17. Analysis of the international evidence also demonstrates that, alongside school autonomy, accountability for student performance is critical to driving educational improvement.

18. It is vital that schools should be accountable to parents for how well pupils do, and how taxpayers’ money is spent. Clear performance information and good comparative data are positive features of our system. But we must do better. Greater transparency in the funding system will mean that every parent will know the money which is allocated for their child’s education, the amount spent by local government, and the amount available to the school. Comparisons between different schools and local authority areas will drive higher performance and better value for money.

19. Clear accountability measures are vital if we are to identify good practice in the best schools and identify those schools where students are being let down. But existing measures of performance encourage ‘gaming’ behaviour – with primary schools over-rehearsing tests and secondary schools changing the curriculum to embrace ‘equivalent’ qualifications which count heavily in performance tables. 

20. So, we will:

  • Put far more information into the public domain, so that it is possible to understand a school’s performance more fully than now.
  • Place information on expenditure, including the amount allocated per pupil, online.
  • Reform performance tables so that they set out our high expectations – every pupil should have a broad education (the English Baccalaureate), a firm grip of the basics and be making progress.
  • Institute a new measure of how well deprived pupils do and introduce a measure of how young people do when they leave school.
  • Reform Ofsted inspection, so that inspectors spend more time in the classroom and focus on key issues of educational effectiveness, rather than the long list of issues they are currently required to consider.
  • Establish a new ‘floor standard’ for primary and secondary schools, which sets an escalating minimum expectation for attainment. 
  • Make it easier for schools to adopt models of governance which work for them – including smaller, more focused governing bodies, which clearly hold the school to account for children’s progress.