Council-led trusts should drive school improvement, says LGA
Laura McCardle
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Local authorities should be given powers to create education trusts that oversee improvements to schools in their area, including academies and free schools, council leaders have said.
The Local Government Association (LGA) said the creation of council-led trusts should be a priority for the new government that will be elected in May 2015, and be used as a way of shifting responsibility for improvement work in the majority of schools from Ofsted to local authorities.
In its Investing In Our Nation’s Future, The First 100 Days of the Next Government report, the LGA says all schools should be required to join education trusts and for each area to develop a school-to-school improvement programme that would enable “good” and “outstanding” schools to support each other to maintain and improve standards. This would free up Ofsted to focus on just those schools that are struggling.
The LGA has said the move would streamline the two-tier system of accountability, which sees the Department for Education take responsibility for 3,500 academies and free schools.
The call echoes recent comments made by Alan Wood, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, who said local authorities are best placed to offer a single point of accountability on education provision.
Councillor David Simmonds, chair of the LGA’s children and young people board, said education trusts would remove the bureaucracy that surrounds the current system.
He said: “Someone has to take responsibility for the accountability of schools and with local knowledge and links to community schools, councils are ideally placed to take this role on.
“Education trusts would bring a shift away from the tick box culture of Ofsted inspections by fostering peer support and reviews, which will drive school improvement.
“Councils will be in a position to intervene should there be a problem, but otherwise, through mutual support, we see no reason why there cannot be a shift away from Ofsted inspections to peer support, enabling the profession to deliver for children and mums and dads.”
Chris Keates, general secretary of teachers’ union Nasuwt, has welcomed the recommendation.
She said: “Recent education policy reforms have weakened democratic accountability as more and more power has been handed to unelected education providers at the expense of parents and local communities.
“Serious fault lines have now appeared across the education landscape, which means that children’s entitlement to a school place, fair admissions, a broad and balanced curriculum, and to be taught by qualified teachers are at the mercy of individual education providers.”
However, a DfE spokesman has rejected the idea and said academies support children who have been failed by councils.
He said: “Since 2010, we have taken 900 schools that were failing under council control and turned them into academies with the support of a strong sponsor.
“Academies take power away from politicians and bureaucrats, and give it to the heads and teachers who know their pupils best.
“Results are rising faster in sponsored academies than in council-run schools, and converter academies are more likely to improve their Ofsted rating.”
The LGA recently warned that government plans to reduce the education services grant by £200m will damage councils’ ability to hold schools to account and help those that are struggling to improve.
Last month, the LGA also called on the government to give councils greater powers to intervene in troubled schools, following investigations into religious extremism in Birmingham schools.
