Supporting schools

Academy and free school expansion coupled with budget cuts have left local authorities facing an uphill struggle to maintain school improvement services.

The latest blow to improvement support came in July when the Department for Education (DfE) announced plans to cut £200m from the education services grant, which funds school improvement work.

This comes on top of widespread council budget cuts and a shift in the balance of power in education away from councils to schools.

For some councils, this has meant they "are not intervening in academies as much as they could be", according to Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) senior policy officer Andy Hollingsworth.

Councils are also meeting resistance from some academies, which lack confidence in their ability to effectively support schools, concedes Phil Marshall, vice-chair of the Independent Academies Association.

"Looking at history, there is a view that when local authorities ran these schools, they failed miserably," she says.

But Hollingsworth urges councils to remember that under the 2004 Children's Act, directors of children's services and lead members have a legal responsibility for the education of all children in their area.

"Councils could do things like call academy heads to their scrutiny committee if they have concerns that are not being dealt with, and tell the local press that they have been asked to attend," he says. "I'd be surprised if they didn't show up then."

Among those adopting an assertive approach is Peter Lewis, the interim director of children's services at Somerset County Council. He is currently working with Somerset's regional schools commissioner, who is responsible for academies locally on behalf of the DfE, to highlight concerns with local academies.

"There will be some academies that have the attitude that they are not accountable to the council and they do not have to talk to us," he says. "My response is that they do as I am responsible for the education of children in the area. If they are still not prepared to have that conversation, then I will do other things, one of which is to tell the Secretary of State for Education that the school is failing its children. We push our concerns strongly."

A senior education officer at another council, who declines to be named, reveals that involving the DfE was an important negotiating tool with one uncooperative local academy recently. "As soon as the DfE was notified, the academy went from being resistant to working with us on an improvement plan," he explains.

But Chris Palmer, director of achievement and learning at Solihull Borough Council, says he approaches academies as "equals". "If we went in there and said 'we are better than you', that relationship wouldn't work," he says.

This is done through regular breakfast briefings with local head teachers and academy principals and its school improvement officers focusing on face-to-face meetings with senior school staff.

He says Solihull's in-house school improvement service is striving to carry out this kind of relationship-building work, as well as scrutinising local school improvement, on a drastically reduced budget, which has been slashed from £3.25m to £1.2m since 2010. Following redundancies and pay cuts, the service is now just 13-strong in an area with 81 schools.

To deal with this new landscape of shrinking budgets and influence over local schools, a range of new education improvement models are emerging. For example, some such as Staffordshire have partnered with a private company to run a commercial operation.

Another model is for local maintained schools, academies and free schools to work together in partnership to offer peer support, with head teachers drafted into each other's schools to help.

Debbie Barnes is chair of the Association of Directors of Children's Services' education achievement policy committee and director of children's services at Lincolnshire County Council. She says this is a direction Lincolnshire's currently outsourced school improvement service may move to when it is re-commissioned in 2017.

"Schools would do the challenging themselves," she says. "Therefore, our monitoring would be less intensive, which would save money."

Such a hands-off move under the current inspection regime is risky though.

Ofsted currently requires councils to ensure they are properly supporting schools and carry out specific school improvement inspections where concerns are raised about low achievement and performance in an area.

In total, 11 school improvement services have been inspected over the past year, of which seven were found to be ineffective. These were Blackpool, Doncaster, East Sussex, Middlesbrough, Suffolk, Wakefield and Walsall.

According to an Ofsted spokeswoman, the inspectorate is reviewing its school improvement inspection guidelines.

A new approach could serve to reduce pressure on cash-strapped local authorities, with scrutiny of education improvement work shifting from councils towards schools.

BEXLEY: FOCUS ON LEADERSHIP GETS RESULTS

Strengthening the leadership skills of head teachers, governors and senior teachers is at the heart of the London Borough of Bexley's education improvement programme.

Through training, forums and peer support, the ethos of strong leadership, focused on continual improvement, will filter down through all aspects of school life.

This is especially important in Bexley as its school improvement service involves peer assessment where about 15 local head teachers are called on to visit, challenge and support their neighbouring schools and support the work of the 30-strong school improvement team.

"School-to-school support is an important part of our service," says Jo Lakey, Bexley's head of school improvement. "We have a core team of central officers as well as a wider team of head teachers who go into schools.

"If a school is looking vulnerable, we work with the school openly about our concerns and see what their strategy is. I will then look to see who is the most appropriate head teacher to work with them as a partner."

Through the service, schools also have access to independent, expert school improvement consultants for specific issues, such as maths support. While peer support is free, this extra support is paid for by schools.

But with all its secondary schools and a fifth of primary schools having academy status, Bexley's in-house support service faces stiff competition from academy chains' support mechanisms and other commercial providers.

Nevertheless, Lakey is optimistic more academies will turn to Bexley's education improvement programme due to its focus on peer support and building relationships between local schools. "We have a strong focus on collaboration and we hope that academies will look at that, like what they see and want to buy into it," she says. This also applies to schools in neighbouring boroughs, with the programme already selling services, such as head teacher training, outside Bexley.

Even if Bexley schools look elsewhere for their support, Lakey says there is still a role for the programme to monitor performance and ensure schools are addressing problems.

"We don't need to be the people on the ground providing the operation, but we do need to have an insight," she says. "They are our pupils, but it is their school, which they should be able to self-manage."

She hopes another persuasive factor is the improvement in performance at local schools, especially at council-run primary schools that work closely with the programme.

The proportion of children attending a "good" or "outstanding" primary school rose from 64 per cent to 80 per cent between August 2012 and December 2013.

In addition, there has been an increase in the proportion of children achieving level 4 and above at Key Stage 2, from 77 per cent in 2012 to 80 per cent this year.

Interest in the programme among all schools in the borough is growing, with 60 out of Bexley's 84 head teachers attending a recent planning day.

KINGSTON AND RICHMOND: SCHOOLS SIGN UP TO MEMBERSHIP SCHEME

The London boroughs of Kingston and Richmond share an education improvement service centred around a two-tier membership scheme for schools.

Called Spark (School Performance Alliance in Richmond and Kingston), the service is part of a jointly run community interest company called Achieving for Children, which runs children's services across the two boroughs.

The first tier of education improvement membership is free and offered to all schools. This involves the Spark team carrying out an analysis of performance and recommending areas in need of improvement. Schools with this level are then urged to buy in support, either from Spark or another provider.

The second, premium tier, costs schools £8,000 a year and includes access to a school improvement partner who will challenge the school and work closely with it to co-ordinate a range of support from Spark. Premium members also get access to regular meetings and networking opportunities.

In addition to money gained through subscriptions, Spark also receives around £1.3m a year in total funding from both councils.

Graham Willett, Achieving for Children director of education services, says eight out of 10 schools in the two boroughs are signed up as premium members.

Schools are also involved in running the service through a board that comprises head teachers and council representatives.

"The spirit of partnership is central to our approach," says Willett. "We don't wish to have an arrangement where it is us inspecting schools or getting on their case. We'd rather be in dialogue with them to support them and challenge them to go further."

The school improvement partners, who are mostly former head teachers or senior school improvement officers, play a key role in fostering good relationships with schools, acting "without fear or favour".

"It is not something that can happen overnight. Relationships take time to build and a lot of my job is relationship management," Willett adds.

With two free schools, most secondary schools, and four primary schools in the area having academy status, such relationship-building is key to ensuring local schools continue to buy Spark's services.

"One of the core principles is respecting the autonomy of schools," says Willett. "They have the right to buy services from elsewhere."

Spark was created last month and, with its focus on tiered membership and school improvement partners, is essentially an enlarged version of Kingston's previous school improvement service, called Education Kingston.

Evaluation of Education Kingston showed that 84 per cent of schools in the borough were rated "good" or better by Ofsted in 2013. This has been achieved by "bearing down on the number of schools who were not 'good' or 'outstanding' according to Ofsted and really focus on ways to improve", says Willett.

Regarding the future, he has ruled out adopting a peer assessment approach where schools challenge each other. He questions whether such a model is truly cost-effective as it would still require "rigorous" oversight.

But he would consider making Spark more commercially focused and offering its services beyond the two boroughs' borders. He adds: "We could do that - we have that freedom."

STAFFORDSHIRE: WORKING WITH THE PRIVATE SECTOR

In April 2013, Staffordshire County Council launched a joint venture with private firm Capita to run education services including school improvement.

Called Entrust, the new venture took over council school service staff contracts and operates commercially, providing education improvement services to schools in Staffordshire and elsewhere in England.

Staffordshire has 49 per cent of shares and any share of profits is channelled back into local services.

Councillor Ben Adams, Staffordshire County Council's cabinet member for learning and skills, explains the joint venture approach was adopted to tap into the "growth in the school services market" brought about by academies' greater autonomy over spending.

"This offers schools the best of both worlds: the experience and continuity of local staff and the backing of an international organisation that is able to invest in the service," he says.

But he stresses Entrust is the provider of services and the council retains its statutory duty to monitor school performance.

As well as buying in services, such as training or specialist maths support, schools are also offered free support from Entrust if serious performance issues arise.

"There are two types of provision - the sort we commission to halt schools sliding and then there's the marketplace where they are buying services," explains Cllr Adams.

Sharon Kelly, Entrust's director of education services, says this model is already helping improve performance. "Since April 2013, 95 per cent of comments made in Ofsted reports about improvement support in Staffordshire schools have been positive," she says.

In addition, the number of schools in the county judged to be "good" or "outstanding" has risen from 63 per cent in August 2012 to 78 per cent in July this year.

Entrust must ensure it is listening to its customers so it continues to win contracts, says Kelly.

It does this by having a business advisory group involving head teachers that meets with Entrust's board of directors to give feedback and help shape services. Each Entrust director also has a district patch with a remit to meet all their local head teachers.

"One example of feedback helping to shape services was head teachers saying there was a lack of leadership training out there," says Kelly. "We have worked with them to come up with packages for new or aspiring head teachers and those leading schools under challenging circumstances."

Adams says further feedback from head teachers will be gleaned from a proposed council-run networking group, to be called Shield.

"This will be a forum for all head teachers," he explains. "Currently, we have specialist forums for primary or special schools, but I think there's room for improvement services to gather views from all schools."