Oral evidence: Multi-academy trusts, HC 204
Oral evidence, 12 October 2016.
Chair
Good morning and welcome to our session on what does a good multi-academy trust look like. Today we are going to be talking to Regional Schools Commissioners. We have three in the room and the purpose of this basically is to find out where the Regional Schools Commissioner system is going in connection with multi-academy trusts and their responsibilities and issues about accountability as well. So would you like to introduce yourselves? You do not necessarily need to describe what a School Commissioner is because you all have the same job, but for your region. Janet first.
Janet Renou
Yes. Janet Renou, I am the Regional Schools Commissioner for the north of England.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I am Jennifer Bexon-Smith, RSC for East Midlands and Humber.
Rebecca Clark
I am Rebecca Clark and I am the Regional Schools Commissioner for the south-west of England.
Chair
Okay, so we have a good spread there. I was born in the north-east and my constituency is in the south-west and I know the middle quite well, so we will all be able to have a connection with one of you at least. Thank you. Since the publication of our report, because we did do a fairly thorough report on the role of Regional Schools Commissioners, what changes do you think have been made to improve transparency and accountability of the system and of the Regional Schools Commissioners? Janet?
Janet Renou
One of the things that we are doing now is publishing more of our work. We are publishing our head teacher board minutes now and we are working to put more things in the public domain. One of the other things that we have done now is have more accountability with the National Schools Commissioner working with us and overseeing what we are doing.
Chair
So does Sir David meet you on a fairly regular basis, either as individuals or as a group?
Janet Renou
He does. We meet monthly in RSC forums, but we meet regularly with Sir David Carter who comes up to our regions to have a look at what we are doing, and to work with us. We also do peer reviews of each other’s teams, so that has been very useful to have a look at what we are doing across the teams.
Chair
Okay. Jennifer, do you have anything to add there?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Just in terms of the transparency, of course what we have published is the decision-making framework, which I do not think previously has been published, and also of course the roles and responsibilities of RSCs and details related to conflict of interest. Those are the things we have tried to do.
Rebecca Clark
The only thing that I would add is that our roles are really outward-facing, so a large part of transparency is how effectively we communicate with the system. I have been in post for just about five months now, and I have undertaken 162 external engagements during that time, and that ranges from conversations with head teachers, visits to academies, speaking at events, conducting MAT review meetings, and a large part of that is making sure that we get consistent messaging and share as openly as we can the way that we are hoping to work with the system both now and into the future.
Chair
What is your relationship like with the local authorities that are in action in your various regions? Janet?
Janet Renou
Very good. We work with them very closely because together we are looking out for the children in our care. Possibly the biggest meeting is after the examination results when we look through the outcomes of our schools in our region, and then following that we keep in close contact and local authorities, if they have concerns about academies, will contact me. If I have concerns or I am doing something with a particular academy I will let the local authority know. We work quite closely.
Chair
Any other points?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I would only say that we have a protocol. We meet with the local authorities at least once a term as a minimum and then ourselves or officials meet with them on a more regular basis. It does vary depending on the political complexion of the local authority in terms of where they sit, but I have very positive relationships with the vast majority of the ones that I work with. Some of them have been working with us very closely on looking at clustering, how best we can make the multi-academy trust system work.
Rebecca Clark
We have 16 local authorities in the south-west. One of those is the Isles of Scilly, and it is a key part of our work to be engaged with them. We are all working in the interests of children. We have different roles, but fundamentally we are all working in the interests of the same children. The other thing that we have set up is sub-regional improvement forums. Local authorities are part of those forums and that is where we look at the performance of schools maintained and academies in the round.
Chair
Thank you. What about Ofsted? Because of course they have a regional system of sorts, though they are not coterminous with your structure. Have you had relatively frequent meetings with Ofsted’s regional directors?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I meet with two regional directors because of the nature of my region and I meet with them, again, a minimum of once a term where we meet face-to-face and then it is a matter of if there are particular issues or concerns then it is a phone call and a conversation.
Chair
Is that about underperformance of schools generally or specific schools?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
It tends to be in relation to underperformance of schools where we have concerns. If I have a particular concern about a school it may be, for example, that I put an IEB in place, then I alert Ofsted to the intervention that I am taking to make sure that they understand exactly what is going on. Equally, they will ring me if they have a particular concern about an academy.
Chair
Does that apply to Janet and Rebecca?
Janet Renou
Absolutely the same, yes.
Rebecca Clark
Yes.
Chair
Do you ever get involved in Ofsted inspections of multi-academy trusts or academies?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Not directly.
Janet Renou
It is not our role.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I have been interviewed when they were doing the batch inspection of CfBT as the responsible relationship officer but that is the only point of contact I have had.
Chair
Do you think that MATs should be inspected on a rigorous basis by Ofsted?
Rebecca Clark
I think that the current position is that we look at the quality of multi-academy trusts, the quality of the individual schools within them, so the current arrangement whereby Ofsted will go and inspect individual schools seems to me to give us a really clear picture of how well those trusts are serving the interests of the children in the communities.
Chair
Any other comments?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
No. I think it is clearly something that is being reviewed I believe by the Secretary of State at the moment.
Chair
Okay. Thank you. Ian wants to ask about head teacher boards.
Ian Mearns
I am wondering whether the head teacher boards are appropriately named, because they do not seem to be staffed out with current head teachers across the board. The East Midlands current head teacher board does not have any elected head teachers on it. It has three former heads, one vacancy and three appointed people, and I think out of the total the greatest number of head teachers on any board is about half their membership. Is it appropriate to call them head teacher boards and why do we end up with a lot of former head teachers on head teacher boards? What is it specifically about former head teachers that makes them appropriate to fulfil the role of a head teacher board member?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
It is my board you are referring to.
Ian Mearns
Yours does not have any currently elected head teachers but on all of the boards across all of the regions the most number of heads on any board is four, and that makes up half the membership.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I can only talk about my particular board. Of the four elected people two of them were head teachers at that particular point when the election took place and retired in the September. Clearly they do have that expertise of being head teachers that they bring to the board. You refer to them not being head teachers. They are of course running multi-academy trusts, the other two elected members, and I have to say the primary head who was elected did not run a trust, she was a head teacher and she has just retired this September but has continued with the board. I think really what they bring is that experience and expertise of running schools. They were all former head teachers, even though they may have continued their career to become CEOs. For me, head teacher board, I suppose you can argue about the terminology, but they have all fulfilled, in my particular case, that role, so it would seem appropriate.
Ian Mearns
Across the piece, something between one-quarter and one-third of the entire school estate has converted to academy status. Are head teachers of voluntary aided or maintained schools eligible to go on to the regional boards?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I think the view at the moment is that the decisions are around conversion to an academy and dealing with schools that are converting to become an academy. It is about that journey and it is that experience and that professional expertise that we draw on within the head teacher board. At the moment I think it is entirely appropriate and proper that they are representatives of schools—
Ian Mearns
But the majority of schools out there are still maintained or voluntary aided. The majority of the schools are paid for by the public through taxation, so it seems to me what we are seeing here is that the head teachers of the majority of schools out there are being excluded from Regional Commissioners boards.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
It is about the nature of the business though, isn’t it, in terms of the decision-making. We are making decisions about academies. Those local maintained school heads have not necessarily had that experience and expertise of what it means to convert, what is involved in running an academy. That is what these people bring. Remember, we do talk to other people as well. The head teacher board is clearly the head teacher board, but our relationships are much wider than that in terms of discussions with maintained heads. We are encouraging our most successful clearly to become academies, so there is dialogue going on. They are not completely excluded from the process.
Ian Mearns
There is still a Government intention to convert all schools to academies somewhere down the line and surely therefore to be open, transparent and inclusive the Regional Schools Commissioners’ head teacher boards really should be reaching out to all schools, because it is everybody’s combined business, isn’t it, surely?
Rebecca Clark
I think there is perhaps a different way of looking at it, if I may, and that is that with any board the complementary skill set of the people on the board is going to be the thing that determines, very often, how successful they will be in providing support and challenge. One way to look at our head teacher boards as well is the balance of the skill set that we have, so do we have individuals that have expertise from the special school sector? Do we have individuals that have expertise within the diocesan sector? Do we have individuals with secondary and primary specialism? Although the elected members of the head teacher boards are drawn from academies they have all worked in maintained schools as well, so they are not exclusively representing simply that perspective.
Ian Mearns
I am sorry, Rebecca, but you seem to be implying, therefore, that the vast majority of head teachers out there who are heads of maintained and voluntary controlled schools do not have the expertise to convert their own schools towards academisation. That is what you are implying.
Rebecca Clark
No, I think what we are probably saying is that those people who have been through that journey are probably best-placed to share the insights of lessons learned.
Ian Mearns
Can I suggest therefore that around the regions the vacancies that currently exist are filled by people who are not head teachers of academies already, but who are head teachers of schools that may look towards being academies at some time in the future? That is the journey that the Government want to take us on, to convert all schools eventually to become academies, so why don’t you fill those vacancies around the regions with head teachers from maintained and voluntary aided schools?
Rebecca Clark
I think that is something that we can take back.
Janet Renou
It is something for government policy, I think.
Stephen Timms
The Secretary of State told us about the proposed growth health checks for multi-academy trusts and it has been reported that they are going to be rolled out across all trusts from January. I wonder whether that is what you are all expecting to be doing.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Not for all trusts from January. At the moment we are undergoing a pilot of I think 30 MATs taking part. There was an initial pilot of five. There are 30, and I think it will be reviewed in the new year as to the outcomes of those and the health checks are due to run in 2017. Whether it will be straightaway in January or whether it will be in September is yet to be determined, but I have to say we had somebody from a long-time head teacher board to talk us through the process. It was a trust that had experienced the initial pilot, just to get a feel of how it had worked and what it had engaged. I have to say that the feedback from the CEOs in the room who listened to it was really positive.
Stephen Timms
I would be keen for you to tell us about that, how it is likely to work out, but in terms of the timing you are saying at some point next year you will complete all these growth health checks?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Not complete them. They will come into being from next year. At the moment it is still at pilot stage. They are still refining the process, but the expectation is that the process will come into being for all trusts from 2017.
Stephen Timms
When you say it will “come into being” that means you will start making the assessments, does it? How long would you expect it to take, for you to complete growth health checks on all the multi-academy trusts in your regions?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I do not think we have a timescale yet, because it is still pilot. We have not been party directly to it, as I say. It is just something that Sir David Carter is leading on, but we do know that clearly there are particular points when a trust is looking to grow that it will be appropriate for RSCs like ourselves to commission the health check to take place. It will not be a matter of everybody going through in one tranche. It will be appropriate to where the trust is, in terms of its natural development.
Stephen Timms
Can you then just talk us through the process of how you see these checks being applied?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
As far as I understand in terms of the process there will be an experienced CEO, a finance director, a board member and a member of the trust that is being inspected, and they will have a series of five areas that they will focus on. There will be structured questions, but it will be very much about fitness for purpose to grow. It is not a pass or a fail; it is about identifying where there may be potential issues that need to be addressed before that trust is ready to go to the next stage of development.
Stephen Timms
So there will be a panel of four people, by the sound of it?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
That is what they are trialling at the moment, yes.
Stephen Timms
Put in place for each trust that is being assessed?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Yes.
Stephen Timms
The four people will have a meeting, or a series of meetings? How would it work?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
The way in which the pilot is run, it is being done over a period of time, a few days, so they have gone and visited and met with the trust and the respective members of the groups and areas that they want to look at. I think the detail will evolve and we will have clarity once the pilot is complete.
Stephen Timms
The current model is for the four individuals to meet over a period of days and at the end of that produce what exactly?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I assume that they will produce a report with recommendation about where they see the strengths and where they feel there are areas for development.
Stephen Timms
That will include a recommendation about whether that trust should be permitted to grow or not?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
To be perfectly honest I do not know. I do not know whether my colleagues know the detail of it.
Janet Renou
I think it is still in pilot, so still working through it.
Rebecca Clark
I think the sense of it is it is not a pass or fail test. The intention is that the health check informs the decision about whether or not the MAT is best placed to grow, as opposed to taking that decision as part of that process.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
It will be for the RSC ultimately to make the decision, having seen the report, as to whether it is appropriate that that trust continues to expand.
Stephen Timms
As we understand the background to this the worry has been that some multi-academy trusts have grown too quickly and therefore their performance has not been as good as everyone would have liked it to be, and schools have not improved as much as they might have done. I suppose my assumption would have been that these tests were assessing whether the trust had the capacity to grow successfully, yes or no, and that that would then have been a very decisive element in the decision about whether a particular expansion should take place.
Janet Renou
If I can come in, I think it is more developmental. I think it is reflection time, for that multi-academy trust to look at how it has grown, because at the end of it the multi-academy trust may come back to their RSC and say, “Having gone through that process we do not feel we are ready for growth. We have learned some things in going through that process and now we need to take stock and relook at our plans for the future”. We are hoping it comes from the trust, that they learn this internally and they can internalise the process that they go through. It is sort of peer-to-peer support and development as well.
Stephen Timms
I think this goes back to the former Secretary of State who came to this Committee and agreed with the Committee that multi-academy trusts should not be allowed to expand unless they had a track record of successful school improvement. That is how you see this exercise as well, is it?
Janet Renou
Yes, we still follow that.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Absolutely.
Stephen Timms
Will these growth health checks tell you whether the trust has a track record for successful school improvement?
Rebecca Clark
I think they will look at that as part of that, definitely, their track record, but they also look at it in the round. If we are focusing on how we can grow the system with care that sense of building capacity ahead of growth is really important. Part of that is making a retrospective assessment about how successful they have been in the context of school improvement so far, but part of that also is saying, “How well developed is the school improvement model for this trust and how well placed is it to support schools at different phases of development?” From my perspective drawing upon my experience as the National Director for Oasis, which is one of the largest national trusts, I think this would have been absolutely invaluable at certain phases of expansion as a tool to be able to reflect upon what we need to have in place in order to take on additional challenge. Sometimes growth can be about bringing capacity into a trust, so sometimes a converted academy joining a trust from a position of strength the growth builds capacity as opposed to stretching capacity. We have to look at each decision in the round.
Stephen Timms
Do you all agree that quite a lot of multi-academy trusts have expanded too fast?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I think there are a minority of trusts that have done that, and clearly we all know the national chains that grew very quickly in the initial years of the academies’ programme. I think it is very interesting that if you look at the breakdown of trusts within the regions, in terms of my own, 70 of our MATs are only one or two academies. 75 are between three and 10. We only have 11 that have more than 11 schools. It is making sure that we have a balanced perspective. Most of our trusts I think are in those very early stages of just developing and growing.
Stephen Timms
Yes, but you would all agree, would you, that there are a number of trusts that have expanded too fast?
Rebecca Clark
It is clear that there are examples of trusts that went through periods of quite exponential growth, but it is also true that very many of those same trusts have over the last two years certainly gone through a period of rationalisation whereby you will see regional structures developing, we will see clusters of schools bring more geographical coherence, particularly to those that have grown on a national scale. Yes, absolutely, there was a stage in the academies’ movement where there were some trusts that grew really quickly, and it was a challenge for them to have the capacity to meet the challenge of all of those schools, but equally and positively I think that the vast majority of those trusts absolutely have learned those lessons and have taken quite definitive steps to address them.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I think CfBT would be a very good example of that. They are a trust that I manage and clearly they have a national presence and they have recognised, they were obviously part of the batch inspections, but now they have moved to a much stronger cluster model. They have given up some of their more remote academies and so they have a model that will work and sustain school improvement. When they were at disparate edges across the country they could not sustain that.
Stephen Timms
Is it part of your role to ensure that a trust that is seeking to expand, and it is your decision whether they should or not, has a successful track record of school improvement?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Yes, absolutely.
Janet Renou
Yes.
Stephen Timms
A final question, if I may. The health checks that you have explained to us are being piloted at the moment, do you expect the model to be agreed and set at a national level, or do you expect to have different variations in the different regions?
Rebecca Clark
My understanding is that the variants in terms of some of the criteria and what we are looking for will be consistent nationally and the significant point is looking at the size of the trust currently and where it wants to grow to. So the criteria that you look at for a trust that is a starter trust, that has between one and five schools but is looking to grow to having between five and 15 schools, the focus of that particular health check may look at slightly different things in a more nuanced way than a trust that has perhaps 16 schools and is looking to move into a different region but nationally those parameters will be consistent.
Chair
Before I move on to re-brokering do any of you have a preference between vertical integration and horizontal integration in terms of the structure of MATs, ie, do you think that it should be just primary schools or primary and secondary? Do you have any preference?
Janet Renou
My preference is a family of schools, so we are looking at the full range from primary through to sixth form, and I think that family approach takes away the issues we have in transition. If you go into a staffroom in any school they are always talking about transition from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3 or from Key Stage 4 to sixth form, and I think if you have that family of schools the staff can work across the age range. Also for the community that is giving the chance for the community to have the one entity that they work with and they can get to know that trust and the trust can get to know the community and take the career of that child right the way through.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I would agree with Jan. I have to say I am an ex-CEO of a trust and we took on at least one of our feeder schools. We are a secondary school and that whole area of transition, planning the curriculum, was fabulous and provided a much better consistency and continuity of education for those youngsters. However, enabling those families of schools to develop sometimes in certain parts of my region is incredibly difficult and sometimes we do not have a strong secondary that is able to work with the primaries and it would not be appropriate. We have different structures developing so we have some very successful solely primary trusts flying high—Nottingham is a really good example. Equally at the other side we have strong secondary trusts and that is all they want, to develop their expertise.
Chair
But in the situation you have just described where you do not have a strong secondary school, do you try to seek out ways where you might be able to encourage a secondary school to start filling that role?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Yes, we do. Again, it depends on local context, but wherever we can facilitate the development of the family structure we will do. Sometimes we have had instances where we have some very strong primary schools that are able to support the weak secondary school. You have to look carefully at the capacity within some of the primary schools. They have to be the larger primary schools that are able to do that.
Chair
Rebecca, what is your thought on this?
Rebecca Clark
We have examples of trusts that are configured differently, which are performing well, so I do not think there is a fixed answer. The way that we configure MATs needs to serve the interests of children and children’s education flows through from nought to 19. I think what is perhaps more significant is to say however a MAT is configured, so if it is a primary-led MAT or if it is an entirely secondary-focused MAT, at that point of transition, as Janet alluded to, how is that MAT connected into so that it can support a child as they move to that next phase of their development. I think that increasingly we are breaking down some silos. There has been that sense very much, I know, among primary colleagues that we get taken over by large secondary schools, and that is one of the myths that we really want to explode. We can all point to examples where we have really strong primary MATs who are just starting to bring secondary schools in. Pedagogy flows that way much more naturally than it flows the other way. I think it is about the quality of the MAT, less so the configuration of the MAT.
Chair
Okay, thank you. Ian, rebrokering schools within MATs.
Ian Mearns
Just quickly before I go on to rebrokering, am I right in thinking—because we had this with Nicky Morgan when she was Secretary of State—that if a local authority tries to bring together schools within its area to create multi-academy trusts within its own area, if the fingerprints of the local authority are anywhere near it that those new multi-academy trusts will not be allowed to go forward?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
The rules are quite clear in terms of local authority membership of boards, basically.
Ian Mearns
I am not talking about membership; I am just talking about the local authority acting as a broker trying to bring schools together within its own family to move them forward towards becoming multi-academy trusts. I have been told explicitly, frankly, that if the fingerprints of the local authority are anywhere near the bids that those bids will not be allowed.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
It obviously depends on situations. I cannot comment on everybody’s, but I have cited Leicestershire, for example, where we worked incredibly closely with the local authority in terms of bringing schools together in successful clusters to form MATs, very much utilising the knowledge of the local authority in relation to the particular strengths of leadership that are there. That is replicated in some of the other local authorities where I work, so I do not feel familiar with the situation you are talking about.
Janet Renou
No, I do not either because I am having quite a lot of conversations with the north-east about this and the local authority talking to me about clusters that they see and the leading schools that they have in their local authorities and working with those system leaders to set up multi-academy trusts. Those discussions are going ahead now.
Ian Mearns
Janet, I think possibly you need to get yourself to the other end of the telescope because that is how they are feeling about things at the moment. That is not just my own local authority but a number of local authorities in the north-east region. I know you cover the north-east plus North Yorkshire and Cumbria, so you have a large area to cover, but at the other end of the telescope the local authorities feel as though they have to keep away from the situation. They could be rather helpful in bringing schools together in those sorts of teams.
Janet Renou
Yes, I am sorry to hear that.
Chair
Let us use your microscope on rebrokering.
Ian Mearns
When a maintained school gets a notice to improve, it goes down the route of becoming an academy, and part of your performance indicators is to help them to become an academy. When an academy gets a notice to improve, one of the jobs is to make sure that they are rebrokered to get them new leadership. A parliamentary question in 2016 revealed that of 277 academies rated as inadequate from 2010 to 2015 just 84 had been rebrokered. So 70% of the schools that did require some sort of rebrokering intervention were not being done. What are we going to do about that to help those schools that need rebrokerage, that need improvement, to get that rebrokerage?
Janet Renou
It is about, again, looking at our system leaders and the good leaders that we have in the area and getting more sponsors and more multi-academy trusts across the region.
Ian Mearns
It is not working; 70% of the schools in a five-year period were not rebrokered that needed that rebrokerage. It is not working, so do you not think in that case, rather than concentrating so much of your time on brokering maintained and VA schools to become academies, you need to look after the estate that you are already responsible for?
Janet Renou
Yes, we do do that. We work very closely—
Ian Mearns
It is not working, Janet. I am sorry, 70% of the schools that required rebrokerage had not had it in that five-year period.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Again, it depends on local context, doesn’t it? I did 35 rebrokerages last year. I still have some that I need to complete this time. Sometimes it is finding the right sponsor. Some of our more challenging schools, after all, they have failed once; trying to find a second sponsor to take them on, it has to be the right match and that is not always easy to do.
Ian Mearns
Last December, Jennifer, the Sandhill MAT was ordered to close and its schools rebrokered. Has that process been completed? Why has it taken so long?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Well, as I say, rebrokering does sometimes take time and that is about finding the right match. Of course, you also have to persuade another trust to take on a school that probably has already been brokered once. They have to carry out their due diligence and very often they will look at it and say, “It is too broken. We would not be able to take it on”.
Ian Mearns
Therefore, that kind of begs the question: isn’t that an inherent flaw in the whole system that you are overseeing? If rebrokerage for schools that are failing, which are already academised, is taking so long and is becoming so hard to get other MATs to take over those situations, isn’t that an inherent flaw in the overall system that you are overseeing?
Rebecca Clark
I think that you are speaking to what is a very real priority for all of us, which is how we build capacity in the system such that when schools go into difficulties we have timely solutions that can quickly change that for them. That is really important. Fundamentally, five, 10, 15 years from now we should have a system whereby we catch schools before they fall into that spiral of decline and our intervention is much earlier so we are not waiting until we get into a desperate situation.
Ian Mearns
The children in the schools that we are talking about do not have five, 10 or 15 years. They need the school that they are in improved around them now and they need somebody overseeing that improvement very, very quickly.
Rebecca Clark
Certainly, from the context of the south-west there were 17 rebrokerages in the south-west to date. Of the academies at the moment who we have had any concerns with, we are actively pursuing solutions to any academies that we have concerns with that could turn into rebrokerages. I do think that it is a different picture in different parts of the country. I do think that there is more capacity in certain areas. As I say, it is a really intentional piece of our work, a really big priority, how we build that capacity so it is ready to move at the point that we need schools to be supported.
Ian Mearns
I think it was Lord Nash who was trying to get London businesses to move their focus outside of London to oversee academy trusts. That is trickle-down “schoolonomics”, if you like. It might work in London and the home counties, but is it going to work in the north-east of England, the north-west of England, the East Midlands and the West Midlands, in the south-west? These are tough questions because the Government have a clear intention to move us towards a system where all schools become part of academy trusts and/or academies. It is not working now with the 6,500 that we already have. Where those schools are failing, 70% have not been rebrokered in that period. We need to get on to it.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
We also need to think that rebrokerage is our last resort. I do not know the particular schools that you are referring to, but we will have weighed up the situation whether rebrokerage is the right solution for those schools. Rebrokerage is not the only solution. There will be other things that are taking place. There will be other interventions. Very often with these schools it is about change of leadership, which is critical. That can happen so you do not rebroker that academy. You allow them time to settle it down, to sort it out, obviously with a very close watching brief. I would not want to suggest that every time there is a problem and a school gets into difficulty it has to be rebrokered. Rebrokerage is disruptive. It is disruptive to everybody, staff and pupils most importantly, so it really is our last resort to have to rebroker. I think there are other ways of doing it.
Ian Mearns
In the last analysis, what we all want to see is school improvement for the youngsters that are in those schools. It is all about the outcomes for the youngsters in those schools. It might mean rebrokerage or it might not, but I think what we all need to have is some openness and transparency to see that school improvement is taking place. In your jobs as Regional Schools Commissioners, it is your duty to oversee that and let us know what is happening.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Yes.
Chair
Just on that, obviously, Jennifer, you were talking about self-improvement or school improvement mechanisms in preference to rebrokering, in a sense, weren’t you? Is that the view that Janet and Rebecca also take?
Janet Renou
Yes. We work again with our teaching schools and teaching school alliances to see where we can broker support to bring into the schools. They are very important to us and, again, it is the system leaders that are working in the region to come in and support the work and to keep the school moving forward while we try to find a new place to put the school.
Chair
Leadership is always referred to as the key thing in school improvement. Sir Michael Wilshaw talks about that. Sir David Carter talks about that. Everybody talks about it.
Janet Renou
We all talk about that.
Chair
You talk about it. Do you think you have enough tools in the toolkit to bring about those changes in leadership where necessary?
Rebecca Clark
I think that is a really interesting question. There are three initial questions when a school gets into difficulties. The first question is: what is the quality of the leadership and does that leadership have the capacity and the vision to come up with a plan that we think is going to work? The second thing is once you have a plan, is the resource there within the multi-academy trust and, if it isn’t, how are we going to commission resource from outside of that trust to make sure that the plan is delivered? The third critical component is: is there strong enough governance to be able to hold the leaders to account for delivery of that plan? We stay across the detail of that progress for all of the schools that we are concerned about. In terms of looking at school leadership, I think that one of the things that multi-academy trusts offer is a really positive route for us to develop the leaders of tomorrow. Speaking to my own example, I joined Oasis in 2008 as a deputy principal. I became principal by 2009, moved to be a regional director, and then the national education director, before taking up this post in 2016. I can sit here as an example of how you can take somebody with leadership potential and within the context of one organisation grow and nurture that. One of the critical questions that we are asking all MATs—in the south-west we have met with all of our MATs across the course of this term; I have conducted I think 30 meetings myself already—is, “What is your succession plan? If anything happened to your CEO for whatever reason, how are you going to cover off the educational and also the corporate leadership that that trust needs to move forward?” I think that we are in a stronger position than ever to be able to do that really intentionally.
Chair
You are effectively making the case for MATs to be the succession planning structure for the schools and of the MAT?
Rebecca Clark
I think that they offer different mechanisms to do that. The best MATs have a really coherent talent development plan and a career development structure. One of the questions that you would go and test in the best MAT is to stop any leader or teacher and say, “How, because you are part of this organisation, do you feel you are personally being developed?” Because they are one entity there is a scale and there is opportunity to move people to experience different contexts and different experiences. Yes, I think we are in a much stronger position than we may have been five years ago in this context.
Chair
Okay, thank you. Any other comments before I move on to Lucy and MAT expansion?
Lucy Allan
We have already talked a little bit around MAT growth, but I wonder if you could comment on some of the previous evidence that we have had to this Committee, which has suggested that slow expansion results in the most successful MATs. Given that there is a need for significant MAT growth, how do we manage that to ensure that we reach success? Could I start with you, Rebecca? It is this contradiction, in effect, between the need to move forward rapidly and the evidence that suggests a cautious, gradual approach is more successful.
Rebecca Clark
I think that we are in a space where we have to look at the whole of our regions and consider how we are intentionally designing the multi-academy trust landscape so that we build capacity. If you look in the south-west, we have 600 schools that are rural schools. We have the highest proportion of rural schools in the country. Finding solutions to build capacity on the reaches of Exmoor is a very different challenge from looking at how you build capacity in and around Bristol. We can look at the time that it takes and consider growth in terms that a MAT is ready to grow when it has got to a certain position or its schools are in a certain phase, but I think we have an opportunity, because we see the whole of the system in our regions, to prioritise growth according to where we think the greatest need is. There is absolutely no doubt that steady growth within a MAT is the most sensible way to move forward if for no other reason than the best MATs have a clear sense of the consistent principles that they adhere to. They need to be really clear about those things that are working effectively before there can be a disciplined understanding of those things that can work at scale and be replicated. So, absolutely, but I think that the solution to the growth of individual MATs and that being timely and sensible is part of a wider picture as to how we grow capacity across the system as a whole.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Yes, I would not disagree with what Rebecca has said. We have worked very hard within our region looking at this whole area of new and growing. Last year we ran a whole series of workshops for our trust to come along just to share best practice. They were run by the practitioners to talk about these critical points in growth. At which point do you become financially secure, particularly for groups of primary schools where if they are very small you have to reach a certain number of students to be able to have a strong financial plan? So, just trying to share the expertise and the experience of the successes and the failures, because sometimes where trusts have gone wrong you learn much more from that. Those sessions, as I say, we ran right through from September to April and we had over 70 people attending every session. I think that shows there is a real appetite for sharing that knowledge and that expertise to know how to grow and grow effectively.
Lucy Allan
Is it about the wide geographical spread or insufficient support structures that make the failure? Is that your experience?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
The key for failure, and we have already said it, is poor leadership. We have got much sharper in terms of our expectations of when trusts come forward and they put their structures together. We are much better at interrogating what the leadership looks like, what the governance structure is, what is important about school improvement, what capacity they have there. Developing that growth model is about the balance. At which point can a trust take on a more challenging school? At which point do they need to develop capacity by taking on good and outstanding schools? It is a real balancing act and it is not an exact science.
Lucy Allan
It can be done in areas with a wide geographical spread, you are saying, with the right leadership and judgment?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
It can if they have a cluster model. First and foremost, we always look for geographical clustering because we know that to have a school within at least an hour’s travelling distance you can get genuine collaboration. You can move staff around. You can go to a meeting at the end of the school day. If it is three hours away, people are not going to do that. Geographical clustering is absolutely critical to growth.
Lucy Allan
Are we talking about the number of schools within a MAT or are we talking about total pupil size, and is that relevant?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Total pupil size I think is very important because that is obviously what leads to financial viability. We do tend to talk about numbers of schools as well as numbers of pupils. We have to use both, to be perfectly honest, yes.
Lucy Allan
Janet, do you want to add anything?
Janet Renou
Yes. I would just add that one of the things that we are encouraging some of our strong trusts to do is to take a good or outstanding school in the region that we need the sponsors to come in. They create capacity by taking another good or outstanding school that joins the trust. Then it gives them a capacity in that region to grow another hub. One of the other things we are doing in supporting new CEOs is encouraging that they go on the new CEO course that has been developed and putting our CEOs through that, and also encouraging them to work together. As my colleagues have said, we have our new trusts working together and working with some of our experienced trusts to take them through their experiences.
Lucy Allan
Would you say that the DfE is going too fast in terms of expansion?
Janet Renou
One of the things that we are doing now is slowing it down because we are looking at quality. If I can add on to what Jenny has just said, we are taking more time for each MAT that comes in to look now. If they come in and the material is not there and the names are not there on the trust, we are wanting to go back and make sure that we know the people that they are pulling together to lead those trusts. We are looking for quality now so that each trust that comes forward has the quality of the people in it.
Ian Mearns
I am sorry, Janet, I really do not want to be nit-picking but that kind of implies that we have gone too fast and there was not always quality before.
Janet Renou
No, I was asked are we pushing forward. All I am saying is we are looking at quality.
Rebecca Clark
I think also the multi-academy trust movement is relatively young. We are still relatively embryonic and we have been really clear in saying that there were some trusts that grew too fast, but equally the vast majority of those have learned those lessons and are now structured in a much more pragmatic way to serve the interests of their young people. Going forward, in terms of that pace of growth, I think that what we are seeing now is that we are working in that development phase. When a school or a MAT first comes forward to our officials and says, “We are considering this particular opportunity. We would like to grow in this sense”, then it might take longer in that development phase before it ever gets to the head teacher board because we want to be working with trusts in a much more proactive way, asking all of those questions that we have learnt from the lessons of the past to avoid those pitfalls re-emerging.
Chair
Okay, we are going to move on to Marion and she is going to talk about basically your structure.
Marion Fellows
Good morning, everyone. Is Sir David Carter still planning to take control of the largest trusts, those with 30 or more schools? What implications will this have for the RSC regions?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Sir David has the responsibility for overseeing the nine largest trusts, the national trusts—not the National Trust but the national trusts—and the way in which we operate that is he meets regularly obviously with the CEOs and we work through David. We have a communication and we have a weekly return if we have met with other members of the trust so that we make sure that we each know what is being said and share our intelligence. We as RSCs usually work through their regional directors, so we still meet with them. We still obviously discuss schools within our region that are underperforming, but any letters, any communications with the trusts, are always signed jointly between Sir David and ourselves. If we have concerns and I say I want to write a letter to whoever, then he will see that and sign it as well. It is very much joined up, but because of their national nature he is able to oversee the whole piece.
Marion Fellows
Okay. Would you like to add something?
Rebecca Clark
Yes. Drawing upon my experience of being in one of those national trusts quite recently, I think it is a really welcome move. Instead of having six or seven or eight individual conversations, to have one single point of contact and David to hold that relationship and to be considering growth in the context of a national perspective is really useful. He has that strategic relationship. He will be working with the chairs of those trusts and CEOs of those trusts. We are really clear that our responsibility is still for the children in the individual academies within our region. If we have any sort of concern in the context of individual academies, then we will speak directly to the people who are the regional directors within those trusts. It is working effectively. We have regular updates. We communicate regularly. It works both ways. Certainly, the conversations that I have had with the national trusts, their impression is it is working well for them and our impression is that it is working from our perspective as well.
Chair
Doesn’t that logic apply also to a trust that might straddle two regions fairly comprehensively?
Rebecca Clark
It does, and we do exactly the same thing. We have named responsibility for trusts that are cross-regional. There is one lead RSC who will fulfil the equivalent of Sir David’s role with the national trust and then we will work together in the context of individual academies.
Marion Fellows
Okay. How would you need to adapt if there were to be a move towards a fully academised system?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Obviously, we have recently had quite a change in terms of our structure. We have moved from just having a separate RSC office and a regional team to merging the two together. We have a significant amount of resource, I am pleased to say, at the moment. Clearly, if there were a change to a programme of full academisation over a relatively short period of time, then we would have to review resources. At the moment, I think we are well resourced for what we are being expected to deliver.
Janet Renou
Our offices have grown from when we started, when we just had the six officials working with us, and now we are up to a much larger size and able to cope with the workload that we have on, and two deputy directors now working to us, which have helped to take on the workload.
Rebecca Clark
All I can say is in five months the team that I joined at the beginning of May had eight people in it and today we have 49 full-time equivalents and closer to 60 in terms of headcount. We have had an expansion of our resource in order to meet the expansion in the scale of the work that we need to undertake.
Marion Fellows
You have all fully talked about the increase in staff, etc., you have had. As your role expands and you recruit even more staff, how will your offices differ from those of local authorities who are constituted at present?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Well, quite differently, really. I am not overfamiliar with how local authorities are structured as such, but the functions that local authorities have traditionally held we do not hold or would not hold all those functions. For example, I am thinking about school improvement. We commission groups for school improvement but we do not have a whole raft of advisers. We sometimes utilise consultants when needed. I think the structure is different in terms of what we need to do and what we deliver.
Rebecca Clark
There is one fundamental difference and that is that it is our role to hold the chairs of trusts to account for the performance of schools. As trusts expand and get larger, the accountability for the performance of the schools within their trust, that is where it rests. A significant relationship for us is that relationship with the chair or with the CEO of those individual trusts, which is a different scale to be operating at than having an individual relationship with all of the schools within a defined local authority area.
Marion Fellows
Okay. Janet, do you have anything to add?
Janet Renou
Yes, I agree with what my colleagues have said. It is about the way that we work with our trusts and it is about holding them to account.
Chair
Okay, thank you, Marion. Michelle, a fully academised system.
Michelle Donelan
Yes. Hi, everybody. Academisation is no longer going to be legislated for, so it is going to be a much more organic process. With that in mind, what is the impact on the supply of sponsors and what do you perceive to be the impact in the long term of the supply of sponsors?
Janet Renou
I still think that we have good and outstanding heads in our schools that want to have the impact on more children across the region. Our focus now is to increase the number of good places that are available to parents and children across England. That is where we are going now. It is to work to make sure that we get the sponsors so that we can increase that capacity.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Yes. Clearly, it is still about system leadership, isn’t it? We still have a job of work to encourage. There still are leading system leaders that are not yet stepping up and delivering that wider system leadership. They are running really effective schools but have maybe not yet had the confidence to go out and think, “We could contribute more to the wider educational landscape”. We clearly need to continue to build the number of sponsors, but we have also alluded to it being about developing that collaborative landscape as well. There is not the need for competition between MATs. We went through a period of where one or two of the MATs thought that they wanted to keep everything quite secret and close, and we are moving much more now to a more mature system where it is about sharing. If we are going to aspire to our goal for all pupils to go to a good or outstanding school, then at least we have to share our very best practice. It is about trusts collaborating together and utilising the knowledge from the system to continue to grow it and develop our expertise.
Rebecca Clark
I think it is a really exciting space. The space that we are operating in is working with the system to build a collective vision of how we can ensure that every single child, wherever they live in our country, goes to a great school. What we are seeing certainly is that increasingly school leaders are becoming energised by that opportunity as well, that sense of how we work together. Schools are always interdependent. They always have been interdependent. What we are certainly seeing across the south-west is a sense of how we can work together collaboratively and configure ourselves optimally so that we are best placed to serve the children and communities across the south-west. That sense of collective responsibility, so every single leader having a wider responsibility for the performance of the whole system, is something that I think is really embedding. Sir David in his role as the National Schools Commissioner has done great work in building that momentum and communicating those core messages. Just as we are one national team of RSCs with one vision, similarly across our regions I think we are starting to see that school leaders very definitely are coming together with one really ambitious vision for the schools across their region.
Michelle Donelan
With all of that in mind then, do you each individually have your own regional strategies to get on board more sponsors and, if so, can you each describe it—very, very briefly—so that we can compare what the differences are between each one?
Janet Renou
I look at the areas where we have the least sponsors, and that is Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Cumbria, and where I also need more primary schools, too, who want to cluster. I am working particularly on those areas to see how we can move sponsorship and move MATs forward, but it might mean that we have to look at best practice and share examples of MAT structures. In the rural areas of North Yorkshire and Northumberland and Cumbria, again it may be a slightly different model that we need to make that work.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Similarly, we are obviously targeting particular areas where we know we are short of sponsors—ours are Lincolnshire, East Riding in particular—but we are also very aware that it is developing new sponsors, completely new. We are targeting our outstanding and our good schools to do that, but we are also obviously trying to grow our existing sponsors as well. One of the things that we have done is to target those trusts that have not been performing very well. We have run, again, a programme of support trying to explain to them what is missing, what they should be doing as a strong trust. On the one hand, while we are recruiting our new sponsors, we have had four sponsors step down as a consequence of taking part in that programme who have decided they are not well equipped to do it and it is not right for them. It is not just more and more sponsors, it is about quality, and we are very focused on that.
Rebecca Clark
Just a couple of practical things to illustrate it, our MAT meetings have two purposes. One is to review the self-assessment of the MATs to say, “Do you know where you are and do we agree with that assessment of where you are as a MAT using Sir David’s nine features?” The second really important part of those meetings is to have a shared conversation about their growth strategy and their intentions. This is also where the local authorities are really important in bringing them into that conversation. We sit down with a MAT of a local authority area and look at how schools are configured and where those challenges are. It is also about embracing the power of networks. A core priority for us across the south-west is to make sure that all schools are part of teaching school alliances so that they can access the resource and support that comes through that. There is a wide range of practical steps that we can take to build that capacity through the system.
Michelle Donelan
You mentioned, Janet, the primary schools. In terms of primary schools in rural areas and remote areas—I am in the south-west as well, so we have a number of those—how do you establish and support them in each of your regions to encourage them to go into the MAT structure?
Janet Renou
It is working with them. We have a few examples of multi-academy trusts that are working well in the primary sector in rural areas. We are having them working with us and going out and holding conversations with our primary heads to give them the confidence to move forward. Another area, of course, is the dioceses in my region. That has many primary schools, so we are working with the dioceses in how they can pull their primary schools together and how they can help support them. It is the back office support. It is important for us to keep these primary schools. Rural areas of Cumbria, if they lose their primary school they lose village status. It is very important. For me, it is a really important area of development that we must do is to keep communities alive in our rural areas. We are going to work very hard to make sure that happens.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Not really a great deal to add. East Riding in particular and Derbyshire are our key areas where we have the small rural schools and across Lincolnshire as well. It is getting out to them. We have done a whole series of workshops and going out, if you like, myth busting, looking at how they can be clustered together, what will work for them both in terms of school improvement but also financially. We have trusts like the Ebor Trust that have come forward and said they will change their status. They are going to become a church sponsor in order to be able to work with these primary schools. Similarly, we have the Diocese of Derby, which is working very effectively with Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar in Chesterfield, that are similarly working with these smaller schools and looking at some innovative structures about how we can keep them open. In some cases, we probably have 40 children in a small school and it is looking at leadership structures, how we make those work, and obviously providing the back room services to be able to facilitate them so they become centres of delivering teaching and learning and not having to worry about all the peripheries around it. It is very important but challenging.
Rebecca Clark
I just have three things that I would add to that. Whenever you are looking at small rural schools and that challenge of rurality, in Devon we have 53 schools that if you drew a five-mile radius around them they have five or fewer schools around them. It is a stark geographical challenge. When you are looking at small rural schools, you have to look at it through the lens of educational viability and economic viability. Coming together in MATs provides a real lifeline for many of these small rural schools, but there is a pragmatism that they will need to be configured differently going forward. We have to bring some confidence for them to stick their toe in the water to say this might be what it looks like further down the line in terms of the optimal model, but we do not have to get from there to there today, so it becomes a safer space for us to explore how that develops. Practically, we have seconded Paul Jones, who is from one of the most successful primary MATs nationally, First Federation. His role is very much to go and have those pragmatic conversations saying, “Let’s stop just looking at it theoretically. How would this work on the ground?”
Michelle Donelan
Okay. Finally, just to Janet, your region has the lowest number of MATs and academies. How has the northern fund helped you with that? Has it helped or is it enough?
Janet Renou
Yes, it has helped me encourage two strong MATs to come into two of the areas of need, which was Northumberland and the Tees Valley, and we are starting to see improvements in there. I need more sponsors. It needs to move on, but the northern sponsor fund has allowed me to take on some of the most broken schools, broken both educationally and financially, and move them into strong MATs.
Catherine McKinnell
Just to briefly follow on from that, I questioned the former Secretary of State recently about the gap in per pupil funding between the north-east schools and the rest of the country, particularly the national average. She implied that the northern fund would help to address that problem. Would you agree with that?
Janet Renou
It helps us to address the problem of providing good or outstanding schools for the children in the region, but it is focused on looking at the quality of the schools in the region and improving that.
Catherine McKinnell
Okay. Just looking at accountability, Sir Michael Wilshaw told the Committee that parents cannot identify with faceless Regional School Commissioners. Can you comment on that?
Janet Renou
I can comment in the fact that parents have a right to appeal and talk to their schools about any issues they have, and if they are talking to a school they have right of appeal to the head, then to the trust. If they do not get the answers that they want from the trust, then, of course, they come to the Department with their issues. If they are a trust that we manage, then it comes to us. I have very recently just been in correspondence with five parents who have gone through that process and have not had the answers that they want. I have been able to work with the trust and get the answers back to those parents.
Catherine McKinnell
Right, okay. Do you have anything to add?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Only that, as Janet has rightly articulated, the responsibility for the education directly should be with the school and with the trust and that should be the first point of contact for parents. But parents will write in. I have been dealing with age-range changes in Leicestershire, which has been quite tricky. We have had quite a group of parents who have been very unhappy about the potential changes and they have all written to me and every one of them has received a response from me. Although they may not know my face and they may not have met me personally, there is still that voice and they will get responded to. While we cannot encourage every parent to write to us—I do not think we could quite cope with that—clearly we are there if they need us and we will respond. We also meet parents through our governance work. I think that is our chief point of contact. I have certainly done an awful lot of talks for various groups of governors and the parent governors tend to make themselves known at those events. So we do have that interaction.
Catherine McKinnell
Okay. Do you have anything to add? You do not need to.
Rebecca Clark
The only thing I would say is that as a former head teacher the most important relationship that a parent has is with the teachers of their children and the head teachers of the schools that they attend.
Catherine McKinnell
Unless they are unhappy with the teacher or they are unhappy with the head teacher.
Rebecca Clark
Unless they are not happy and then, as Jenny said, we are available.
Catherine McKinnell
Yes. Rebecca, you mentioned in a previous answer how an important part of your work is working with the local authorities as well. You may have picked up on comments from the leader of Newcastle City Council recently, who commented that he has never met you, Janet, and that the council has had no contact from you. Do you want to comment on that?
Janet Renou
I am disappointed about that comment because I have met with officials in Newcastle County Council and I am working with them. I am also involved in the post-16 area-based review that is going on in the region, so working quite closely with the people in Newcastle and with the director of children’s services, as we have already explained, meeting with them to talk through the issues in the region. I have been in phone contact as well.
Catherine McKinnell
Okay. Would you simply accept that as a Regional Schools Commissioner for a very large geographical area with a very large number of schools—in the north it is 200—that you are inevitably faceless, which is the initial question I asked?
Rebecca Clark
I do not think that anybody that has met us would say that we are faceless.
Ian Mearns
Yes, you all have faces, it is all right.
Rebecca Clark
We are really outward facing in our work.
Catherine McKinnell
To the parents.
Rebecca Clark
It is about where that relationship should sit because we could really undermine the autonomy that we are working to build in the system if we get involved with relationships. The primacy of those sits with schools.
Catherine McKinnell
Yes. I guess it is worth bearing in mind, though, where parents are coming from who may feel this frustration that previously they went to the local authority if they had an issue and it was a very direct line of democratic accountability they would feel. It is very different now in the current situation and as it expands there has to be an awareness of that accountability and “faceness”.
Janet Renou
Can I add something, Catherine? Something that I found very useful is working with my MPs in the region because they bring the information. I have met a lot of my MPs, apart from, yes, Catherine and Ian.
Ian Mearns
Apart from us.
Janet Renou
But I am ready and available because what you bring to the discussion for me is what you get in your surgeries and what you get from your constituency. There have been MPs that have been able to bring to me what the parents think about some of the decisions we have been making, and I have been working with the MPs to get messages back around the area. It has been really, really helpful.
Catherine McKinnell
We would always be delighted to meet with you, Janet.
Janet Renou
That would be great.
Catherine McKinnell
The Department for Education is being taken to court over the decision of not one of you “faceful” people, but a fellow Regional Schools Commissioner who has granted an approval for a new sixth-form college. How do you feel that reflects on the decision-making process between the Regional Schools Commissioners and the Department? Do you think it is clear enough?
Rebecca Clark
I think that the decision-making framework that has been published sets out those parameters for decision making. We would not and it would not be right for us to be across the detail or to comment on individual cases that are happening in other regions. I think we work really hard to secure that consistency in a very intentional way: our peer reviews, our regular monthly forums, that sense of talking through difficult decisions so that we moderate our judgments, the fact that anything that requires policy interpretation or runs a risk of setting a precedent we will elevate to Ministers. I think that there is a very public and well set out process for us to make decisions through.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Yes, I agree.
Chair
Stephen, do you have a quick question?
Ian Mearns
Sorry, there was one thing I wanted to come in on on question 6. Janet, we talked earlier on about the lack of sponsors for the north of England. The north-east region, 12 local authorities, has within its area only 1,000 businesses that employ more than 50 people. That is inherently going to be a problem in terms of providing local regional focus for sponsorship, isn’t it?
Janet Renou
Yes. I do not know whether you know about the Department’s Academy Ambassador programme where the Department is working to encourage more and more people to get involved with that programme. Therefore, when we are looking at a multi-academy trust and we think there is a weakness on the board, we are asking them to work with or putting the academy ambassadors in touch with them to find people. It is working. I have placed nine now into trusts as they are growing. It is something that we are starting to find trickling through.
Ian Mearns
The parent group of the sponsorship, is it from within the region or is it exterior to the region?
Janet Renou
No, it is within the region. In fact, there is an awful lot coming from Newcastle. I think it is big companies like lawyers and banks and their employees wanting to get involved in the education sector.
Chair
Stephen, you have a question?
Stephen Timms
Yes, it is a question about academisation. I think we would all agree the purpose of academisation is to improve schools. What the evidence is suggesting is that academisation has succeeded in turning round failing schools and that outstanding schools that have converted to academies have become better still, but for the majority of schools that are not failing and not outstanding becoming academies has not raised their standards so far. Why do you think academisation has fallen short up until now?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I am not sure I would argue that it has fallen short. I understand what you are saying, but it is back to as an ex-head teacher I firmly believed in autonomy. For me, the academies route I felt was absolutely right and proper and it was right and proper for my school at that particular moment in time, and we continued to flourish as a consequence. It is about mindset. We have many converter academies that have stood alone in the belief that if you stand alone you will continue to do as well. You will not. You need to share that expertise. You need to be a part of the wider system if you really are going to drive up standards. It is more about—I think many of them are realising that now—needing to be part of a wider collaboration. A part of the piece of work that I have been doing is working with those standalone academy trusts looking at the potential of getting some of them to merge together to form a multi-academy trust to develop those networks. Certainly, if they are standing alone and do not wish to go down that route, they need to be part of a teaching schools network so that they get that stimulus, they get that best practice.
Stephen Timms
You think that the key weakness is there have been too many standalone academies up until now?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
It is fine being standalone, but what you cannot afford to be is standalone and isolationist. That is where we have seen that they have problems.
Stephen Timms
Would you all agree that that is the central weakness so far?
Rebecca Clark
What, the standalone element of it?
Stephen Timms
Yes, or the isolation.
Rebecca Clark
Certainly, I think multi-academy trusts offer the most powerful vehicle to hardwire collaboration because you have that alignment of autonomy, accountability, leadership and governance in a formal structure that just does not exist in any other place. I think the real challenge for trusts is to be able to think really deeply about what your value add is around our core business. A question that I would always ask a CEO is: can you describe to me with absolute clarity the tangible difference that you are making for children and teachers in classrooms? It is about sometimes taking something that conceptually is at a certain scale and drilling it down into the impact that we are having for individual young people. The very best MATs are doing that. The very best MATs give opportunities for teachers to work together to assess and to moderate and to develop their teaching skills, for leaders to be nurtured. They have accountability that is really clear on how it secures impact and compliance. I would not agree that the best MATs are not having an impact for all schools, but I do think it is also a challenge for any school to say, “Can you be really clear about how your school improvement model flexes such that you provide an added value to a school whatever their phase of development?” So those schools that are moving, in David’s terms, from declutter to repair, but it is also those ones that are improving, how they continuously improve. All schools are either improving or declining and the challenge is to make sure that they all stay set on that trajectory of improvement.
Janet Renou
I would just add that schools are better together and I think there is strength in working together. That is something that we advocate and I think it is taken by the profession now that collaboration and working together is the way forward for strength.
Chair
Okay. Following on from Stephen’s question, you have all said that working together is the key and through a multi-academy trust is the way forward. That begs the question: what does a good multi-academy trust look like? I have been thinking about what Sir Michael Wilshaw described and I am going to highlight eight points he has made: powerful executive leaders; a broad and balanced curriculum; commitment to provide high quality education for all pupils; investment in professional development of teachers; high priority given to initial teacher training; clear frameworks of governance, accountability and delegation, which all three of you have touched upon quite a lot this morning; effective use of assessment information, which Sir David Carter I think would interpret as risk indicators but we have discussed that; and a cautious and considered approach to expansion, which, Janet, you have put your finger on that. Is there anything that you would add or subtract to that list?
Janet Renou
Neil, I would add that they need to have the confidence of parents and the community. I think that is the hallmark of a good trust.
Chair
I am going to ask all of you this. It is going to get harder and harder. Jennifer?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Oh dear.
Chair
Do you want me to read out the list again?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Read the list. I must admit I did not write them down.
Chair
I will do: powerful and authoritative executive leaders; a broad and balanced curriculum; a commitment to provide high quality education for all pupils; investment in professional development of teachers; a high priority given to initial teacher training; clear frameworks of governance, accountability and delegation; effective use of assessment information; and a cautious and considered approach to expansion.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I suppose the only one that springs to mind that I do not think is covered is finance. They need a strong finance plan. They need to be obviously solvent.
Chair
That has been in the news quite a lot, partly because some MATs have gone over the top, but also because, of course, resource is an issue.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Yes, it is.
Chair
Presumably, you really mean there thorough transparency and appropriate management of funds?
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Absolutely, yes.
Chair
Yes. Rebecca?
Rebecca Clark
The only thing that I would add is that I think the very best MATs have an alignment of values and a vision that enables schools to work together as one. What we have learnt by looking at the very best MATs is that they have a sensible approach to earned autonomy and they are not afraid to mandate and to say we are all going to consistently do something in a certain way if it enables them to work together more effectively. Fundamentally, a good MAT is much like a good school. Great schools are ones that reduce within-school variation such that every subject and teacher is performing to the standard of the very best. Great MATs give an opportunity for us to reduce within-school variation at a different scale so that all schools are performing to the level of the very best by learning from the very best. To do that, you have to have real clarity around what your economic model is, what your target operating model is and what your education model is.
Chair
I am going to add one of my own, which is focus on a subject and the ability to develop a subject through leadership and curriculum development and assessment within the multi-academy trust. If you agree with that, just say yes.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
Yes.
Rebecca Clark
Yes.
Janet Renou
Yes.
Chair
Sir David Carter would talk about commitment to making a contribution to local, regional and national system leadership, and I think I know what he means there. You are obviously in the middle of that structure. Do you agree that that is an important part of the multi-academy story?
Janet Renou
Yes, because we are looking at our multi-academy trusts to lead the system. The things that they are learning we need to know in the centre. We need to know what it is like on the ground in order to feed back into policy. I think it is really vital because they are actually putting policy into operation, but we need the feedback loop so we get it back in, so when we are discussing new policies we can feed back in. I know they do that because I know a lot of my CEOs spend time coming down to London to talk to Sir David Carter and the Department about what they are finding in their trusts.
Chair
Any last comment, Rebecca and Jennifer?
Rebecca Clark
If a system leader is anybody whose decisions or actions can have an influence or impact upon children that are outside of their direct sphere of influence, then everybody is a system leader. The more that we can develop a collective vision and hardwire collaboration we harness the potential of those system leaders to work together in a positive way for all children.
Jennifer Bexon-Smith
I think it just comes back to what many of us went into teaching for. It is about moral purpose. If you see someone down the road who is not doing particularly well, you have a responsibility to try to step in and help and support and lead.
Chair
That is a good point to end on. Thank you very much indeed, all three of you. It has been a very good morning, and if I may just say, none of you is faceless.