School Accountability and Intervention

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 3 February.

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a Statement on this Government’s plans to reform school accountability.

Before I begin, I want to say that I am devastated to hear that a boy has died after a stabbing at a school in Sheffield. My heart goes out to his family, friends and the entire school community at this very distressing time. We are in contact with the school and the council to offer support, and investigations are under way. Nothing is more important than the safety of our children.

This Government are clear about the need to secure the very best education for our young people, and we are determined that our schools are reformed to deliver that ambition to enable every child to achieve and thrive. That reform begins at the very start of a child’s journey, with an early years system that sets up our children for the best start in life. That means brilliant schools, with excellent, qualified staff, driving high and rising standards in all parts of our country. It reflects our determination to ensure that we break, in the generations ahead, the unfair link between background and opportunity.

Like so many in this House, I know the value of a brilliant school because I went to one in the west end of Newcastle, in the north-east. My school set high standards for all its pupils. It nurtured my talents and love of learning, and it propelled me forward to university and a career in law. So I know full well that the system can work and that a good school can be an incredible force for good. My school set high standards and expected us all to aim high. High standards and high expectations are this Government’s vision for every child and every school in our country. We will set no ceiling on what children can achieve.

We must recognise that Members from all parts of the House, including David Blunkett and Michael Gove, have driven forward great educational reform. Reform has also been driven by the dedication and determination of teachers across the country. I benefited from the first statutory national curriculum, introduced by Lord Baker in 1988. The arrival of Ofsted and the common inspection framework brought far greater rigour to school inspections. Numeracy hour and literacy hour brought a clear focus to the impact and importance of high-quality teaching, in and of itself. Performance tables brought new transparency for parents, and SATs showed children’s attainment across key stages for the first time.

The sponsored academy programme, started by Labour and expanded by the Conservatives, has been instrumental in raising standards in many schools. Multi-academy trusts brought diversity, innovation and a drive for improvement to our schools. The focus on evidence and pragmatism was embodied in the Education Endowment Foundation. There was a switch to phonics in the wake of the Rose review, and a focus on a curriculum rich in knowledge. All those reforms brought changes to our system, transforming the life chances of millions of children.

We understand, better than any previous generation, what works to drive up standards for children. We know, more clearly than ever before, that a great education for every child is not an impossible promise but one that Governments can and must deliver. We are determined, more fiercely than ever before, to use that understanding and knowledge to take our schools forward. However, in the past decade, the ambition for excellence which had powered Governments from the left and the right, and the appetite for reforms that delivered better life chances for our children, have faded, and the system has drifted.

Conservative Members may not like hearing that, so let me remind them about this Government’s inheritance in July, which tells a less happy story: a third of children are finishing primary school without the reading, writing and maths skills they need; children with special educational needs are struggling to get the right support, after spending years in a system that is not serving them; the attainment gap between those from well-off backgrounds and those who are less privileged is shamefully wide; young people in London are 70% more likely to enter university compared with their peers in the north-east, where I went to school; and hundreds of thousands of children are in schools that are stuck, receiving poor Ofsted judgments year on year.

This Government are impatient for our children’s success. They get only one childhood, so we will not rest in ensuring that they get the best education they can, and we will not tolerate our children being let down. We will not sit back and await changes in schools from governance changes alone. This Labour Government will stop at nothing to improve schools and children’s life chances. We can and must build on the legacy of reform, reignite the ambition for excellence and drive the change our children need, to push once more for high and rising standards in every school, and to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child.

A key part of that change must be a reformed and improved approach to both inspection and accountability that champions good practice, encourages collaboration in schools and, crucially, shines a light on all areas of strength and weakness. Today, the Department for Education and Ofsted are together setting out plans for a new era of accountability, and a renewed ambition for every child and every school. Schools that are stuck but have the capacity to improve must be supported and pushed to do so. We will get our new RISE—regional improvement for standards and excellence—teams, whose members are expert school leaders, in early. We will use them to facilitate faster improvement, using knowledge, experience and the reports of reformed, high-quality inspections to turn schools around. We will work to chart a path to progress, and intervene in way that is effective, bespoke and proportionate, making a difference as early as possible. Today, we are announcing over £20 million for the new RISE teams over the next 15 months. Our first 20 advisers are already in place. They will work with schools across the country to drive improvement and share best practice, because when one school fails, we have all failed the children of that school.

This new era of accountability will come with a new era of inspection. Single headline grades pushed our system on and brought proper scrutiny to our schools, but the time for change has come. They had become high stakes for schools but inadequate to drive the change that our children need—too blunt, too rough and too vague, leaving too many schools without a proper diagnosis and not clear on how to improve. We need a more diagnostic approach that is targeted and focused, raising the bar on what we expect from schools, with the ingredients of a great education each given their own grade, new report cards identifying excellence and shining a light on performance, clarity for parents, and challenge backed by support for schools.

Those diagnostics will drive our approach to improvement. The worst-performing schools, whether local authority-maintained or academies, will be moved to a strong trust. We will never flinch from bringing in new leadership when children’s life chances demand it, but in this new era of accountability we want schools to support each other. We will foster a self-improving system, where all seek to raise their standards. A proposed new top grade of ‘exemplary’ will signal educational practice that is simply too good for schools to keep to themselves. When a school is awarded ‘exemplary’ in any area, what it is doing should be shared across the country so that others can learn from the very best. Our quest for high and rising standards is universal. We want good schools to become great, and great schools to become even better, sharing their excellence along the way.

Reformed accountability will underpin everything else that we do in education, whether that is delivering better special educational needs and disabilities provision in mainstream schools, or getting to the bottom of the attendance crisis. Inclusion and attendance will both be part of raising standards across our schools.

The changes that we are making to accountability will draw on the wisdom of the entire sector. Today, the department and Ofsted launch 12-week consultations, seeking the views of those who know the school system best—teachers, school leaders and parents—on the principles needed for inspection, support and intervention. Ofsted has already drawn on the findings of its Big Listen initiative to inform its approach to future inspections, but further action is needed. Ofsted’s consultation will seek the views of parents, carers, professionals and learners on how Ofsted conducts inspections and the way it reports them. The consultation includes proposals for new inspection methodology, alongside the proposed inspection framework, toolkits and report cards, to change how inspections look and feel for schools. Consultation and parental involvement are essential. Neither the Government nor Ofsted alone can drive up standards for children. We have excellent schools and trusts across our country, which have come about thanks to the hard work of school leaders, teachers and others, and reforms passed in this House. They have raised standards down the decades.

The Government believe that the best way to celebrate success is to multiply it, because where someone is born, their family, their city and their parents’ income should not determine their access to the life-changing power of a good education. The measures for school accountability that I have outlined will support and challenge every school to do better for its pupils, share its successes, and bring high and rising standards to every corner of the country, so that every child can go to a good local school, and look forward to a bright future. I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, no one in this House will disagree with the Government’s aspirations for every child in this country to receive a great education and to leave school with the qualifications and confidence they need to go on to the next stage, whether that is education or work, and to realise their potential. No one would disagree that this needs to be done as quickly as possible.

Indeed, under the previous Government, one of the top priorities of the Secretary of State was to reduce the number of children studying in schools that, at that time, were judged to be “Inadequate”—or “2RI+”, as we called them in the jargon; everyone has their secret language—or those that had had multiple Ofsted judgments below “Good”. In the past two years in office, we reduced that figure by over 200,000 children to around 500,000. I am glad that the Government are continuing with that focus, but I suggest that the figure is not the 300,000 that the Government are talking about; it is around 500,000. Just the redefinition that the Government have brought means that 200,000 fewer children risk not getting the intervention that their school needs.

Where we part ways on the ambition is on how we get there. One of the first actions that this Government took was to stop intervention in schools that were judged to be “2RI+”. These are literally the schools where the Government are now saying that they need to see change and will potentially intervene. Some of these schools were “2RI+”, but many had had four, five or more judgments and had had never been “Good” in their history. That is two full cohorts of children going through a school that is judged not to be “Good”.

While the Statement talks about earlier intervention, fostering a self-improving system and putting in support from the RISE teams, in reality, last year’s decision to stop intervention into “2RI+” schools will slow things down, and it will be the children in those schools who pay the price. It will be interesting to see whether the new Government can maintain the pace of the previous Government in reducing the number of children in stuck schools: not by taking action in those schools, but by actually moving them to “Good”—or “Secure”, in the new Ofsted language.