The Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has today written to local authorities about their role in identifying underperforming schools that would benefit from becoming academies. You can read the text of this letter below:
Improving underperforming schools and the Academies programme
It’s been six months since the new Coalition Government was established as a partnership between two parties determined to work together in the national interest to resolve the big problems our country faces.
Since the Government was formed, we’ve set to work to restore our finances, reduce the massive deficit we inherited and put public services on a sustainable footing. We have started to reform our political system to make it fairer, more accountable and more transparent, embarked on reforms of education, health and welfare to promote social justice and taken steps to accelerate economic growth by improving vocational training, investing in science and lifting the bureaucratic burden on business.
Our reform programme is driven by two principles shared across the coalition parties. We believe in shifting power down from central Government to the lowest possible level – to local authorities, schools, mutuals and co-ops, GP consortia, community groups, families and individuals. And alongside this power shift we believe in setting policy with a determined eye on the long-term. Whether it's reforming higher education, taking radical action on energy efficiency or investing more in pre-school learning for our two-year-olds the Government believes in a horizon shift, where tough decisions are taken now so the country can enjoy a more sustainably prosperous future.
These big changes have only been made possible by working in partnership. And as Education Secretary, I am only too well aware that the reforms I am introducing depend on working in partnership with you.
If we are to raise attainment in all our schools, turn round underperforming schools where students have been poorly served for years, close the gap between rich and poor and make opportunity more equal, we need to work at every level to accelerate the pace of change.
Local authorities have a central role to play. The services you provide are critical to our shared mission of giving every child, and young person, the best possible start in life. From the support given in the earliest years, through Sure Start and other settings, to the effective policing of admissions rules to guarantee fair access for all students; from the expertise required to support children with special educational needs to the challenge which underperforming schools require to improve, local authorities are our essential partners in the fight to extend every child’s opportunities.
I am grateful for all the support, advice and encouragement I have received from colleagues in local government, councillors from all parties and officials at every level, and the Schools White Paper we plan to publish later this year will reflect the conversations I have had with local government colleagues as well as outline new and exciting ways of working together.
Increased autonomy for local authorities
As we shift power downwards, that means the potential for the creative use of greater autonomy on the part of those who lead both schools and local authorities.
We propose to give local authorities progressively greater freedoms as they become strategic delivery partners. At the moment there are countless targets, onerous inspection regimes and a stultifying culture of compliance, with a proliferation of ring-fences, an overkill of regulations and a burgeoning thicket of guidance. All of these centrally-driven interventions have made government less local and we are stripping them away.
By removing comprehensive area assessment and ending local area agreements, we have begun to remove the bureaucratic burdens that have been applied by central government to local government.
Today I am going a step further to liberate local authorities by announcing the ending of statutory requirements on local authorities to set and then police a whole range of externally imposed performance targets on schools and Early Years settings.
Instead, local authorities will be able to develop their own plans to improve the quality of Early Years provision. And you will be free to develop new and innovative ways of supporting the vulnerable across your local areas. With the additional resources we are making available for the education of the poorest two-year-olds, the schooling of all poorer children and early intervention to help those most in need, you will have the funding, and the freedom, to make a real difference.
Sharper accountability for underperforming schools
As well as granting local authorities greater autonomy, the Coalition Government is also making good its commitment to grant schools greater autonomy. I am grateful for the constructive way in which local authorities have worked to ensure we can offer all schools the promise of greater control over their destiny.
But with greater freedom must come sharper accountability. And one of my personal priorities is ensuring we devote particular energy to turning round the performance of our most challenging schools.
We all have a duty to ensure there are minimum standards of performance through the school system. It can’t be acceptable to have so many schools in which two-thirds of children fail to secure five good GCSEs. Minimum standards at GCSE have risen in recent years, in line with the increased aspirations of parents and communities. Those school leaders and local authorities who have driven the fastest improvements deserve special credit.
But given the quickening pace of school improvement across the globe, I believe it's now essential that we demonstrate that we are stepping up our reform programme.
I will therefore be finalising details of new floor standards shortly, for inclusion in my forthcoming Schools White Paper. These will apply from January 2011, when we have the verified and final summer 2010 examination data.
In setting new standards I want to be clear that we are determined to tackle underperformance, but I want to avoid the errors of the past which meant some felt unfairly stigmatised. That is why we will be offering support first. On top of the pupil premium, and in addition to other financial support for those in greatest need, I have announced the creation of a new education endowment fund worth £110 million. Local authorities should be among those bidding to use this additional money to raise attainment in our most challenging schools.
We will identify the schools in the most challenging circumstances in the fairest and most rigorous way possible. The measures we use will recognise the need for schools to improve both their levels of attainment and the progress they make with their pupils.
Academy sponsors and underperforming schools
Central to our approach to school standards, especially in tackling the most significant areas of underperformance, will be our Academies programme. I want now to set out further details of our strengthened commitment to use the Academies programme to help the most in need, in advance of the white paper.
The Academies programme has helped enormously in raising standards in schools across the country. While we have rightly given a great deal of focus over recent months to the new opportunities for high-performing schools to convert to academies so they can use their freedoms to help others, that priority is matched by our commitment to sponsored academies as the best solution to intractable underperformance in maintained schools.
With your support we can go further. I want to expand the programme in three important areas. First, we should be looking to spread the experience of academies into the primary sector. Second, the central role of some academies in federations of schools and more extended networks is demonstrating the potential for academies developed through clusters of schools within a local area. And most important of all, too many underperforming schools that were above the minimum threshold we inherited have not received sufficient attention and support.
I want the Department to work with sponsors and LAs to consider solutions to a wider range of underperforming schools. I have been encouraged by my conversations with many local authorities which have confirmed the potential for further progress. I would like LAs to consider more schools for academy status where both attainment and pupil progression are low and where schools lack the capacity to improve themselves.
In particular I want to focus our shared attention on how to improve schools where
- attainment is low and pupils progress poorly
- the most recent Ofsted judgement is that the school is eligible for intervention or is merely satisfactory (the latter is included to reflect wider issues in the school such as its capacity to improve or in key areas such as leadership and governance)
- there is a record of low attainment over time – whether or not the most recent results have crossed a minimum threshold we should be looking at whether the previous results indicate those increases are sustainable
- pupils in secondary schools achieve poorly compared to schools with similar intakes.
The minimum standards on attainment and progression will be set out in the white paper. But these should be regarded as guidelines, not rigid criteria. Where schools fall outside these benchmarks but LAs consider that schools would still benefit from the involvement of sponsors, I would encourage LAs to make proposals for the conversion of those schools.
However, where schools are facing challenges across the board, decisive action is clearly needed.
Some of the most successful academy sponsors have been deepening their relationships with LAs and with groups of schools, to consider how they might bring new solutions to other underperforming schools without the initial involvement of the Department.
I have actively encouraged sponsors to work directly with LAs in this way.
Equally, we are seeing an increasing number of LAs proposing the development of new academies and making links directly with sponsors, which I also very much welcome. Officials from the Department will continue to support and facilitate the brokering of new academies between schools, LAs and sponsors. I see this as a continuation of the collaborative approach that has been fostered over the years to secure the replacement of such schools with academies. I very much want that partnership approach to continue.
For some years we have also had powers on the statute book for the Secretary of State to intervene directly in failing schools. The new Academies Act enables me to make an Academy Order in respect of any school that is eligible for intervention: this includes specifically schools that Ofsted has judged to require special measures or significant improvement, or which have failed to respond to a valid warning notice.
I will be ready to use this power in the months ahead where I judge that academy status is in the best interests of an eligible school and its pupils, and where it has not been possible to reach agreement on a way ahead with the LA or the school or both. Of course, I would hope that I do not need to use these powers extensively as I fully expect LAs to use their own extensive intervention powers to bring about change in poorly performing schools that are failing to improve. But where there is a lack of decisive action or a reluctance to consider the necessary academy solution, then I will not hesitate to act.
Officials in my department will be talking both to LAs and to sponsors to identify the best opportunities for progress.
I wanted to conclude by thanking you for your efforts and as ever, I welcome your views on the best way to ensure standards among the lowest performing schools continue to rise.
MICHAEL GOVE
