MAKING SURE EVERY CHILD HAS A PLACE AT A GOOD LOCAL SCHOOL

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MAKING SURE EVERY CHILD HAS A PLACE AT A GOOD LOCAL SCHOOL

In our report 'Investing in our nation's future: the first 100 days of the next government' we set out what the new government will need to do to secure a bright future for the people of this country. We pledged that if a radical and devolved model for public services is put in place, councils will be able to commit, over the course of the next Parliament, to offer every child a place at a good school close to home, to give them the best possible start in life.

Schools have been given increasing freedom since they gained control over their budgets and staffing in the late 1980s. Councils no longer ‘control’ schools and have no desire to do so.

The growing number of academies directly accountable to ministers in Whitehall has accelerated this trend, creating a two-tier system of accountability, with the majority of schools still accountable to democratically elected local councils, but more than 4,000 able to opt out of local scrutiny and decision-making.

As schools are given more freedom, it becomes more, not less, important that they are effectively held to account. We do not believe that Whitehall has either the capacity or the local knowledge to exercise the oversight of academies and take the swift action that parents have a right to expect when standards start to slip.

We are concerned that the interests of the most vulnerable pupils are not well served by two-tier accountability, with some crucial decisions affecting individual children taken by civil servants in Whitehall with no real knowledge of their needs and circumstances.

Councils have a unique responsibility to make sure that there is a school place for every child and face a huge increase in demand. But decisions about funding new places and opening new schools have also been increasingly centralised.

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We are calling on the government to mend the broken system of two-tier school accountability and decision-making by:

• supportingthecreationof localeducation trusts to drive school improvement, building on the successful school/council partnerships already developing across the country

• streamliningtop-downOfsted inspection and putting peer challenge by local heads, senior leaders and governors at the heart of school-to-school improvement

• restoringtocouncilsthepowerstoholdall local schools, including academies and free schools, to account for education standards and to intervene when they start to slip

• returningtocouncilsresponsibilityforsafeguarding and special educational needs provision in academies and the power to direct them to admit hard-to-place pupils

• allowingcouncilstoopennewschoolsand paying schools capital into single local capital pots to allow councils and schools to work together to make best use of scarce resources.

“The oversight and intervention systems for English state schools differ according to whether they have academy or maintained status. Both major political parties have suggested that all state schools may be brought under a single regime in the future. Any future government should consider whether the existing dual system is beneficial in encouraging the development of more effective and earlier challenge to and remedies for underperformance.”1

Commons Education Committee report on Academies and Free Schools 28 January 2015

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BackgroundSchools are independent, autonomous institutions and have controlled their own budgets and managed their own resources since 1988 when Local Management of Schools (LMS) came into force.

Although they are no longer providers of schools, local authorities exercise a vital role as the ‘middle tier’ between schools and central government. They are responsible for oversight of educational standards and of financial propriety in schools which spend billions of pounds of public money. They act as champions of local children and young people and their families and are democratically accountable to the communities which schools serve.

The combination of a democratic mandate with statutory responsibility makes the council role vital ensuring that every child gets access to a good education. They have no incentive to game the system in pursuit of targets at the expense of some children. They have a clear responsibility for outcomes for all children and for ensuring fair access for all local children to a good local school.

The independent, democratic voice of local councils is the guarantee for all children that even if a school gives up on them, there is still someone to act as champion and advocate of their interests in getting access in the education system.

The growing number of academies directly accountable to Whitehall has broken this vital local connection and safeguard. It has created a two-tier system of accountability and funding which is not joined up around the needs of children, young people and their families.

Local councils are responsible for oversight of around 17,000 community, faith (voluntary aided) and foundation schools. The Secretary of State for Education is responsible for keeping an eye on more than 4,000 academies.

We do not believe that the Government has either the capacity or the local knowledge to exercise effective oversight of the educational performance and finances of such a large number of schools from the centre.

Its recent creation of a new bureaucratic tier of eight Regional School Commissioners is an admission of the impossibility of the task. In a system where increasing autonomy has been given to schools, Ofstediseffectivelythefront-lineofschoolaccountability, particularly for academies. Even for councils, the limitations on their powers brought in by the Government to ‘protect’ school autonomy means theyusuallyhavetowaitforpoorOfstedjudgments before they can intervene to turn around underperforming schools.

ButOfsted’scredibilityhasbeendamagedby last years’ events in Birmingham. The re-inspection and downgrading of the schools involved in the Trojan Horse affair from outstanding or good to inadequate following intense media coverage has dented the confidence of councils and the public in the inspectorate.

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It has called into question the wisdom of just leaving good or outstanding schools alone and potentially isolated until problems become serious and radical intervention is required to turn things around.

Local parents want to be sure that someone who knows their child’s school is keeping an eye on its performance and is able to take action before standards start to slip. Councils know their schools and the communities they serve and are locally accountable, so strong local oversight by councils is needed to spot warning signs and tackle problems before it is too late.

Local authorities need powers to intervene in all underperforming schools, including academies, quickly and effectively, without the need to ask permission from Whitehall orOfsted.

Oneof thebiggestchallengesfacingcouncils is to make sure that places are there for the 880,000 extra pupils expected by 2023, at a cost of £12 billion. But the Government’s insistence that all new schools should be academies undermines local accountability and takes decision-making away from local areas.

Powers and funding need to be restored to councils if they are to deliver on their commitment to make sure all local children and young people have a good school place.

If a radical and devolved model for public services is put in place, local government will be able to commit, over the course of the next Parliament, to offer every child a place at a good school close to home, to give them the best possible start in life.

So the new government must:

In the first Queen’s Speech

•Announce a Public Services Bill that will include provisions to extend councils’ powers to challenge underperforming academies and free schools so that they can act as the champions for parents and children to drive up standards and ensure all local schools are rated ‘good’ orbetterbyOfsted.

•The bill will also announce the setting up of local ‘Education Trusts’ for all schools, including academies and free schools, which bring together head teachers and governors, supported and held to account by councils, to share expertise and support self-improvement.

•Announce a reform of the current two-tier system of accountability so that councils have the power to intervene when they are not satisfied with Special Educational Needs provisions or safeguarding arrangements put in place by an academy.

• In the first Budget, allocate indicative five-year capital budgets to councils across the lifetime of the Parliament, paid into a single, local pot. This will help councils to meet the sharply increasing demand for school places and ensure every child gets a place at a good local school.

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In September 2013, Hertfordshire County Council launched Herts for Learning, a new schools company to deliver school improvement services with and for schools. Schools own 80 per cent of the company and the council owns the remainder.

The move came in response to the local authority’s changing relationship with schools, a changing financial and political context and the wish to co-produce with schools a sustainable model of school improvement support. Gillian Cawley, Assistant Director and Commissioner for Education Services, says: “We looked at all the alternatives including outsourcing and social enterprise. Given that school-to-school support is the way of the future, we decided on an option that enabled the users to own the service and the council to commission high-quality services from it.”

School-to-school support is thriving in Wigan thanks to an embedded collaborative approach. By the end of 2015 all secondary schools are expected to be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ along with most primaries, and achievement at primary and GCSE level is well above the national average. Schools work together in eight autonomous consortia to support self-improvement and share expertise (three for the secondary sector and five for the primary sector). They are accountable to a school improvement board which monitors the effectiveness of the consortia and ensures all schools are getting the right support.

Kirston Nelson, Assistant Director for Education at Wigan Council, says this shared accountability is key to the borough’s success. The system is founded on real partnership, with the council and schools working together to find the best local solutions for issues ranging from school improvement to place planning (where, for example, a consensus agreement has been reached to expand secondary schools rather than create new ones). Nelson says that the partnership has “rigour and real collective responsibility.”

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Local Education TrustsThe council role in school improvement is to support, challenge and hold schools to account for the quality of education that they provide to local children and young people.

As schools have been given ever-increasing autonomy under successive governments local authorities have had to adapt their role. Councils no longer ‘control’ schools and have no desire to do so. They believe that real improvement can only be achieved when public services are freed up to work collaboratively at a local level, focus on the needs of users and allowed to drive their own improvement.

As the case studies accompanying this report show, local authorities have adapted to the increasing autonomy of schools by working with them to establish local school-to-school improvement partnerships.

These take many forms but at their heart is a shared commitment to improving outcomes for all local children, not just those in a single school; and a belief that school-to-school improvement is the best way to achieve this. Some of the Government’s reforms have worked to make this objective more difficult. OneexampleistheconcernthatChief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw expressed in his Annual Report that some academies were becoming isolated:

“More than 2,000 academies are not part of a Multi Academy Trust [chain] and some have become isolated. Isolation can lead to underperformance. Our analysis of academies that experienced a sharp fall in inspection grade last year shows that most had not made arrangements for external support and challenge until it was too late and serious decline had set in.”

Sir Michael Wilshaw2 in his 2013/14 Annual Report

We do not believe that it is in the interests of children and young people that some schools should be able to ‘opt out’ of locally accountable arrangements to drive improvements in academic outcomes for all local children.

We want to see the partnership approach already developing in the best-performing areas embedded throughout the education system. Education Trusts should be set up in every area with a clear expectation that all schools should participate in a positive way. Trusts would operate at arm’s length from councils, but would be accountable to them.

Councils’ experience of sector-led improvement shows that legislation and top-down prescription is not the best way to support front-line improvement.

This would cut across the good work already being done by partnerships across the country and impose a ‘one-size fits all’ model mandated by Westminster.

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Democratically accountable councils and front-line professionals in schools should be allowed to develop solutions that fit local needs and priorities. So to encourage the participation of all schools in Local Education Trusts we want to seeanadditionalOfstedjudgmentonwhether a school it inspects has a positive relationship with other schools through the local Trust.

The council role in Local Education TrustsA variety of school improvement models are developing, but all the successful partnerships in the case studies have been facilitated and supported by local councils. In each case councils retain their oversight and accountability role with schools and provide challenge to the partnership and to individual schools. In many models the council’s powers of intervention are integrated into the ‘toolkit’ available to tackle school underperformance.

We want to build on the models of school-to-school improvement that are already developing and would not want to see a single model imposed on local areas.

But at a minimum we would expect:

• Alltheschoolsinanareatotakepartin the Trust – those not participating wouldbesubjecttoregularfullOfstedinspections with a specific judgment about how they are working with local schools. For schools in a Multi Academy Trust (MAT), that receive support from their sponsor, the relationship would be different from schools that use the Trust as the main form of improvement support.

• Formalpartnershiparrangementswhich include a clear and substantial role for the council in holding the trust locally accountable for its effectiveness in improving standards.

• Clearandtransparentprocessesfor risk-rating the performance of local schools and sharing timely and effective data across the Trust, including data for parents.

• Aclearseparationbetweenthefunctions of the Trust and those of the council which reflects councils’ statutory duties and formal powers of intervention and avoids duplication.

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The two London boroughs of Kingston and Richmond have more than 100 schools across a relatively small area. Most of the secondary schools are academies, as are a couple of primaries. The need for more cost-effective provision was behind a decision by the two local authorities to set up a social enterprise community interest company, Achieving for Children, to provide all children’s services across both boroughs.

The company, set up in April 2014, is wholly owned by the two local authorities. Graham Willett, Director for Education Services, says the need for financial efficiency was a key driver but they were also keen to use the opportunity to pool expertise and design better services. Kingston’s safeguarding services had been rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted but its education support arrangements were strong, so the partnership has allowed both councils to share best practice. Setting up a community interest company has also provided greater freedom in terms of operational ability.

Reform of school inspectionPeer review and peer challenge is at the heart of sector-led improvement and the LGA would like to see it given a much greater role in driving school improvement. The core function of Local Education Trusts should be to support a system for school peer review which uses local heads, senior leaders and governors to raise educational standards.

We are not proposing an additional layer of costly bureaucracy. Trusts should build on the existing partnerships that are already developing across the country. OnceaTrustisestablishedinanareaamuch more light-touch inspection process would be possible.

An increasing reliance on the judgment of serving frontline professionals should replace top-down inspection as the main way to reassure parents about school standards. This needs to be supported by easily understandable performance data about each school, designed with parents in mind.

Ofstedwouldtheninspectthesupportandchallenge provided by the Trust and the validity of the judgments being made about schools, rather than itself carrying out an inspection of every school in the area. This could include a full inspection of a sample the Trust’s schools, or of those causing most concern, to provide further reassurance.

Any school in the area choosing not to co-operate with the Trust would be subject to a separate inspection which would focus on the external support and challenge that it was receiving to improve standards and its collaboration with other schools. If these schools were part of a MAT, they would be subjecttoinspectionthroughregularOfstedinspections of MATs.

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Liverpool is involved in peer challenge programmes with other local authorities across the North West region through which they review the effectiveness of each other’s school improvement services. Sue Shinkfield, Head of School Improvement for the council says: “It is really useful for our own judgements about how effective we are to be challenged. It also assists authorities to be prepared in the event of a formal inspection of their school improvement arrangements.”

Council powers of intervention in underperforming schoolsCouncils should have the same intervention powers for all the schools that educate children in their areas, including oversight of the spending by schools of billions of pounds of public money.

This should include powers to intervene in academies and free schools causing concern. Without this, two-tier accountability will continue to allow some schools to escape local scrutiny of their educational and financial performance.

Councils’ powers of intervention in schools must also be freed from the unnecessary restrictions put on them over the years by successive governments to ‘protect’ schools from interference by councils. These stop them from acting quickly and decisively to nip problems in the bud in the interest of local children and parents.

The only power that councils can currently use without reference to Whitehall or Ofstedandwithoutarightof appealfrom underperforming schools is to remove financial delegation – the power of governors and staff to set the budget and spend money. All the rest of their intervention powers are heavily qualified:

• Councilscanissuemaintainedschoolswith a ‘notice to improve’ but governing bodies are allowed to appeal against thenoticetoOfsted.Thiscanintroducea delay of eight weeks or longer and willoftentriggeraninspectionbyOfsted– which takes responsibility out of the hands of the local council.

• Councilscanappointadditionalgovernors or direct an underperforming school to work with another school, but only if it issues a ‘notice to improve’ and, if theschoolappeals,Ofstedhasupheldthe notice.

• CouncilshavetoapplytotheDepartment for Education to remove the entire governing body and replace it with an Interim Executive Board (IEB), evenif OfstedhasratedaschoolasInadequate.

• Councilshavenopowersovertheappointment or removal of school governors. They only have the power to propose and remove a single local authority governor and the school can refuse to agree to appoint the person nominated by the council.

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TheGovernmentandOfstedhavecriticisedcouncils for not using their formal powers of intervention often enough. If councils are to make greater use of their powers, they must have the same powers in relation to all local schools and they must be able to use them quickly and decisively, without the need to ask permission from Whitehall andOfsted.

Financial scrutiny of schools is a vital council function. The council role is to challenge schools and hold them to account for what they do with millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. However good Education Funding Agency (EFA) or Whitehall officials are, they cannot reasonably be expected to keep an eye on what hundreds of highly-paid public servants are doing in schools and parents have every right to expect better.

In particular, schools under pressure to meet targets can be reluctant to admit when things are beginning to go wrong.Recent reports by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the Commons Education Select Committee3 have raised serious concerns about the DfE and EFA oversight of the financial affairs in academies and free schools.

TheNAO’sComptrollerandAuditorGeneral also recently issued an adverse opinion on the DfE’s accounts after concluding it failed to meet Parliament’s accountability requirements on academy spending.

The DfE routinely issues statements to the effect that financial oversight arrangements for academies are “more robust than in council-run schools”. However, whatever the formal requirements, councils proactively check the draft budgets and outturn for maintained schools.

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We are concerned that the DfE and EFA do not have the capacity and local knowledge to make similar checks on academy financial statements and have to rely on whistleblowers before concerns are picked up.

Councils already oversee the finances of the more than 80 per cent of schools that they still maintain. They are best placed to also exercise day-to-day oversight of the financial affairs of academies and responsibility for such oversight should be returned to councils in the light of the concerns expressed by the Select Committee and PAC.

Councils require the vast majority of schools to submit accounts at the financial year end, rather than the academic year end, which is a key reason the Auditor General refused to certify the DfE accounts. Putting academies on the same financial basis as maintained schools will also allow them to maintain smaller balances as risks are reduced and shared by strong local authority oversight.

This will ensure that scarce public money is used to improve educational outcomes for children and young people, rather than sitting in academy bank accounts.

Protecting the interests of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged pupilsWe are concerned that the interests of the most vulnerable children are not well served by the current two-tier system of accountability.

This means that councils have no powers to intervene in academies to require them to admit vulnerable children; ensure adequate provision for those with Special Educational Needs and disabilities (SEND); or if they are unhappy with safeguarding arrangements in an academy. Decisions about the needs of individual academy pupils now have to be taken by bureaucrats in Whitehall or by DfE-appointed academy proprietors.

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Oneexampleisthepowertodirectaschoolto admit a particular child. In most cases if a child is excluded from a school, another local school will agree to admit the child for a new start on the basis that other schools will return the favour with any children they exclude. This system works well and in most cases academies play their full part.

If the system for local agreement breaks down, a council can direct a maintained school to admit a pupil and it must comply. However, if the school is an academy, councils have to apply to the EFA to make the direction.

The EFA has taken this opportunity to second-guess local decision-making and of the 76 requests for directions to admit since April 2012 the EFA has agreed to just five. So an academy refusing to admit a vulnerable child has a more than 90 per cent chance of avoiding having to do so.

Another area of concern is the inability of councils to require academies to improve the quality of education provided to children with SEND. The Children and Families Act 2014 puts councils in the lead role of ensuring that Education, Health and Care plans of SEND children are implemented.

But councils have no powers to intervene in an academy if they are not satisfied with the SEND provision. They have to raise their concerns with the EFA or move the child to another school.

Finally, although councils are responsible for dealing with individual cases where there are child protection concerns in an academy, it is the responsibility of academy proprietors and EFA if there are concerns about the overall arrangements for safeguarding children.

It is simply unacceptable that decisions about the most vulnerable children and young people should be taken away from councils in this way.

Councils have a particular responsibility to protect the interests of these children, so decisions about individual children should be taken locally, based on local knowledge of children, families and schools. We want to see a return to councils of the powers to direct an academy to admit an excluded pupil and intervene where they are not satisfied with the Special Educational Needs provision or safeguarding arrangements in an academy.

There is a well-evidenced link between poverty and disadvantage and low educational attainment. The latest figures show just 37 per cent of disadvantaged children achieved five good GCSEs, including English and Maths, compared to 63 per cent of all other pupils.4 Closing the gap in attainment between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers must be a priority for Local Education Trusts.

Councils should have a clear role in holding schools to account for their success in improving the life chances of the most disadvantaged pupils and making sure they have fair access to the best local schools.

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In Devon there is some concern that a more autonomous and fragmented education landscape could impact on the most vulnerable children. Although ‘statemented’ children, children in care and those on free school meals are very visible in the system, of greater concern are children in highly mobile families and those with behavioural or emotional difficulties who are vulnerable to being pushed out or refused admission. If a child is excluded, the funding should follow them. However, some academies have been reluctant to pay when billed, as an agreement to passport funding with the excluded child was not in their original transfer agreement.

Dawn Stabb, the council’s School Improvement Strategy Manager, says: “As the educational landscape becomes more diverse, the local authority has to be more vigilant in respect of these vulnerable children. However, the further removed we are from the data on them, the more difficult it is to establish where they are, how well they are doing and how they are being supported.”

Making sure there are sufficient school placesCouncils have a unique responsibility to make sure there is a school place for every local child and young person. No other local or national body shares with them the duty “to secure sufficient primary and secondary schools5”, although they increasingly have to work with schools to deliver the 880,000 extra places that will be needed by 20236.

The current system for distributing schools capital is a classic case of Whitehall fragmentation, bureaucracy and central control. The capital pot is first divided into three, with separate allocations for rebuilding schools, school maintenance and new school places.

The money is then allocated through a variety of central and local programmes with different bureaucratic reporting requirements for each. Maintenance funding is split again into separate pots for council-maintained schools, faith schools and academies.

In April 2011 the Government commissioned the independent James Review of schools capital which found that “the capital allocation process is complex, time consuming, expensive and opaque.”7 A key recommendation was:

“The Department should avoid multiple funding streams for investment that can and should be planned locally, and instead apportion the available capital as a single, flexible budget for each local area.”

This recommendation for a single capital pot for each area must be implemented if councils are to meet the challenge of providing new school places and repairing and rebuilding crumbling schools.

In the last Spending Review a £21 billion schools capital allocation for 2015-2020 was announced and the Government now needs to make a corresponding five-year allocation to local areas, paid into local capital pots. This will allow councils to plan ahead with schools to meet local needs and priorities and use scarce capital resources flexibly and efficiently.

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The majority of secondary schools are now academies and increasing demand will feed through to the secondary sector from 2015. But councils are unable to require academies to expand to meet local need.

We would hope that the expansions needed can be achieved by negotiation with schools, but councils must have the same powers to require academies to expand as they do for maintained schools.

The hands of councils are further tied by top-down central control in building new schools, which have to be opened as academies, with all the final decisions about proposals and sponsors resting with the Secretary of State for Education. Decision-making on the provision of new schools must be returned to local level, as it was prior to the Academies Act 2011.

This includes the flexibility to deliver whatever new type of school is required to contribute to the local education offer, including the option of establishing community schools if that is the locally preferred option.

Where academies are preferred, decisions about sponsors should be taken locally to meet the needs and wishes of local parents and communities.

The process for establishing and funding free schools is entirely run from Whitehall, although councils are increasingly trying to engage potential free school sponsors to make sure that new schools are established in areas of need. If the free schools programme continues following the General Election, councils should have the role of judging and approving free school proposals to ensure that new free schools are established where they are needed to support councils in their place planning duties.

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Gill Weston, Assistant Director for Education, Learning & Skills, says Leicestershire County Council has deliberately moved from ‘control’ to ‘influence’. She says: “We have a relatively loose self-improvement system that is growing and developing without us controlling it, but we have clear protocols so that we can tighten it if we need to.” The council is currently looking across the various school networks to identify what is working well and which schools may need to be linked into stronger partnership arrangements. “The aim is to develop an accurate picture of effective partnership working, including where schools are linking across county boundaries.”

The vast majority of schools in Brighton & Hove are still local authority maintained – all but five of its 73 state-funded schools. There are three academies (two secondary and one primary) and two free schools (a Christian secondary and a bilingual primary school). Another secondary school recently consulted on becoming an academy but the governors voted not to go ahead with it.

The council is developing the notion of the ‘City Child’ as a reminder that all children should have access to good quality education and services, wherever in the city they live, and is encouraging schools to work together to achieve this. It is adapting its role in the new educational landscape and there is a strong emphasis on schools taking responsibility for their own improvement.

In terms of GCSE performance, the direction of progress in Sandwell’s schools is positive, with the gap to national performance narrowing, but there is no clear link to show that becoming an academy guarantees Ofsted success. In fact, recent inspection outcomes demonstrate a decline in the proportion of good or better secondary schools here, despite the high proportion of academies.

As a result, the council is changing the way it works with academies. Previously there was a ‘hands off’ approach which left responsibility for academy improvement with the DfE. Now, the council is adopting a new and far more challenging protocol for working with academies, sponsors, the regional school commissioner and the DfE. Most academies and sponsors engage well with the council and have welcomed this new way of working together.

CASE STUDIES

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Most schools in North East Lincolnshire are academies – all secondaries, special schools and pupil referral units and 68 per cent of primary schools. Some are recent convertors while others have been academies since 2007. They include stand-alone and sponsored academies and members of multi-academy trusts. North East Lincolnshire Council has seen the education landscape shift dramatically towards autonomy; as a result it has developed a very different relationship with all local schools.

Academies here recognise the council’s ongoing role and responsibility for all local children, and so far they have been keen to maintain a strong relationship and build new working relationships. However, these relationships are built on mutual trust and respect rather than formal obligation.

A range of forums and meetings are facilitated by the local authority with full representation and/or engagement from local schools, academies and colleges where appropriate. Roz Danks, Head of Access Services, says: “No matter how autonomous the schools are or how our role changes, we have to work together for the benefit of all of our children and young people.”

Oxfordshire has identified a need for more robust processes at a national level to identify effective sponsors. There have been situations where a sponsor on the approved list has turned out to be less than ideal, and the council does not have the resources to take on due diligence that the government should be exercising.

Roy Leach, the council’s School Organisation & Planning Manager says: “I did not get the impression that the Department for Education was well set up for approving recommended sponsors in a timely fashion. With a number of new schools needed in Oxfordshire over the next few years this is an important issue for us.”

Although not an education authority, Tamworth Borough Council takes a broader interest in the local community than simply providing core services. The borough has a strong place-shaping agenda and is working with partners to deliver on a range of key priorities, which include improving educational attainment.

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Wandsworth has successfully met the demand for additional school places, both by expanding existing schools and promoting new schools through its innovative Academies and Free Schools Commission. This encourages would-be providers to meet with the council and develop robust proposals which can then be successfully endorsed to the DfE. Wandsworth has also worked actively to secure sites, reflecting this Conservative council’s robust approach to encouraging diversity and choice of schools for parents while ensuring that every child has access to high quality education, whatever the provider.

As a result of this work, three new primary free schools opened in 2013 and two primary academies will open by 2016. Wandsworth took the lead in creating one of the free schools in a council-owned building in Tooting, securing sponsorship from a local secondary school, which has been a success. Although the council is only consulted by the DfE once a free school has been approved, it has worked closely with all the free schools as they developed their bids and was confident in the quality of the proposals as a result. Being involved at an early stage also helped to ensure that the schools are in the right location and meet demand for places.

In Peterborough not all academy conversions have led to improvement. One primary academy was previously outstanding but unfortunately, two years after converting, went into special measures. The council believes it has a responsibility to intervene as part of its duty to promote “high standards and fulfilment by every child of their educational potential,” outlined in the Education Act 1996, so two senior officers joined the governing body to help turn the school around. Peterborough’s longstanding good relationship with all schools means its academies are happy to accept challenge and will approach the council for feedback on their improvement plans. On occasion the council has issued academies with warning notices, even though they have no formal status. It will approach the DfE and local MP if there are grounds for concern.

In 2014, an Ofsted inspection of Peterborough’s arrangements for supporting school improvement noted that its strategies were “bearing positive results”, such as a significant improvement in GCSE results. The inspectors recognised the key role the council has played in attracting and working with academy sponsors. Jonathan Lewis, Assistant Director for Children’s Services, says the challenge is to sustain this improvement and move up the league tables. “We are happy for schools to be autonomous but we will still provide leadership, an approach that is well received by all our schools.”

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NOTES1. http://www.publications.parliament.

uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmeduc/258/258.pdf

2. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/384707/Ofsted_Annual_Report_201314_Schools.pdf

3. See note 1 above and http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/public-accounts-committee/news/report-sshool-oversight-and-intervention/

4. http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/about/what-we-do-and-why/

5. Education Act 1996 Section 14(1)

6. TheOfstedannualreport2014,p22:https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/384699/Ofsted_Annual_Report_201314_HMCI_commentary.pdf

7. https://www.education.gov.uk/consultations/downloadableDocs/James%20Reviewpdf.pdf

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