Council leaders call for more power to help struggling schools

The Local Government Association is calling for central government to remove the “bureaucratic barriers” stopping councils from intervening in underperforming schools.

It says that by allowing high-performing maintained schools to sponsor struggling schools, they can help raise education standards and improve life chances including taking on the running of failing academies.

Currently, only existing academy schools can sponsor struggling schools to help them improve.

The LGA said it is concerned that there is a lack of potential academy sponsors to take on large numbers of underperforming schools.

David Simmonds, chair of the LGA’s children and young people board, said: “Councils are education improvement partners and not a barrier to change.

“Schools spend billions of pounds of public money, yet at present, there is no rigorous accountability for academies that are ‘coasting’; no clear understanding of what happens when one falls into this category; and no risk assessment in place for those rated as good or above.

“For parents who are far more concerned with the quality of their child’s education in the classroom than the legal status of the school, it is the council that they still turn to for advice and support.

“However, their current powers to intervene are strictly limited.”

Simmonds said the Education and Adoption Bill provides “the ideal opportunity to right this wrong” by allowing councils and the best maintained schools to share expertise and provide support to school leadership teams.