IPPR calls for creation of local school commissioners to prevent more 'cracks in the system'
Derren Hayes
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Local commissioners should be introduced to oversee new school places, hold academies to account and coordinate area-wide education improvement work, a think-tank has said.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says commissioners would help provide strategic oversight for all school provision across a county or city. It describes the current arrangements as “fragmented” and says that education reforms have created a two-tier system between local authority-maintained schools, and academies and free schools.
Under the IPPR model, commissioners would decide whether to open or close schools, including academies and free schools; ensure school improvement support is available; use soft powers to challenge schools to improve; and, where other measures have failed, broker a change of provider in underperforming schools.
Commissioners would also be able to force schools to expand if the local authority was unable to get agreement from non-maintained schools to create new places where there was a need, run tendering competitions for new school providers, and co-ordinate and commission education provision for 16- to 18-year-olds.
The IPPR proposals would mean the Department for Education would no longer be able to approve and commission free schools, force state schools to convert to academies or intervene in failing schools.
Its report, Whole System Reform, states: “Central government does not have the capacity or knowledge required to commission and oversee the performance of so many individual schools. A number of cracks are already beginning to appear in the system, including an acute shortage of places in some areas of the country, poor-quality providers being allowed to set up schools, and underperformance not being picked up early enough in some cases.”
The role is similar to proposals put forward earlier this year by former Home Secretary David Blunkett. His report called for directors of school standards to be introduced in every local authority area with powers to intervene in all underperforming maintained, academy and free schools. The Labour Party has backed those plans as a way to ensure local accountability over non-maintained schools.
Under the IPPR model, local authorities would retain their statutory duties over schools, but some of these would be delivered in tandem with commissioners, such as improvement support. They would still be responsible for ensuring the needs of vulnerable pupils were met.
The new system would give all schools the same legal status and also enable maintained schools to compete with academies to open new schools or take over the running of failing ones.
The IPPR says its model is more democratic as commissioners would be in post for a fixed term, would hold hearings over key issues and have their decisions scrutinised by city and local authority mayors who would be responsible for their appointment.
The think-tank also criticised the regional school commissioners system, introduced by the government last month. It said these lack the resources to properly oversee the large areas they cover, do not have an improvement role, and are unable to adequately link mainstream education with post-16 learning.
