Councils can offer safety net on school standards

Revised statutory guidance to local authorities on the roles of directors and lead members for children’s services makes clear that a single officer and a single elected member must be responsible for both education and children’s social care in their area and that they should each have an integrated children’s services brief.

The guidance – radically slimmed down, but this time not to the point of nothingness – affirms the concept of children’s services enshrined in the Children Act 2004.

But what is perhaps most striking about the guidance is its insistence that local authorities “should promote educational excellence for all children and young people and be ambitious in tackling underperformance” including the development of robust school improvement strategies. This assertion comes at a time when about 50 per cent of secondaries and four per cent of primaries are, or are in the process of becoming, academies – released from local authority control. It also comes as Ofsted chief inspector Michael Wilshaw intensifies the pressure on all schools to raise standards, scrapping the “satisfactory” grading and replacing it with the much more critical judgment of “requires improvement”.

However, schools need challenge and support to improve, not just inspections and warning notices. As academies become the norm, particularly in secondary education, the future of school improvement is looking very hazy indeed. Research from the National College shows an academy that is part of a chain improves more rapidly than a standalone academy. Schools do not improve in isolation. So in a timely intervention last week, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) urged all local authorities to step up to the plate and act as the “missing link” of support in a system of autonomous schools.

Education Secretary Michael Gove tends to regard local authorities as part of the problem ?in school standards rather than part of the solution. And yet the education white paper The Importance of Teaching purports to “give local authorities a strong strategic role as champions for parents, families and vulnerable pupils”. The ADCS rightly wants the government’s forthcoming statutory guidance on schools that are “causing concern” to make clear the powers of local authorities to intervene in schools deemed to require improvement.

Councils can and do support this improvement in a variety of ways: brokering support packages; analysing pupil data to spot gaps in need, particularly to help the most ?vulnerable pupils; securing a supply of head teachers and governors; building knowledge ?of schools through frequent meetings and visits; and providing or commissioning training ?for school governors.

It is claimed that local authorities have been left “shell-shocked” and on the “back foot” as they have rapidly relinquished control of schools over the past few months. But it is they that are best placed to be the safety net on educational standards in their area. It is important that authorities across England now get on the front foot and seek to make this part of their core business.

Ravi Chandiramani, editor, Children & Young People Now