indicators of financial performance, but on the basis of what we heard, no indicators of efficiency or value for money, and neither the Department nor the Agency have any ‘leading’ indicators of safeguarding issues. (A ‘leading’ indicator gives an indication of risks before problems occur, as opposed to a ‘lag’ indicator of performance in the past.)
Recommendation: The Department should develop leading indicators to fill the gaps in its information on governance, efficiency and safeguarding, and then incorporate them into its expectations of how oversight bodies identify underperformance.
Weak oversight arrangements can mask problems in some schools, which then go undetected until serious damage has been done. The Department has increased the autonomy of schools and oversight bodies. It has done so without an overall strategy, leading to confusion about the roles and responsibilities of the Department, the Agency, local authorities and academy sponsors, and allowing schools to fall through gaps in the system. Without a consistent understanding of the roles of existing and new oversight bodies, school failure can go unnoticed. Of the schools rated ‘inadequate’ in 2012/13, 36% had previously been rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’; oversight bodies need to work together to identify and intervene earlier in time to challenge and support schools. In September 2014 the Department introduced eight Regional Schools Commissioners, a welcome recognition of the need to provide more local intelligence and oversight for the growing number of academies. However, with 4,500 academies it is hard to believe that the Commissioners will have enough local knowledge on their own. There is also a risk that introducing commissioners will increase confusion about roles, especially where local authorities are already working constructively with academies.
Recommendation: The Department needs to clarify its own role, and the roles of Regional Schools Commissioners, local authorities and the Agency and specify how they will work together to share information and identify failure at an earlier stage. In addition the Department should set clear and explicit expectations for Regional Schools Commissioners to ensure that they make effective use of local authorities’ relationships with and local knowledge about schools and academies in their areas. In the next 18 months, the Department should evaluate the effectiveness of the Regional Schools Commissioners, and how constructively they are working with local authorities. The Department should also explicitly set out the set up and running costs of Regional School Commissioners so that value can be assessed.
Lack of clarity in the Department’s guidance has contributed to a situation where some local authorities do not understand their safeguarding duties towards pupils in academies. Under the Children’s Act 1989, local authorities are responsible for monitoring safeguarding arrangements in all schools; these responsibilities include academies set up in recent years. However, out of the 87 local authorities surveyed by the National Audit Office, 13 said they did not monitor academies’ safeguarding arrangements, and 13 said they would not intervene directly in an academy if pupil safety was threatened. We were surprised to hear that the Department had done nothing to address this potentially serious gap in oversight since becoming aware of it during the NAO’s work. After our evidence session we wrote to the Permanent Secretary requesting that he write immediately to all local authorities to confirm and clarify their duties in relation to safeguarding in academies. It is likely that some local authorities, in the context of wider messages about the academies’ autonomy, felt that safeguarding in academies was no longer their responsibility.
Recommendation: The Department should clarify local authorities’ safeguarding responsibilities towards schools in a single document, including whether or not local authorities have the power to direct academies to change their safeguarding arrangements.
The Department lacks information about the number and quality of school governors. In an increasingly autonomous school system that relies on self-improvement, the Department relies on schools having good governors and strong leadership. The structure of governance varies depending on school type, but regardless of this, all governors must be aware of their responsibilities and be able to provide sufficient support and challenge. The National Governors Association estimates there are around 350,000 governors in England, but the Department does not have any record of the number, skills and capacity of governors or trustees, even though it relies on them to understand and challenge school performance. The failure of the Department and the local authority to identify problems with governors at Birmingham schools that were part of the ‘Trojan Horse’ inquiry highlights one risk of not knowing enough about governors. We have also previously reported on problems with financial management and unmanaged conflicts of interest in schools, and these continue to cause us concern.
Recommendation: The Department should carry out a skills audit of school governors and ensure that all schools provide appropriate training for all governors and trustees. The Department should regularly assure itself that the capability and capacity of governors are fit for purpose.
Oversight bodies have not formally intervened in some schools that have been identified as underperforming. In September 2013, 179 open academies met the Department’s criteria for formal intervention, based on its own definition of failure (exam results and Ofsted rating). It should have intervened formally in all cases, but it only sent a warning notice to 15. The Agency also maintains a list of academies of national concern over financial management or governance issues. It has issued financial notices to improve to 4 of these academies, as a result of fraud allegations or financial irregularity; but there are another 7 which have been on the list for suspected fraud but have not received a financial notice to improve. Both the Department and the Agency acknowledge that their records are not good enough to explain why they have intervened in some academies and not others.
Recommendation: The Department and the Agency should improve the recording of their decisions to identify and intervene in underperforming schools to ensure consistency in the approach to the schools. The Department must ensure that, as a minimum, all schools eligible for intervention are identified.
The Department does not know enough about which formal interventions are most effective to tackle failure under which circumstances. Of schools inspected by Ofsted in 2012/13, 48% (62 out of 129) of those which had received some kind of formal intervention improved at their next inspection. The remainder stayed the same or deteriorated, with the apparent impact of different interventions varying significantly. Meanwhile, 59% (2,181 out of 3,696) of schools that received no formal intervention also improved. The
Department has not done enough to evaluate the effectiveness of different interventions and so does not know which are the most cost-effective. It recognises that it needs to do more.
Recommendation: The Department should commission a full evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of all formal interventions in schools.
There are no independent assessments of the effectiveness of academy sponsors and the Department has taken an optimistic view of sponsor capacity for too long. The Department’s main intervention for failing maintained schools is to match them with a sponsor and turn the school into a sponsored academy. Often the failing school will become part of a chain of academies run by one sponsor with a central management function. In its keenness to expand the academies programme and increase the number of sponsored academies, it has allowed some chains to grow too quickly without the necessary capacity and capability. It has currently ‘paused’ the growth of 18 sponsors because of concerns about their performance; these sponsors are currently educating almost 100,000 children. However, it has no independent source of information about the effectiveness of academy sponsors and the Department is over-reliant on whistleblowers. Ofsted is able to focus inspections on a number of academies within a chain and give an assessment about how well the chain supports those academies but, unlike in local authorities, it is unable to inspect the central management function of a sponsor (which is the primary mechanism for delivering improvement in a failing school). Unlike the powers Ofsted has to inspect local authorities, there is no statutory framework setting out the basis for what the inspectors are assessing when they look at the operation of an academy chain, and Ofsted awards no overall judgement or rating of academy sponsors.
Recommendation: The Department should obtain independent judgements of the capacity of sponsors that run more than one academy, and should use this to determine which sponsors are able to grow and when it should intervene with particular sponsors.