Oral evidence: Academies and Free Schools, HC 258Tuesday 24 June 2014
Oral evidence, 24 June 2014.
Witnesses
Helen Fulcher, Head of Church Lane Primary School, Lincolnshire, Milorad Vasic, Director of Children and Families, Hull City Council, and Marie-Claire Bretherton, Executive Headteacher, Mount Street Academy, gave evidence.
Chair
Welcome. Thank you very much for appearing before the Committee today. I think all three of you listened to the first evidence session. I am grateful for your coming. Can I ask: is there enough incentive in the system for primary schools to work together to create a self-improving system? Regardless of whether you are looking at academies or teaching school alliances, there has been a change in attitude in which it is thought that the capacity to improve needs to be embedded at school level so that there is an open-door policy within schools, greater observation of each other’s teaching, peer‑to‑peer support within schools and peer‑to‑peer support across schools. Are there enough incentives to get people to co-operate in a genuine way rather than paying lip service to it and is it the right direction of travel if we want to raise standards for children overall, and we want to close the gap and provide better education opportunities for poorer children?
Helen Fulcher
In Lincolnshire, we were very supported to become part of a collaboration back in 2012. We did have a financial incentive at that point to become part of the collaboration, and I did not feel at that time it was a done-to approach; it was with discussions with the local authority about who we were to collaborate with and what the benefits of the collaboration were at the time. The collaboration has grown since this time, and that is because of the schools working together and actually forming their own agenda. This has not been a local authority agenda; this has been a schools agenda, deciding on the way they want to improve themselves, on how they want to work together and how they want to support each other and challenge each other. In particular with my collaboration, the schools have really looked within themselves about what things they really need to do to improve. Again, in our collaboration there is a difference. There are academies; we are all “good” and “outstanding” schools, but there are also academies as part of our collaboration. I think it is really important that we are focusing on working together and have that accountability on improving the provision for children in the area.
Chair
Do we need to avoid a false dichotomy between academy and maintained schools, and view them as part of one system?
Helen Fulcher
Yes.
Marie-Claire Bretherton
Yes, I agree. There are some incentives in the system. I think the teaching school movement has led to some of those conversations happening, but there could be more. There is a potential danger where schools are competing for children that collaboration might not go as well, or where we are reporting to Ofsted as separate, individual schools rather than as groups of schools. If we had joint reporting of results and if we had finance to get the infrastructure in there, there would be more incentive. Helen is right. In Lincolnshire, the local authority did nudge the system and some fantastic collaborative partnerships have emerged. As a big school that was not involved in that, what I have noticed is that a lot of the big schools in Lincolnshire have said, “Hang on a minute; this is really great and standards are improving in these schools. We want a piece of this.” They are now joining in with the collaborations and there is a big snowball effect. As a teaching school alliance, I now have 30 schools working in seven collaborative partnerships within it. Half of them are academies; half of them are maintained. Half of them are church schools; half of them are not. There is no division in labour around the agenda of improving standards for children.
Milorad Vasic
First, can I just welcome the Committee on behalf of Hull City Council to Hull? You have seen one of our great schools here. In terms of the incentives, I think the key incentive in the system of collaboration is that it is seen to improve the outcomes for children. That has to be the key incentive; we have built frameworks and thought about how we might do that, and force partnerships etc. If we force partnerships, that tends to be a false direction of travel, so there is maybe something to debate about compelling academies.
Chair
What is different? Emma was talking about the fact that when her father was a head there was collaboration; it was not invented in 2010 or 2011. Yet most people agree that there is far more of it now. What is it that has changed and is it going to last, or is it going to be one of those fads? Education has been beset by fads, which were fashionable for a while and then dropped. Is this more than a fad?
Helen Fulcher
It was. Previously it was very woolly. I have been in Lincolnshire since 2001 and there were clusters and schools working together, but it was very woolly. It was really dependent on the headteacher and the leadership team, and whether they wanted to be part of that collaboration or not. As we know there was a financial incentive, there was accountability and a memorandum of understanding, and when you offer it as part of a package, that is when it becomes a much more formal approach. That then leads to greater understanding of actually where you fit in as part of that collaboration.
Milorad Vasic
I would add that expectations have risen, in terms of our expectations of pupils and how you achieve that, and expectations of headteachers. It is very difficult, particularly in primaries, to be out and about and see everything that is going on, bringing new practices to your school, to deliver. Everybody is fearful of having a poor Ofsted; those standards are set and people want to achieve those standards, both in terms of the imperative to get good education for children and in terms of their own professional development and careers within the school. Collaboration has grown and evolved. It is pre-academies. There were hard federations of some the key leaders in the system pre-academies, where they were already becoming executive heads and driving school improvements.
Chair
The people we met yesterday were very impressive and inspiring. Does academisation, and multi-academy trusts in particular, provide a basis or foundation on which those people who are already there are able to have a greater and wider impact across the system to the betterment of more children’s education?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
From my perspective, yes, multi-academy trusts can do that, but I do not think it is the only route, in and of itself, to achieving the kind of collaboration and partnership that is needed to raise standards. You asked whether collaboration is a fad and whether it is just going to go. For me, it is the evidence of the impact of the collaboration that is the bit that teachers and heads are hanging on to. I have staff applying for jobs in my school who are saying, “We want to work for you because you are working with other schools in collaboration and we know that there is a professional development offer as part of that wider network that we would not have if they were standalone schools.”
Chair
If you look at this Government’s education policies, when we look back in history and we look for what was most positive, will it be the promotion of teaching school alliances or will it be the promotion of academies? Or is separating them a false dichotomy itself?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
I am in a multi-academy trust and a teaching school alliance.
Chair
If you had to pick one as being the more important, which of the two would it be?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
I cannot speak for all multi-academy trusts, but the multi‑academy trust that I am a part of has really enabled me to engage in teaching school alliance work. They have promoted that; they have promoted a sense of moral purpose—a sense of connecting with the local community and local schools. The multi-academy trust has enabled me to work as an alliance and led to school improvement across a group of schools.
Bill Esterson
Are you saying that you would not have been able to do it if you had not been in a multi-academy trust?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
We were doing it before we became an academy. We applied to be a teaching school when we were a maintained school, and became an academy and a teaching school simultaneously.
Bill Esterson
So it would have happened anyway?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
You have to have been doing the work to become a teaching school before you get given the status. I think it would have happened anyway, but I do think being part of the multi-academy trust that I am a part of, CfBT, has given me international reach; it has given me evidence and research; it has connected me to a much bigger network of professionals, which has helped me to do my job better.
Mr Ward
Do you not think that the whole academies debate has taken a strange turn? It was originally about the freedoms given to individual schools. It was about that school and what it could individually do with these new freedoms. It now seems as if the debate is much more to do with the freedoms it gives to schools to actually work with others in collaboration. We have identified that that needs to be in a smaller area as opposed to dotted all over the country with these chains. The focus now is actually the freedom to work with others.
Helen Fulcher
We are a maintained school and I do not feel in any way constricted or restricted in what we do. I think it is all about having a visionary leader. That is the most important thing. The leadership team and having that vision set across all of the collaboration is the most important part, whether you are an academy or a maintained school. I am not frightened to extend the school day, because we have the opportunity to do that. I am not frightened or nervous to put in my pay policy the fact they have to be part of a collaboration, because we have done it. In terms of recruitment, I am not frightened to admit that we are a maintained school and we have those freedoms because we do that in the curriculum; we do it with the fact that I recruit and retain staff by putting in retention allowances. It is about having the leader, having the opportunity, and being brave and saying, “This is what we are going to do for our school.” Being an academy does not make that any different.
Alex Cunningham
How do your staff manage to move around or move into more senior positions? Does that happen within your collaboration of several schools as it does in one the academy chains?
Helen Fulcher
Yes, it does. That is exactly how it does happen. We second staff between the collaboration; we move staff around; we have promotion opportunities within the collaboration. Just for one example, I have got a deputy head who is ready for headship coming to shadow me for the whole of next term, starting in autumn. I think they are the opportunities we could only have if we are part of this collaboration, as a maintained school. I cannot talk about academies; I can talk about maintained schools, but because we work together very freely and openly, and have those honest discussions, we are able to give these development opportunities to our staff.
Craig Whittaker
We have been told in this Committee by the National Governors’ Association that the option of becoming a federation is generally not put forward to primaries and that joining a multi-academy trust is being promoted as the way forward for collaboration. Is there any evidence that multi-academy trusts actually do improve educational standards and result in better collaboration?
Milorad Vasic
Hopefully I will answer the question you have just asked. With MATs, we need to guard against an assumption that by saying “a multi-academy trust” it means there will be improvement, in the same way that talking about maintained, collaborative, softer federations, umbrella trusts, or whatever you want to call them, means there will not be improvement. As you increase the number of each, you will get a wide spread. Some will improve and some will not, and you need to understand why that has happened within that area.
Craig Whittaker
Are they right to promote the MAT over a hard federation, for example?
Milorad Vasic
If I were to be honest, I would say not. Within the primary sector you have evidence from different people to say different approaches have worked well, and you need to understand why those different approaches have worked. As you are evolving into something that you might call a MAT, it is around that consistency of approach, leadership and vision. Where MATs have worked, and particularly in Hull, what the academy agenda perhaps has given is that people have looked for collaborations with like‑minded staff and like‑minded headteachers who are not necessarily geographically located together. The converse to that is that those schools that would have worked geographically together because they are working with the same issues do not have the time to work, necessarily, in the same way with those schools that are not part of their multi‑academy trust. Often what you find is that umbrella trusts involve more schools earlier because they do not have to spend the time to organise themselves through all the governance structures and everything like that. I would like the recommendation to promote the variety of collaborations so they can deliver the outcomes that we are talking about and, over time, you will solidify some of the governance arrangements that you talk about. I think compelling it and saying, “That’s your only option,” will put off a lot of schools and leave some schools isolated and not part of anything.
Craig Whittaker
Marie and Helen, do either of you have a different view from that?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
I agree. I think that a variety of options should be available to people. My experience in Lincolnshire is that there are a number of federations that have emerged where that has been the case, as well as other examples.
Craig Whittaker
The Committee has recommended in the past that the Primary Academy Chain Development Grant, for example, should be opened up to other forms of collaboration. Do you think the Committee is right by doing that?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
Yes.
Milorad Vasic
I think it is right. Whether it is affordable is another issue. Maybe you would have to look at that.
Craig Whittaker
Helen, do you have a different view?
Helen Fulcher
No, I would definitely agree that financial incentive, for us in particular, has made collaboration more effective and accountable, so I can understand why that would be effective.
Caroline Nokes
Wherever you go in the world and find a high‑performing education system, there will be some sort of collaboration involved but, from what we have heard today and previously, no two models of collaboration are the same. There was a fantastic quote from Helen that what used to be woolly is now set out a bit more clearly. Is it your view that an effective autonomous school system is one that lets the schools decide the degree and type of partnership model that works for them?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
For me, it is about the evidence of what works. I think a variety of models should be explored and available. Schools should be advised on different things that do work, as long as there is robust evidence for how that particular way of doing things will improve standards. Going back to the primary schools grant, where there is money, if there is accountability for what that actually looks like, I would like to see partnerships operating with KPIs, similar to teaching schools do; I would like to see accountability for results across the partnership, which then incentivises heads to genuinely really care about the performance of other schools in their group. There should be evidence to show that it works.
Chair
You touched on earlier that you would like to change the accountability system so it was not just single‑school‑focused and people were held to account for a group of schools. How could that work? Local authorities have been held to account for the performance of all their schools. It does not always lead to change, but how could it work?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
There are some examples from America where they do look at joint reporting for schools in their areas. I think there would obviously have to be clear sign‑up from the heads in that group. For example, I am the head of an infant and nursery school with a feeder junior school. I would love us to be able to combine what we are doing and be unified in our approach to progress on attainment.
Helen Fulcher
That all comes down to the openness of the schools working together. It is about sharing the data, being open and honest, and having those frank conversations about where we are in terms of our school’s journey. As a collaboration, we are able to do that because the local authority has brokered the support right from the start, with the educational adviser being part of that collaboration. I would be very happy to be responsible for our collaboration’s data because we know that working in collaboration has had a massive improvement in all of our data.
Milorad Vasic
You have to think about who you are being accountable to and for what purpose. The key people who you should be accountable to are the parents. In terms of the system you put in place, you can overcomplicate it.
Chair
Are you right? Is it not historically true that lots of schools get put in special measures, and if you look at the last parent survey they are 96% delighted with the education at the school? Parents are a pretty lousy consumer of educational services for their children. If we have a system that rests on whether or not they are happy, we had fluffy primary schools failing the kids and parents loved them. There is no school so poor that the local community will not come out in protest if you try to close it. Surely we need to recognise that fact if we are going to get a clear accountability system.
Milorad Vasic
Having been through the process of trying to close a failing school, I have got those particular scars to show around that. Nevertheless, we still ought to demonstrate why that school is good, because part of that issue there—and this is the whole point around education—it is not about school structures; it is about children and what impacts on their life. If you go to more affluent areas, if we call them that, schools lose pupils because parents do understand the value of education. That is actually part of a wider issue about parental value of education.
Chair
Staying on accountability, you started off saying we should rely ultimately on the parents. I do not think we should. I do not think there is any evidence to suggest that that’s the best place to put it. Where should it be? Should it be Ofsted? Should it be league tables? How do we have a sharp accountability system that means that failure is squeezed out and success is rewarded, supported and expanded?
Milorad Vasic
I was not suggesting that we would only be accountable to parents and you would not have some form of understanding of what good looks like, because I think that is part of it. Within a chain’s results, if you were just looking at a chain or a multi‑academy trust, you could hide very easily the results of some of the schools that are not doing so well. There is a way that you need to ensure that each individual school is accountable for serving its local children, and then you also need to consider to who and how you would hold the people responsible for a group of schools to account.
Chair
That is what we are asking. We are trying to find out who and how precisely so we can recommend it to the Government.
Milorad Vasic
The key driver for a lot of the collaboration and the fear of why certain schools decided to go with a local solution has been Ofsted and the regulatory framework and, set alongside that, as somebody said earlier, the testing regime, because that is how you are judged. Those two things need to work together. The accountability is there already; you are just deciding how big or wide, and how you want to aggregate your results.
Caroline Nokes
The report into primary partnerships in Lincolnshire emphasised how important it was that there be a memorandum of understanding on how any partnership would work, and that the rules be very clearly laid down. In your view, how critical is that?
Helen Fulcher
Having that written agreement is very important. It is even more important when you have got a situation where you are competing for pupils in very small rural primary schools within a community. Then you only need—and I am going to use this term—a rogue headteacher in that collaboration who does not want to be part of the collaboration and who is a new member of staff as part of that group of headteachers working together, and the whole system can fail. You have to make some very clear, safe mechanisms in a structure to ensure that any new leader coming in is aware that this is a collaboration and that it is a strong collaboration working together for school improvement, and that it is advertised as such. That is why it is so important that the collaboration is part of the pay structure, and it is part of the wider performance‑related pay and performance management, so it is embedded into the structure.
Marie-Claire Bretherton
I agree. For me, as the head of a teaching school alliance where schools can opt or opt not to work with us, one of the things we are trying to pursue is really heightening the level of accountability—a memorandum of understanding of some description that says, “This is the commitment we’re making to each other.” I guess I would liken it to any good marriage. If you go into the marriage thinking that divorce is on the cards, it is not a good start, but if you go into a relationship and a partnership thinking, “There is no exit; we’re going to make this work,” the chances are that the relationship will be better.
Mr Ward
The ideology of the academies seems to be, “You’re a failing school; academies are good. You become an academy; you’ll be good.” That was Mr Gove’s ridiculous dream. The danger with collaboration is we actually slip into the same thing: “You’re not a very good school. Start collaborating and you’ll become a good school.” I know from my own experience that schools have worked in clusters before and it has just not worked. There need to be some ingredients. Is there not any value in actually saying to schools, “You two or three schools are not very good. Start collaborating”? Who does the brokering of that? Is there a role for somebody to do that, and would that work?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
Yes, there is a role for some brokering. There is a role for teaching school alliances, local authorities and multi-academy trusts to enable that kind of conversation happening. You are right that collaboration in and of itself is not the solution. It is about the accountability framework that is there. For example, within the teaching school alliance we have seven collaborative partnerships. We are creating a model of peer and self‑review, moderated peer review across those schools, and then clusters and collaborations moderating each other. You talk about a school‑led system and sector‑led improvement, and we are holding each other to account for the performance of each of our partnerships. It is having that level of commitment. The best leaders want to be held to account for what is happening, so it is about creating structures and having the systems in place in those partnerships to make that happen.
Mr Ward
Is it not a danger that the best heads, as we saw yesterday, would be the best heads whether they were in a collaboration or not? The danger is that the collaboration works because of the good heads and not because it is collaboration.
Milorad Vasic
That is an interesting question, but I think the answer is probably not that simple. As you said, there are certain heads or certain people who will end up being the leaders of whatever system they choose to be in. That is just the nature of certain individuals. They will work together and get things together. To upscale that across every single primary is a real issue. I think it was Emma who gave the view of one particular head who wants to just focus on their school. To broker, to collaborate and to do partnership, whether it is a MAT, an umbrella trust or whatever, takes time, effort and a will to do that. Not every single headteacher wants to be that person. Similarly, if they are not involved in that, how do they ensure that they are doing the best that they can do? From a local authority point of view, what we are doing is looking at the collaborations across the city, and which schools are not in something that we would understand to be a clear collaboration—something that might be woollier than some of the others. We are looking at that to understand how those schools are working, whether they are maintained, supported by us or in a looser federation of some description. That broker‑partnership role in accountability currently sits with us as a local authority to work with schools and understand the benefits of the various partnerships and collaborations. Like I said, some will happen, either local area based, across the city or wider, and other schools will not take part in that because they do not have the capacity. As they develop, those key leaders who have developed the informal partnerships do not want to take it to the next step, so who will and how do you broker and support that? That goes back to your primary chain grant money, etc.
Bill Esterson
There are penalties for schools that will not collaborate. Are those penalties effective? Are they enough? Are they right?
Helen Fulcher
I do not think they are effective. We have a school in the local area that has achieved an “outstanding” rating without collaboration with anybody and without working with any school. That is really insulting to those schools who working really hard together and Ofsted stating that you have to work in collaboration to get the “outstanding” grading. That is something that I find a bitter pill to swallow, because we are working really hard within our local community, and we are in a very deprived area. I find it very difficult to understand when we are working in that way.
Bill Esterson
Is this a recent rating?
Helen Fulcher
Yes.
Bill Esterson
They are not supposed to get “outstanding” if they are not collaborating.
Helen Fulcher
No. It is very difficult to understand.
Alex Cunningham
Do they not have a responsibility to help other schools collaborate—in other words spreading their expertise—and should they not be required to do something like that?
Helen Fulcher
I totally believe it should be required and I think that is what is most important. I really was very happy to see that as part of the new framework—that working in collaboration was a key part of the “outstanding” criteria. I think it should absolutely remain in that framework.
Milorad Vasic
If there were a recommendation that I would like to see or something to debate further, it is the notion that collaboration when you are an “outstanding” school should not be restricted to the multi-academy trust that you belong to. What we have heard so far is, to some extent, an example of maybe best practice, but I am pretty confident that across the city and across the country you will find examples where that expertise, collaboration, that working and that sharing of best practice is restricted to that multi‑academy trust as it tries to sell itself as a good multi‑academy trust. That would be key for me.
Marie-Claire Bretherton
Yes. I can only speak from my experience. That is not how I feel within the CfBT schools trust. I think the moral imperative behind that organisation is about outcomes for children regardless of what school they go to. There are just different examples. I can imagine there are some multi‑academy trusts that perhaps do not see it that way. You mentioned the question about the best heads, and Helen has made the point about a school getting “outstanding” with no evidence of collaboration. Really, the best heads should be creating heads for the future who see a system‑led school improvement structure—leaders coming through schools, NQTs and senior leaders who get the vision for pupils in their community regardless of what school they attend. Some of the best multi-academy trusts are doing that and some of the best teaching schools are. If we can incentivise it further through Ofsted to make sure that “outstanding” really means you are system‑leading—you are creating improvement across multiple schools—I would be in favour of that.
Bill Esterson
Research shows that deep partnerships depend on exceptional leadership. Since, by definition, not all school leaders can be exceptional, is partnership really an effective long‑term way to ensure oversight and high attainment?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
I think there is room for development here and there is a skill set for leadership that needs to be explored. Being head of one school you could characterise as quite hierarchical—you are the head; you are the boss. Leading a partnership is a completely different skill set. It requires collaborative leadership; it requires humility; it requires an ability to be a learning-centred leader. The system—and we are doing this within our alliance—needs to respond to that and develop the leaders for the future who have got that ethic and that ability to lead in that kind of way. The characteristics of single institution leadership are not necessarily transferrable to partnership working. Again, there is something for the system to respond to there in the kind of leaders that we need to make partnerships work long term.
Helen Fulcher
I totally agree. The most important thing is the skill set of the leader. The development of that partnership is so important for the individual leaders coming together. I do feel that the collaboration in our areas works better when one of those leaders takes a lead role within that collaboration and starts to look at key things that need to happen within the collaboration, and key things that need to happen within the teaching and learning. Somebody needs to take a lead role within that collaboration.
Chair
The heart of Bill’s question was about the scalability of this. Every initiative I ever see in education—nearly every one—that actually gets realised on the ground works. In order to change something in such a conservative world as education, you have to fight so many people and you have to be such an evangelist that it does not matter what you do; you can have an obsession with pre-1910 desks. If you get permission to set up schools with those desks, you will see that results will go up, because you have to be such an amazing character to be allowed to do it. Then there is this issue of scale. As a Committee, we are trying to identify policy that, when it is rolled out on a wet Thursday to the 1,922nd school, actually leads to a greater likelihood of success than before. The heart of Bill’s question was about that scalability. If you are just taking the great people that we have always had in the system and you get them to do great things, you go, “We now have a golden model, the silver bullet that policymakers like us look for to impose everywhere across the country,” and when it gets rolled out on that wet Thursday to that 1,000th place, it just turns out that without the special people it does not work. That is the heart. What is there to show that it is scalable? Can we build the people with the qualities you are talking about or are they born with it?
Helen Fulcher
Yes, I really believe we can. I think we can build those. If we do not believe we can build great leaders, there is something wrong with our education system. I really believe that we can build great leaders, and great leaders can be great leaders in a variety of different situations. I do think collaboration has that opportunity to build those great leaders because you can recognise them from an early situation. It is just like Marie-Claire said about the skill sets of different people. If somebody gets bogged down in a school that does not want to collaborate, then often that person cannot be recognised, so that person can get stuck within a school. This means we have to look wider and look at the wider agenda.
Mr Ward
Do you feel you are competing against anybody else? Are you doing anything you are doing to beat others?
Helen Fulcher
No, I do not want to beat others. I just want us to be the best we can be. There is not a situation where I want to beat others. The most important thing is that we have teaching and learning coaches that develop teachers across the whole collaboration. That, for me, is really important, rather than actually having a teaching and a learning coach that just produces great teachers within my school. It is important to look at the wider agenda and look much further afield. I do not need to beat anybody.
Mr Ward
Do you not look at league tables and say, “We’re going to beat them next year”?
Helen Fulcher
No.
Chair
Can this thing really be scaled up and deliver the change that we want?
Milorad Vasic
Yes, and I would just add to that. I think that we can recognise leaders. The big issue is in making sure that we encourage teaching as a profession for as many people as possible. Some people do not believe they are leaders when they are in a school. They become good teachers; some become good headteachers; some become good leaders. Others are just happy being good teachers and we should value that as well, because the teaching is the key to young people and how well they achieve, and leadership is part of that mix. I think it is about encouraging it and how. Teaching school alliances are one thing. What happens in university and how you encourage people into schools and education is one of the tricky issues.
Marie-Claire Bretherton
I think it is scalable, but my recommendation would be that this is a very emerging model in teaching school alliances. It needs time. My personal plea is it needs continued investment. You asked the question, “Are we competing?” As the head of a teaching school alliance, I am dreading the point at which my funding stops and I have to suddenly act like a business to keep the infrastructure that I need to operate.
Chair
How much funding are we talking about?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
It was £60,000 in year one, £50,000 in year two and £40,000 in year three, then nothing. Actually I need some infrastructure behind that. I need to have a head of school in the two schools that I run to be able to be able to work as an NLE and lead the system.
Chair
You work across 30 schools?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
Yes, as a teaching school alliance with 30 schools.
Chair
And you need, if you were negotiating with—
Marie-Claire Bretherton
Is this going on record?
Chair
Yes, this is going on the record. What figure would you be asking for as the minimum with which you could provide the capacity that you think is essential to keep it going?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
For me, the grant that we had in year one of £60,000 was enough to get the infrastructure in place around the back-office support that I need and the staffing within my own school. If that were to continue, that would give us the freedom to do the kind of school legwork we are doing. The bit I do not like in the system is the idea that I have to be a businesswoman and create a teaching school alliance that is financially operable.
Chair
Do you not just have to accept the reality that that is £2,000 per school? If the evidence is as strong as you say it is of the commitment of everybody concerned, they can easily find £2,000 from their budget—even primary schools and even relatively small ones can find £2,000 if they value it—so you need to be a businesswoman. Let me put that to you.
Marie-Claire Bretherton
Yes. Note to self.
Alex Cunningham
I love it when the Chairman gives himself a recommendation. Can we talk a little bit about the planning of school places and the complicated picture we now have out there? A number of written submissions have suggested to us that it has become more difficult as we have had the academisation programme—I wish I did not use that word—and there is the fact that we have more and more converter schools. Is it a real problem in the planning of places? I am looking straight at you, Mil. What is happening in the local authority to make sure that you can do it and that it is not ad hoc, as the National Association of Head Teachers would suggest it is?
Milorad Vasic
The local authority has to recognise that that is one of its primary duties. That means for the whole city. The basic piece of work of having a coherent plan for the city about where children are and where they are going be, taking all those sorts of things into play, is not impeded by anybody other than, possibly, having the right staff to do it and do it well.
Alex Cunningham
You probably have very effective collaboration, but in other parts of the country a free school pops up here, a free school there, an academy there.
Milorad Vasic
That does not negate the fact that you need to understand the place and what the future of the place is going to look like, and how those things will impact on that. Being able to bring additional places in is very difficult because it costs money, and there are all sorts of political debates going on—big “p”, little “p”—about giving money to private companies to expand their places and what that means. It does impede it, because it is not always easy to put the places where parents want those places, because it is not the local authority that can create that, and there is a long negotiation about that and a lead‑in time. It needs to be planned and discussed. Part of my current role is to make sure that I have got very good relationships with every school and every sponsor, so that I do not end up in an antagonistic position about places, and working with the city about how it spends its capital money above and beyond what comes through for schools. In some cases we have had to put money in because our primary duty is to make sure we have got sufficient places.
Alex Cunningham
Do you want the power to turn around and say to an academy, “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to take another 20 kids”?
Milorad Vasic
Yes, but it needs to be recognised that what we are talking about is ensuring that those children who are there get to the school that they want to go to. Free schools popping up, as you said, here, there and everywhere are not necessarily the answer. However, if that is the way that you get money, I dare say local authorities have considered where free schools might benefit certain pressures that you have in places. The key really is about looking and understanding what the issues and pressures are, and trying to plan well enough in advance to deal with all the potential issues you have about negotiating that. It is having that primary purpose and people like myself advocating on behalf of children and young people—it is about their education and not about academies and private business or whatever else it might be.
Alex Cunningham
Marie-Claire, you are in an academy chain. How does it affect you? Does the local authority say to you, “We need you to do this and you mustn’t do the other”?
Marie-Claire Bretherton
Ironically, I opened a new school in September of this year due to a shortage of school places in Lincoln city centre. We went through a competitive process with the local authority and we were nominated to run that school as an academy once it opened. My experience has been that the local authority has been proactive in making sure the places are there. We have not had a great number of free schools spring up, but I agree that the local authority should have a remit for ensuring there are enough school places for children. If that means conversations with academies, great, I am up for that.
Alex Cunningham
What is your understanding across the country, though? It may well be great in your particular area.
Marie-Claire Bretherton
To me it just seems ludicrous that there is not some oversight of all of that. I agree with parental choice and I agree with there being enough school places, but there needs to be a co-ordination role to make sure that nobody is losing out. By losing out, I mean the children and the parents.
Alex Cunningham
As a maintained school or a maintained school head working in collaboration with other maintained schools, do you feel that you are under extra pressure from the local authority to take additional pupils because of the places crisis?
Helen Fulcher
I want to take more pupils. I think it is fantastic.
Alex Cunningham
Have you got room?
Helen Fulcher
Not now, thank goodness, but we are in a situation within our collaboration where we can take on extra places. If there is a situation where we do need more children, we can do that. There is also an opportunity, again, working in the collaboration, if there is a child at risk of exclusion or if there needs to be a managed move, to work together to do that without the child having to be shipped off to a PRU that could be many miles from the child’s home. Working in collaboration has actually improved the provisions for children and places. There are places within our collaboration; there are small classes that could take children that we cannot. That is what we do as heads. We work together to say, “Have you got room in year two? Have you got room in year three?” and we talk to the parents and say, “We haven’t got room at this time, but this school has and we are all working together, and our teachers have the same level and the same standard.”
Alex Cunningham
So the bottom line is that the changes in structures within the system have not really impeded the local authority’s or anybody else’s planning of school places?
Helen Fulcher
No.
Milorad Vasic
It is probably too early to say because the main drive or pressure has been in primary schools. Looking ahead into the future, it is going to be secondary schools. We will assume, not unreasonably, that the majority, if not all, secondaries will be in some academy form or other. That is what we need to plan for nationally: the bulge into secondary school. It is expensive to put secondary school places in, and there will be a real issue and difficulty in doing that.
Alex Cunningham
What do we recommend in relation to the planning of school places, bearing in mind that there is this bulk to go through into secondary?
Milorad Vasic
There has to be an overriding duty to ensure sufficient places and that you commit to that, and that academies cannot just move away from that duty in their area because they do not necessarily want it. It has to be like that, otherwise where do they go? If every single academy took that position, what do you do with those children?
Ian Mearns
It appears to be a contradiction in Government’s planning that you have a situation where the Government are almost precluding local authorities from opening any new directly maintained schools, so you cannot get a new school unless it is an academy or a free school, but the local authority still has the responsibility for securing enough places in their area, and also still technically has responsibility to make sure that standards are raised in their area. The problem from your perspective, Mil, is do you feel as though you have no or receding powers to do anything about this, but you are still handy because you are there to blame?
Milorad Vasic
I do not think that has changed much. I think that has always been the case for local authorities. I am not sure that we have ever really had—not for a long time anyway—the power to compel and decide what education should look like. I do not think we ever should have had that. Local authorities that have felt that that has been their role are probably the ones that you have alluded to before that have not been the best people there. There is a bit of legislation that would help, which I have just alluded to, in terms of that. From my work, though, and the schools I have visited, and bringing those different heads together, the role of the local authority is different and I do not think, necessarily, having the powers to compel would actually improve standards in any way. Having an overview and understanding, and supporting those schools, is part of it. There is always somebody somewhere, whether it is a Secretary of State or whoever, who can compel certain things, but if we get into that position, then as a local authority I think we have failed. The answer, irrespective of who determines whether a school is not working well, is collaboration and working other schools, and getting those collaborations in place to begin with rather than waiting until failure starts.
Ian Mearns
Despite those contradictions, you do not feel that local authorities are yet about to abdicate responsibility for what happens in those areas.
Milorad Vasic
I think a local authority that abdicates its responsibility for the education of the young people within its city or its council area is a foolish one.
Chair
Thank you very much indeed for giving evidence today and please be in touch if you have any further thoughts, specifically around recommendations in particular that you like to see in our end report. Thank you. Oral evidence: Academies and Free Schools, HC 258 2