Oral evidence: The role of Regional Schools Commissioners, HC 401Wednesday 4 November 2015
Oral evidence, 4 November 2015.
Witnesses
Sean Harford, National Director for Education, Ofsted, Robert Hill, Work and Education Consultant, and Visiting Senior Research Fellow, King’s College London, and Ben Durbin, Head of Impact, National Foundation for Educational Research, gave evidence.
Chair
Welcome to our second panel. We are still brisk; in fact we are brisker because we were slightly over time there. Could you briefly say who you are, who you are representing and what you do?
Ben Durbin
Sure. I am Ben Durbin. I am Head of Impact at the National Foundation for Educational Research, which is an independent research charity that aims to provide useful information and answers for the system.
Robert Hill
I am Robert Hill. I am a Work and Education Consultant, and Visiting Senior Lecturer at King’s College. I have worked a lot with multi-academy trusts and written about Regional Schools Commissioners.
Sean Harford
Good morning. I am Sean Harford, one of Her Majesty’s inspectors. I am also the National Director for Education for Ofsted, overseeing our school inspection policy and also further education skills and early years.
Chair
Thank you very much for coming to this inquiry. I suppose the question really is this: are the Regional Schools Commissioners an adequate middle tier for the tasks in hand?
Robert Hill
I would say, at this current stage of development, not. I think if you looked at it in terms of how things work in jurisdictions in other parts of the world, they would not recognise the sorts of conversations that you have been having for the last hour. In most other areas the middle tier, I would argue, is primarily about pedagogy, teaching and learning, improvements in the classroom, supporting curriculum programmes, leading curriculum programmes and—
Chair
Your contention is the Regional Schools Commissioners are not focusing on the right area.
Robert Hill
They have been given a remit by the Department. I thought, as they very honestly said, it is effectively that they are Regional Schools Commissioners for addressing school failure, both within academies and in the maintained sector, so that is the brief they have been given, along with promoting new schools. The other thing that I think came out from both Ms Frazer and Ms Nokes was: what is your starting point? Is your starting point a collection of individual institutions, or groups of institutions in the form of multi-academy trusts, or do you start with the locality or the place? For example, yesterday the Secretary of State disbursed £5 million to three academy sponsors for the north of England and improvements there. Is that your starting point—working through groups of institutions—or do you start working through, as in some places like Birmingham, which has a whole-school—
Chair
Ben, would you like to comment?
Ben Durbin
It is important to be clear upfront exactly how the role of an RSC fits into a school-led system. Is their role to go into individual schools and get a very detailed level of intervention, or is the idea within a school-led system that it is a much lighter touch role that operates through existing bodies with school improvement responsibilities, be those multi-academy trusts or local authorities?
Chair
Do you think their powers are effective or would you like to see them, for example, commissioning teacher training?
Ben Durbin
That is quite a different function, but I would not see that as part of their role.
Chair
That would be a different priority for a Regional Schools Commissioner in your world?
Ben Durbin
I would not see that as part of their role.
Chair
Sean?
Sean Harford
Generally about ITT or more generally?
Chair
I am talking about trying to sketch out what you think the role of the Regional Schools Commissioners should be.
Sean Harford
Okay. I think we have worked through the various iterations of this as the educational landscape has changed. It is the middle tier we have with a combination of RSCs, local authorities, dioceses—all those people that you mentioned earlier. Therefore, it is what we have to work with now, so the real question for me over time is whether it is going to be effective. That is what we should be looking at, because you could come up with a number of different structures and any number of them might or might not work. It is about the effectiveness of them, to me.
Robert Hill
I think one very specific role I would give them, even within their current narrowish remit—effectively they are sort of doing this, but let’s be honest and transparent about it—is the role, as Monitor does for the health service, of helping to build the capacity of multi-academy trusts. We have a lot of sponsors—over 750 or thereabouts—and 840-odd multi-academy trusts. A lot of them are what I would call fledglings. Even a number of the so-called mature ones are struggling. Give them a role to support the development there. I would also argue for a process of breaking down—I don’t think it is sustainable to try to cover the size of regions that they are doing.
Chair
You are kind of describing an incremental approach of developing the role of the Regional Schools Commissioners. If you had a rational position and you said, “Right, I want to get somewhere with this structure,” what would that structure look like?
Robert Hill
I would base it on economic sub-regions, which again came out in some of the earlier conversation. It would give you a much more sustainable number. I would have accountability, probably. What is interesting is that we are having this conversation. There is a separate conversation going on around devolution and elected mayors, and the northern powerhouse. I would make them accountable, or at least share the accountability, at the Department, and I would give them oversight of all the schools in the area working with local authorities. Although it looks like local authorities are being written out of the script, I think they are playing much more of a role in many areas than many people appreciate in understanding what is going on in individual schools.
Chair
But you see the Regional Schools Commissioner as the overseer of that action and participant as well?
Robert Hill
Yes, they might even not exactly license local authorities but, where a local authority was not up to doing its job properly, you might say they need to find somebody else to do some of those roles.
Chair
Ben, are you concurring with that?
Ben Durbin
I think getting the size of the regions correct is quite important. At the moment, for example, there are around twice as many schools in Lancashire and West Yorkshire as compared to the north of England. That is a discrepancy that I think needs to be addressed, both in terms of the workload and in creating a cohort of commissioners who have a common role and experience. I would caution against breaking them down into too small a region. As we have heard, one of the greatest challenges that the commissioners are facing is the identification of new sponsors to tackle underperforming schools. I would worry that a region that is made too small would constrain the ability of a commissioner to bring in new sponsors from different parts of the country.
Chair
Size is clearly something to work on, but is there an optimum size and you are not convinced we have that yet?
Ben Durbin
I think there is potentially a case for a handful more commissioners, but I would caution against substantially more.
Sean Harford
Our concern, going back a couple of years, was that as the academy programme progressed we did not have anybody to talk to to say to whom those academies were accountable. Certainly bringing in the Regional Schools Commissioner system has helped in that respect, because we now have someone we can go talk to about our concerns. In that respect it is positive. But I would echo Robert’s point about the fact that local authorities still play an important role in both the planning for schools and also overseeing school improvement, and that is why we still inspect local authorities in that vein.
Chair
Is a Regional Schools Commissioner more closely associated with regulation and, therefore, a regulator, or is he a leader of school improvement?
Robert Hill
As the job description has been written, they join a triad of regulators of the Education Funding Agency, Ofsted and themselves. But the way that it is being interpreted by many of the RSCs is that a number are doing it more overtly than others. Certainly there are a couple of them who see their role very much as a broader school improver and are building that vision. My own view is that that is the conversation that we need to have as more schools become academies. In the short term, it looks like they are going to stay focused on the failure side of the equation with the coasting and the adequate job description.
Sean Harford
To pick up on the point about the three regulators in that area, I think the problem would be if people were not clear on their roles within that area. I think we are clear on our role. People have said, “You can’t be clear if you are calling yourself improvers,” but what we say is that it is about improvement through inspection. We are very clear on that role. The outcomes of those inspections are put up for everyone to see and those that have the improvement role then pick that up and take it forward, so I think there is clarity in that area.
Ian Austin
I would like to ask whether there is a need for this middle tier at all. Everybody knows the thing that improves education is the quality of teaching and leadership at schools, so would it be better to get rid of all this stuff, spend more money on schools, provide better comparative data and then enable parents to make the judgment?
Robert Hill
I think there is a strong case—the evidence suggests this—that you do need schools working together. Sharing learning and teachers working together is the way that you get a lot of that improvement. That does not happen. Out of serendipity that needs facilitating, steering and organising, and that is the strong case of what the best multi-academy trusts are doing. They are exemplars of that, as are the best teaching school alliances and, indeed, the best federations in the maintained schools sector. What happens, I would argue, in the best jurisdictions is that—as really happened with parts of London Challenge; indeed, some of the commissioners, I think in the north-west, have instituted the Blackpool Challenge as a way of seeing the system as a whole moving forward together—sometimes there is an economic dimension to how they develop the curriculum, for example. It is about raising the aspirations of the kids in the area as well. Sometimes it is about bringing in employers and universities, and working and brigading those resources. I think it is just leaving it to schools; they are the focus, they have the responsibility—
Ian Austin
I think the thing you go to—I am not talking about the Ofsted definition of outstanding, but actually outstanding and brilliant schools—is headteachers working with universities and businesses, and bringing in—
Robert Hill
That is true, but I think what we are talking about is the George Bush mantra of “No child left behind”—the education improvement. I think what we are trying to do is “No school left behind”. Yes, we have those that are exemplifying exactly what you say—
Ian Austin
But the picture over decades is one of entrenched mediocrity and, every time there is a reorganisation, the same people responsible for the failing system pop up doing a similar job with a different title under a supposedly new system. I know I am sort of exaggerating—
Chair
I think that is an essay question, really.
Ian Austin
Is that unfair? I think there is some truth in that characterisation, isn’t there?
Robert Hill
Certainly, I think other jurisdictions, both probably in the health and education sector, probably look at the UK as an organisation that does get rather not obsessed, going for a lot of structural reorganisation, and I think that is where they would tend to focus on pedagogy in teaching and learning.
Chair
I think we have that point. Ben, would you like to comment on this line of questioning before we move on?
Ben Durbin
To the initial question of why we need a middle tier, I think any system needs a failsafe. An NFER analysis of the performance of academies has shown that while the evidence is far from black and white, clearly there are circumstances in which by some cohorts and some measures, sponsored academies do perform better than similar schools that have not been sponsored. There are circumstances in which you need some sort of intervention and I would argue that the role of the middle tier is to broker that support, as indeed the RSCs’ measures have defined the parts of the system that are underperforming.
Chair
Sean, a quick answer.
Sean Harford
I would also make the point about reliance on data for parents. Data can give you a picture, but it cannot tell you everything about the effective working of a school. We should not put all our store on just providing data for parents and letting them decide because it does not always tell the picture. Some schools are too small for data to be meaningful. With special schools, pupil referral units—a whole tranche of schools—you would not, as a parent, get the right kind of information if you just relied on the data.
Ian Austin
It depends on the measure of the data, doesn’t it? I think parents can be pretty sophisticated judges of what is a good school and what is not.
Sean Harford
Don’t just rely on data is my point.
Ian Austin
Yes, thank you.
Chair
Do you think Regional Schools Commissioners are operating different reporting requirements as compared to each other?
Robert Hill
I listened to what the commissioners said. My understanding from my own conversations is that multi-academy trusts operate over several regions and also—referring back to the evidence you heard in your session in October—there is some evidence of different reporting requirements. There is some evidence that, although they may work to the same criteria, how they are implementing those criteria in giving warning or termination notices is not entirely consistent. I was with one chief executive of a multi-academy trust last week who said they had had a notice in respect of one academy and she could not for the life of her understand why they had not had it for one of their others. That academy was not exactly identical, although it was in very similar circumstances in terms of meeting the criteria, but it came under a different region.
Chair
That is basically the point that Jon Coles made two weeks ago about the bar being at different levels.
Robert Hill
Yes. In terms of how big a problem it is, I think it is mostly a problem for those multi-academy trusts that are operating across two or three regions, so I don’t think there is innovation for those smaller ones that are largely within the same region.
Chair
Yes. Ben, any thoughts on that line of questioning?
Ben Durbin
No, thoughts so far.
Chair
We are going to move on to Ian now, who is going to be asking some questions about measurement of performance of course in connection with the middle tier.
Lucy Frazer
Can I pick up on that point?
Chair
Just quickly.
Lucy Frazer
Just very quickly. What are the effects of that? Does that mean that a multi-academy trust, operating in two different mediums, will concentrate on the area where the Regional Schools Commissioner is sharper and picks up quicker?
Robert Hill
No, probably not. With the reporting requirements, they just have to get on with it. With the warning of termination notices, in some ways the formal notice is part of a conversation between the commissioner and the trust, as the commissioners were explaining. Even if the notices have not been issued, if they are probably still within the trust, they are very well aware of the expectations and are having to address it. In the great scheme of things, I would not have said it is the worst problem that we have with Regional Schools Commissioners.
Chair
Right, Ian, you fire away.
Ian Mearns
In answer to the questions before about the crowded landscape and who is responsible for what, the three commissioners were clear about what their role was and they felt that everyone was clear about what everybody’s role was. Sean, you have said that you are clear what Ofsted’s role is, but is everybody out there clear about what everybody’s roles and responsibilities are? It is a crucial question. There are some significant stakeholders out there trying to improve this system, all working in their own ways, and all working in their own landscape and also further landscapes, but is everybody clear about what everyone else’s roles and responsibilities are?
Sean Harford
I am sure that not everybody is clear. It is about communication, as the commissioners said earlier, and where it is not clear, we need to go out there and make sure that the message is given clarity. But not everybody will be clear and sometimes schools that find themselves in a tailspin will be looking around and they will feel like they are being improved by, inspected by or overseen by a number of different people and I am sure it could be confusing to them. But, at that point, it is up to somebody to say, “Come to me with those issues and we will sort it through.” I thought that the commissioners earlier gave a reasonably convincing case on that—that they would be able to do that if there was confusion.
Robert Hill
I think there is and there is not. There is clarity around the role in relation to finding sponsors. There is clarity around the role in terms of underperforming MATs, although it was interesting hearing their performance measures. I have not seen those in the public domain, so that would be interesting to look at some of those and to see how they go. Where there is potentially lack of clarity is, first, what it means. With underperforming schools, we do have a range of ways in which the regional commissioners go round and get involved in commenting on what is going on in schools. There is also a degree of confusion, which potentially could increase under the Bill, around new schools and pre-schools, and the respective roles around that and local authorities when sorting that out.
Ben Durbin
I would say that even if there is clarity about the roles among those fulfilling them, there is an issue with parents’ understanding of the system. NFER did some research with parents last year that showed quite a lot of confusion among parents regarding different roles, with variation by levels of household income. Typically—it is the stereotype—the evidence did show that parents from better-off backgrounds were more likely to understand the system and to choose schools based on data. Those from less well-off households were less so. So, to segue into a slightly different agenda, but regarding the social mobility agenda as well, there are issues around parental understanding of the system, how it works and who to complain to if they are not happy with their local school.
Ian Mearns
In that crowded landscape, though, are the schools commissioners the new middle tier? If they are the new middle tier, how should their performance be assessed?
Robert Hill
They are part of a middle tier. We heard it is crowded—I have a slide of a football pitch with a lot of players on it. They are having to work to do the joining up to make things work. It would not be surprising to find that parents find some of that confusing. Sorry, the second part of the question was—
Ian Mearns
How can we assess if they are being effective or not?
Robert Hill
If one takes it against the narrow definition of their role, the sorts of performance indicators they have—if they were open and transparent in the reporting entity—are clearly one level of it. If their role is going to become broader, we do need a different sort of performance management or performance assessment regime that deals with some of the softer things around building capacity of sponsors. It is not just the numbers but the quality of the sponsors and the value that they are adding. We will need to think about how we assess and judge some of those.
Ian Mearns
I would be interested in seeing your map of the football pitch. Would Regional Schools Commissioners be part of the spine of the team on that pitch? Is it a team and, if so, is it a winning team?
Robert Hill
Is it a winning team? The analogy is probably something about half-time. The evidence shows that the impact that multi-academy trusts are making is very mixed. Essentially we have some that are outstanding, adding value and are leading the school system, but we have some where their performance is no better, and in some cases it has stayed behind. The other bit of the mix, which I am sure Sean will want to comment on, is that we have a separate bit of the accountability system that is hanging and does not relate to anything else. That is mainly the focused inspections of multi-academy trusts that Ofsted is undertaking, which is where it comments on the trusts that it is concerned about and writes its letter. With an Ofsted inspection, if you get a letter putting you in the category, it comes back, with monitoring and consequences, whereas with multi-academy trusts, as I understand it, there are no consequences to those letters. I do not know whether Ofsted is discussing with Regional Schools Commissioners about what it is doing when it does have these inspections.
Chair
We are going to talk about that relationship in a minute, when Suella gets started.
Ian Mearns
What in this crowded landscape is the role of the national Schools Commissioner, who we are going to see in a few moments?
Sean Harford
In terms of Frank’s role, the commissioners said that he tries to give some continuity and consistency across the work they do, and he is their boss and seeks to do that. Our relationship is such that I meet Frank, and the other RSCs as well as a group, and our regional directors meet the RSCs individually and in small groups. His role is to co-ordinate that and to make sure that they are held accountable for what they do.
Ian Mearns
But your regions are not contingent with the regions set up for the Regional Schools Commissioners, are they?
Sean Harford
No, they are not coterminous. That has caused us some logistical issues, so some of our regional directors deal with up to three RSCs.
Ian Mearns
Does anybody know whose idea these eight regions were? Whose idea was that?
Chair
You are going into Suella’s territory.
Ian Mearns
I am sorry. I beg your pardon.
Chair
Robert, can I just ask you a question? You have been fairly forthright about the role of Regional Schools Commissioners, so can you apply the same forthrightness to the role of the national Schools Commissioner?
Robert Hill
When it was first established, it was a misnomer, it seems to me. I did not understand what they were commissioning, going back two or three incarnations.
Chair
Let’s look forward.
Robert Hill
Looking forward, the role is much more coherent now. It is in its most coherent form because it is about co-ordinating, and bringing together and managing, what the RSCs are doing. In terms of there being an equivalence of the chief inspector’s role in Ofsted to being a voice or an explanation to parents, the role is yet to develop. There could be one, but it is difficult for a commissioner to do that while being a civil servant. There is a question about whether the commissioners—all of them regionally and nationally—should have greater independence from the Secretary of State.
Chair
Therefore a different line of accountability.
Robert Hill
Yes.
Chair
Which we will discuss later. Michelle, you are going to talk about comparing the regions.
Michelle Donelan
There are obviously a lot of challenges and characteristics that are unique to each region, and in between the regions as well. If we look at the region of the south-west, it is very diverse and fragmented as well. Do you think that that is a concern, and how can the Department monitor the scale and scope of the changes within each region?
Robert Hill
It is probably for Ben in the first instance, because he has done the most work at looking, through NFER, at the different profiles, and I will come in on the back of that.
Ben Durbin
Clearly there are great variations. That presents a number of challenges, first around resourcing. Some of the commissioners have substantially larger jobs to do than others when it comes to not only the numbers of underperforming schools in their areas that they need to tackle, but the capacity within the system in their areas to tackle those schools. You have this catch-22 whereby if you already have some underperforming sponsors or underperforming schools in the area then, by the same notion, you do not have the capacity in the area to turn them around, so that is an issue. If the commissioners are to work as a coherent group and to learn from each other’s experiences, there is a case to be made for some degree of consistency in terms of scale and nature of the challenges that they face. Was there another part to the question?
Michelle Donelan
Going off what you are saying, do you think the system can cope? You raised the point about certain areas being more needy than others, in particular, and that certain areas are geographically bigger, meaning a bigger challenge in that sense. Do you think there is an argument for having more commissioners in certain regions and examining the whole approach? Are we catering to the needs of each region with this one-size-fits-all approach of one per region?
Ben Durbin
I spoke to this briefly earlier. I would caution against too many regions. In the situation where you do not have high-quality existing sponsors, you have a number of options. You can go to some high-performing schools in your area, but if your area is too small, your choice might be limited. You could look for new organisations, universities or education charities but, again, if your region is too small, you are limited. You could go outside your region, which is basically the problem you face again if you have too small a region, or you need to work with the sponsors who are currently struggling to help them to improve. But, again, to have the capacity to do that and to have the experience to draw upon from other sponsors who are doing well, you need that critical mass.
Robert Hill
The answer, in large part, depends upon your school improvement model—we heard the phrase “trickle-down MATenomics”, or whatever it was.
Chair
Professor Mearns.
Ian Mearns
Trickle-down sponsornomics was—
Robert Hill
Sponsornomics. I do a lot of work in Wales, where we have set up for regional consortia. We do not have commissioners, but each consortium and all schools are part of those consortia. Take one of consortia that I work with closely: all schools are expected and are grouped to be part of a school improvement group and they ensure that each school improvement group has a high-performing school as part of it. So there are different ways to think about how you do school improvement. If you are working with a model of believing that turning everything into a sponsored academy trust is the only way to get improvement, you will probably end up with something like we are moving towards or emerging with. I am a big fan of what the best MATs are doing, but I do not think we should see MATs as a punishment for being a bad school. MATs are the pinnacle of school improvement and that is how we should be positioning them, and we should be moving all schools towards that clustered joint working.
Michelle Donelan
We spoke in the last session a lot about the approach and the inconsistencies of different commissioners—in some senses quite rightly, because each region is different, as we have just discussed—but do you not think that there is this danger that we are creating a postcode lottery even more, and that we are setting the bar differently in different areas, with an actual long-term effect to education that is quite damaging?
Robert Hill
I would put a different scenario to you. What would be better is that we ought to be more transparent about difference and say in the south-west, “We are going to follow this model. Let’s look and see how it works. We test and we evaluate and we track. They are going to do this over here in London or in the north-east—interesting. We are going to put £5 million into three academy sponsors to see if we can get extra capacity going; let’s see if that makes a difference.” Let’s be clear about the difference. I agree that we cannot tolerate postcodes to the point of view of opportunities and outcomes, but I would argue that what we need to do is to learn from the difference.
Michelle Donelan
So a more open and frank devolution of methodology and then a sharing of that between the three—
Robert Hill
Yes.
Chair
Michelle, are you happy?
Michelle Donelan
Yes.
Chair
Suella, we have touched upon Ofsted a little, but you want to probe further, don’t you?
Suella Fernandes
Yes. The RSCs and Ofsted need to co-ordinate in terms of working with schools. How effective do you think the co-ordination between RSCs and Ofsted has been so far?
Sean Harford
We have good relationships in certain areas and developing relationships in others. The point picked up earlier about the regions not being coterminous has been a bit of a barrier because some of our regional directors have to work with three RSCs, which can cause some problems, although mainly logistical. It is early days though, would be our reflection, and we need to see the impact of this. Regional directors talk frequently with the RSCs. They will talk about individual schools of concern, and there is a good and frank exchange of views on those schools and on the approaches. But it is early days in terms of impact on this issue.
Suella Fernandes
What weight do you think Ofsted ratings and an opinion from an RD about a school should have in consideration by an RSC?
Sean Harford
It is one of the things that they will take into consideration. All our reports are published, so it is not just the RSC that is seeing that information. Everybody can see that and therefore they will draw their own conclusions from that. We should not be drawn into believing that a “requires improvement” school is a “requires improvement” school regardless. All these are a band, and some of them are just out of special measures and others are nearly good. Therefore the discussions that the RDs have with the RSCs are important because they can nuance what can be considered as a blank grade. They will certainly take into consideration our work, but they also need to consider how long has it been since we have inspected. Outstanding schools are no longer subject to routine inspections, so are they still outstanding or not and is the data reflecting that? It is part of their information.
Robert Hill
What would help the process would be if we had a system, preferably a transparent one, for understanding the performance of multi-academy trusts, which we do not have. In the dying days of the coalition Government, there was a consultation document around that suggested a framework of accountability. That seems to have died a death and gone into the long grass, as far as I can see. Apart from what Ofsted is doing around MATs—it has only inspected about four or five under the new regime—since the election, quite a lot of MATs that I personally would have question marks about are still being allowed to grow.
Chair
Robert, would you mind writing to the Committee with some ideas on how that system that you touched upon there would look like?
Robert Hill
Yes.
Chair
That would be quite interesting.
Suella Fernandes
I just want to go back to this point about the input of Ofsted into the assessment of RSCs. Looking at attainment and key stage 2, recent data has shown that of the 11,000 or so good or outstanding primary schools, about 3,000 fell below the national average of the proportion of children achieving level 4 in reading, writing or maths at key stage 2. Do you think, Sean, that that level of unreliability and inaccuracy is quite damaging and not a reliable basis for an RSC when they are taking into account Ofsted data?
Sean Harford
That data was drawn from one year’s test results for 2014 and one quarter of those schools only were inspected post that data being available. It is not the full numbers that you quoted; it is a proportion of those numbers. Of course, inspection judgments do not only take into account one year’s data either. They judge across a range of things and they also do not look at just one metric within the outcomes. It is a way of looking at whether the inspection outcomes were reliable or not. It is not the only way and I would argue that it is not an entirely reliable method itself. The way in which those scores are arrived at, clearly, is that children are taking a single test and getting a score on it. What that test seems to do is to tell you whether a child can read or write, but the reality is that the score on the test can be obtained from different questions doing different things. We all know the foibles of test data. That is why we use it as one way of looking into what a school may be about, but the key is going in and seeing what it is like on the ground.
Chair
We need to talk more about Regional Schools Commissioners but Suella—
Sean Harford
I thought that was where the question was leading.
Suella Fernandes
In terms of how data from Ofsted feeds into a RSC, it is not just attainment, but progress as well, because a large proportion—almost 50%—of good and outstanding schools fell below the national levels of progress required. Again, is Ofsted a reliable and sound basis in terms of this interaction of feeding in data to the RSC?
Sean Harford
All those things I just said about attainment relate to progress as well. It is one number—one test. The progress is attainment—one test be taken next—so it is all built on the same things. All those things I just said are relevant.
Chair
One more question.
Suella Fernandes
What interaction does Ofsted have with the main Schools Commissioner, Frank Green?
Sean Harford
I meet Frank termly. We also have a meeting where we meet with the RSCs as well as Frank, and I will talk to him about issues that come up in between as well.
Chair
Thank you very much, all three of you, for some very interesting answers to our questions. Thank you. Examination of Witness
Witness
Frank Green CBE, Schools Commissioner, Department for Education, gave evidence.
Chair
This is the last of three sessions this morning. It is a great pleasure to welcome Frank Green, who has been listening to descriptions of his role for the last two hours. Welcome to this Committee. We will get straight on: what do you think your role actually is, given that the Regional Schools Commissioners have their roles?
Frank Green
Good morning. First of all, I must apologise for my throat being a little sore, so I may have to stop every now and again for a sip of water. My role is very much that of overseeing the new system that we are creating. I line manage the Regional Schools Commissioners; that is the major part of my role. I also help to set the strategic direction in conjunction with Ministers and provide advice and notes to Ministers. I also make sure that I get out and about to talk to groups of educators in schools and conferences and to put the message out about where the academy part of the system is going and how it is being constructed. That is the major part of the role. Within the overseeing of the Regional Schools Commissioners, with eight regions you have to build a consistent approach where you can. Some of the judgment is deciding whether that has to be laid down in law—in rules—or if it is that open to their discretion? There is that aspect of it. I also have relationships with all the national organisations like Ofsted, ASCL, NAHT—all the main professional associations—and the dioceses as well.
Chair
There are a couple of recurring questions though, aren’t there? One is the accountability line, which we need to explore because looking at the situation at the moment you would assume that you are in charge of the regional commissioners and you have to tackle those variance issues we have been touching upon and so on. Then the other one is the question of how it all looks with everything else that is in place, in particular the angle that we have heard this morning about the fact you are civil servants. Could you comment on those two points?
Frank Green
Being a civil servant does restrict, clearly, because you provide advice to Government and you are not free to speak out of turn from what the Government position and line is, so that is a constraint. But you know that when you take the job on. I have spent 44 years in education and in only the last two have I been as constrained as I have. It is quite a challenge sometimes to bite my tongue and not say something out of place. It has always been one of my issues. That is part of the challenge, but it is a great part of the challenge, because it is leadership in a very different way from the leadership that I have been used to of running a multi-academy trust and schools before that. That is the first part. You balance those things out and weigh the two things up. I believe we have that right so far for where we are. Just remember, it has only been going for a year and bit. When I first started the job it was a very different job from the one I am doing now. That was the second bit. Could you remind me of the first part of the question again?
Chair
About the accountability issue.
Frank Green
The accountability process. Accountability downwards—that is of me of the Regional Schools Commissioners—works, as they said, on monthly conversations either in person or on the phone that will focus on the key performance indicators. There are eight key performance indicators and although Robert said he was not aware of them, they are published and have been published since day 1 of August last year. I would say it is on those. Also we have a monthly forum that I chair, which looks at particular aspects of the work and particular aspects of changes that are happening, or new developments that are happening, and people will come from EFA, Ofsted and the dioceses to present how they are seeing the system. You are getting accountability in that respect. The other thing that we have introduced is that on at least an annual basis—we are going to try to build it in twice a year—we do a particular challenge session where all the RSCs are required to put down on two sides of A4 paper everything they are doing and what they are doing. It is circulated among all the RSCs. They present for five or 10 minutes and one of the other RSCs does a challenge session with it, and we have a discussion about it. It is one of the strong ways of building: first, an understanding of how each other is working; and, secondly, consistency of approach when that consistency is needed. That is the downwards accountability. The upwards accountability is that there is an academies board that I report into, which happens every two months, and every month there is a group. Most of that group meet to look at how we are progressing and looks at the numbers and digs down deeper rather than how is it fitting with the whole plan. Then there is the performance committee and the Secretary of State and Ministers. Every week I have a meeting with Lord Nash—who is the Minister I report to directly—with other members of the team here and other parts of the Department, DfE and national college.
Chair
Are you effectively a national leader of school improvement, or are you the chief regulator of the academy system?
Frank Green
I would say I am a combination of both. Probably more the regulator than the school improver because we are aiming to build what is described as a school-led system, which has two parts: self-management and self-improvement. The self-management function is very much within the RSCs’ and my role. When schools are failing or not achieving what they should—certainly at the moment it is academies and free schools—it is the RSC’s responsibility to pick it up and focus on that. It is not our function to do the school improvement side. It is to facilitate it and act as a catalyst in that. That is very much the national college function through the Teaching Schools Alliance—the TSAs—in which we have 530 or so, and are hoping to have 600—that is the target for next September. We are looking to build that and to get the NLEs and the SLEs from there. The role of the regional commissioners is to ensure that there is enough support or that they can access enough support for that school. But the responsibility of the improvement was down to an academy—the trust. The contract it has is the funding agreement, which is signed between the trust and the Secretary of State.
Chair
How many schools in England do you think have the title “cause for concern”?
Frank Green
In the whole of England?
Chair
Yes.
Frank Green
The total number in special measures at the moment is 227 LA maintained schools and 144 academies.
Chair
Is there any particular region where those figures are disproportionate for that region?
Frank Green
Not massively so. The East Midlands region seems to have quite a few more academies. The East Midlands seems to have more academies that are in difficulties than other regions, but it is not a vast difference.
Chair
But the regional commissioners are responsible for academies, so that would suggest that special focus needs to be applied to the East Midlands in that case?
Frank Green
Yes.
Chair
Is that something you are doing in your role as national Schools Commissioner?
Frank Green
Yes, with Jenny, who is the regional commissioner for that area.
Chair
Do you think you have enough tools and resources to tackle that particular problem and related problems?
Frank Green
Does one ever have enough tools and resources? The tools and resources that are available at the present time are being used to best effect by each region. It is not just teaching school alliances and LLEs. There are, as we know, private providers who also work in that field, and some of them have multi-academy trusts of their own, like CfBT, which both supports school improvement nationally and internationally, as well as having a trust of its own here. So you get a range of providers, and you could always do with more to turn around the schools that are not doing well, because there are still too many schools not doing well enough.
Chair
Jon Coles talked about our regions being 80% the same and 20% different, effectively. He also talked about different levels in terms of expectations, bar setting and so on. First of all, do you agree with his 80:20 attitude? Do you think it is being reflected in the regions? Secondly, what about this issue about different reporting processes?
Frank Green
I think it probably is about 80:20. It is certainly the kind of number that I work with in my head, in terms of 80% being set down in statute, rules and regulations, and 20% being how the regional commissioner builds his or her region to get the flair and the distinctiveness that gets people feeling they belong to the region, and becomes the team leader, if you like, of that whole region.
Chair
How do you see your role emerging?
Frank Green
As the number of academies grows, as is likely to happen as a result of the current legislation, I think the role of regional commissioners is certainly going to widen, because they are going to have responsibilities on maintained schools, which they do not realistically have at the present time. So that role is going to widen, and therefore the oversight role of the regional commissioners is going to grow. I think that will become a major part of it. It is also important to build those relationships with other groups and national bodies, and also potentially to use the outstanding trusts in particular that go across a lot of regions as a good feedback mechanism in a stronger way than we do at the present. If you have a trust like United Learning, Jon Coles’ trust, which operates in all eight regions, a termly conversation with him about consistency would be a very valuable conversation for me to have now that we have been operating for a year.
Ian Mearns
Do you still have a vision of 100% academised system?
Frank Green
I do. I do think there is a vision of that. I have expressed it in the past in my previous role, and I do think that there is a way of developing things. But everything is going to depend on the spending review in the next few weeks as to exactly how far and how fast any of that might go forward. It is not my decision—it is a ministerial decision—but I do think there is a way you could move the system in that direction.
Ian Mearns
On methods of working, does the new draft guidance on intervening in schools causing concern, which was issued two weeks ago, simply reflect the way that Regional Schools Commissioners have all been working over the last year, or does it usher in a new era of consistency of approach for Regional Schools Commissioners?
Frank Green
I think it does both.
Ian Mearns
The focus of the consultation document is exclusively on intervention with maintained schools, yet many academies, as we have seen from the evidence around the regions, are now also struggling, so do Regional Schools Commissioners need similar guidance on their approach to struggling academies?
Frank Green
The way they work at the moment is that they focus on academies that are not succeeding. So their role, their primary remit and, as they were saying, their primary KPI that I challenge them on all the time is: how are you working with and supporting academies that are not doing the right thing for their children? There was something like over 60 rebrokered academies last year. That sounds to me as though it is going in the same direction, if not already there.
Ian Mearns
We have seen three of your Regional Schools Commissioners this morning, and they have somewhere between 2,400 and 3,300 schools in each region—that sort of variation. Of course within that, they have quite a number of maintained and VA schools, and a number of academies and free schools. The proportions of failing schools are broadly similar between the maintained sector and the academised sector. Given the fact that you have given that guidance for the approach to maintained schools, do you think you need to rejig that for working directly with academies?
Frank Green
That is certainly something we are actively looking at at the present time.
Ian Mearns
Thank you very much indeed. Larger chains are assigned a Regional Schools Commissioner as a lead contact. How does this relationship work in practice?
Frank Green
So far it has worked very well. With the example that was quoted earlier, I think by Robert Hill, of one of the big MAT leaders saying that one of his schools had been treated in one way by one commissioner while a school in a similar state in a different region had been treated differently, my view is that that person should be talking directly to the regional commissioner who has oversight of all that trust. That would be the question that I would have fired back at them.
Ian Mearns
You mentioned that, for instance, Jon Coles’s academy trust has schools in every region. Who has the lead for that, in that case?
Frank Green
At the present time, I believe that is—let’s get it right. It was Paul Smith, I believe.
Ian Mearns
Thank you very much. How many chains have been assigned a lead contact? Have they all been assigned a lead contact?
Frank Green
Yes, they all have a lead contact.
Ian Mearns
Would you publish a list of that so that people know the lines of accountability?
Frank Green
Yes. I would be surprised if we have, but we would be quite happy to publish that list.
Ian Mearns
Or if you just let us have the information.
Frank Green
I can certainly let you have that information, yes.
Ian Mearns
Thank you very much. How do you ensure that the relationship does not become too cosy, given the decisions that the Regional Schools Commissioners are making on sponsorship and sponsors?
Frank Green
Cosy in what sense? That is quite a big topic. Are you talking about giving it to the HTB members that their advisory board has?
Ian Mearns
The Regional Schools Commissioner will ultimately determine which sponsor takes over a particular school. Given that each Regional Schools Commissioner has responsibility for particular academy chains, is there a danger there of the decisions being reflected on those relationships?
Frank Green
We have had this discussion on a number of occasions and we have looked at the evidence on that, and we would say that the opposite was probably true. As you have that relationship, you are harder and harsher. They have to cross the bar of being allowed to do it with tougher criteria than another trust.
Ian Mearns
Have you thought about putting in a mechanism of a sort of transparent failsafe so that everyone can see that that is—
Frank Green
Yes. There is a register of interests that is published and, although at the present time the headteacher board decisions are published, the conflicts of interest at each headteacher board will also be published in that note, and we are very meticulous about ensuring that people do not get involved in decisions. I am still a director of the trust where I was chief executive and if any decisions about Leigh Academies Trust in Dartford are taken, or even discussed in the Department, I am not allowed even to be in the room at the same time that those discussions are taking place.
Ian Mearns
But the absence of you from the room does not preclude everybody from knowing that you have that relationship.
Frank Green
No, it does not, but the education world is not that large. I have been in education for a long time, and people say to me, “Well, you know everybody, Frank.”
Chair
That is why you got the job then.
Ian Mearns
Thank you very much.
Chair
Right, Suella is going to look at the issue of relationships with the national college and LEPs.
Suella Fernandes
Teacher supply and training, and the recruitment of new people into the profession, are obviously critical to improvement and to the programme of expansion. What role do you think you can play in that objective?
Frank Green
Of improving the quality of teachers? I think it is more the Regional Schools Commissioners’ role to identify their needs with talking to individual schools and trusts. That discussion gets fed through to me, and I then have discussions with the national college executive leadership, if there are things that need to be changed. But it is a national college priority on recruitment of teachers. The area that we have most concern on is the one that goes beyond headship, and that is the executive leader and the chief executive. There is no doubt that when you grow a trust, when you are an executive leader of two or three schools, it is a different job from being a headteacher of one school. When you are a chief executive, which comes about when you have about five or six schools, you get a different job again and there is a whole new range of skills. We have already started a training programme—23 young chief executives took part in the first one last year. We have two more courses running at the moment with another 60. We are talking to two universities at the present time—I can’t say who they are—about establishing two more programmes to develop leadership beyond that of headship of a single school, because that is the nature of the direction of travel of the system. It is not the same as the previous one, and we are not building the same system, but teachers still have to be teachers. That is the national college’s priority.
Suella Fernandes
What progress can you report since the last time you came before this Committee on the relationship between you and the NCTL?
Frank Green
I have a very good relationship. I have regular meetings with the leadership of the national college, and with the Teaching Schools Council, and with the NLEs as well. So we have the Teaching Schools Council, the national college and ourselves, and three or four times a year we have a meeting of the groups together to look at overlapping interests and to ensure that we do not tread on each other’s toes when it comes to providing school improvement and getting those functions. The teaching school alliances were set up with six major areas to work on, and the ones that we focus on are school improvement, so professional development of teachers and school improvement in schools that are facing challenging circumstances. That is where we have most of our discussion, and it is a very healthy, strong and good discussion. The system has the self-managing part, which is us, the national college, which has the self-improving part, and the Teaching Schools Council, so the need for us to work very closely together is absolutely paramount. That is part of the structure we have built up in the last year.
Suella Fernandes
Just lastly on this teacher training issue, do you think that the fact that you do not have responsibility for commissioning initial teacher training is a shortcoming in the regime, or do you think that you should have more input into that entry level?
Frank Green
I don’t think so. At the Leigh Trust we had a SCITT there. I chaired the SCITT for 15, 16 years, and it was part of the function of the school and the group of schools to do that, rather than of a commissioner. So I think it is very much a national college function, and our support of the college is what is required there, rather than for it to be part of the function of the national Schools Commissioner. I am not teaching commissioner. If I was teaching commissioner, maybe that would fall into my remit.
Suella Fernandes
The two are so interlinked though, and there is —
Frank Green
I would totally agree. But with the self-managing one, it is the leadership and the governance that is our function mostly. The national college—
Chair
We are a bit short of time, so just one more question, Suella.
Suella Fernandes
The last question is on the local enterprise partnerships. Obviously they have an input into your role so that the needs of employers and business are met. What kind of interaction or relationship is there between the RSCs and local enterprise partnerships?
Frank Green
The amount of interaction so far has not been significant. The level of involvement of local education with local enterprise partnerships has been much more at the classroom level than at the leadership and governance level. That has been developed through the Academy Ambassadors programme, and the New Schools Network is doing that, with Kirsty Watt managing. In the past year we have used that to increase the quality of business people on leadership teams, meaning on the governance teams of schools. Over 100 have been placed in the last year; as of yesterday 102 have been placed. There are over 100 who have wanted to join trusts to improve the quality of governance.
Suella Fernandes
There is a serious issue about people coming out of school lacking employability skills.
Frank Green
I agree.
Suella Fernandes
Can you give us any reassurance of progress you will make on that?
Frank Green
We will make a lot of progress on that. That is the next level down, but I would have said that is a teaching school function, not so much a school commissioner function. I will be suggesting that is the line of development for that.
Ian Mearns
We talked earlier about the different availability of potential sponsors in different places. The local enterprise partnerships might be an inroad into the business community.
Frank Green
I think they are. They are one that has not been tapped yet, and there needs to be a tapping into that for the next year or so.
Ian Mearns
The problem is that your Regional Schools Commissioners will have many different numbers of local enterprise partnerships within their larger area.
Frank Green
Yes. They have 16 to 27 local authorities in an area. LEPs tend to go over two or three local authority areas anyway. That is part of the workload, and when you start adding that up, it comes to a bottom line resource and comes to the spending review before we can take any decision.
Chair
Thank you for that answer. Lucy will quickly look into advisers and consultants.
Lucy Frazer
The Department for Education said that the Regional Schools Commissioners were supported by a small team of staff, a team in the Department, and then expert education advisers who are contracted by the Department to work in individual schools. Who are those advisers?
Frank Green
The majority of them are former senior teachers, or even current practising senior teachers and head teachers in schools, and former senior officers from local authorities. I know of two or three former directors of children’s services who work in this kind of function. So they are people with broad-ranging experience over many years in education.
Lucy Frazer
Would you be happy to publish a list of who they are?
Frank Green
I am not sure if it is commercially sensitive or not. I don’t know. I don’t know whether we have —
Chair
Can we have a discussion about that? We will get our Clerks to contact you about that.
Frank Green
I am not absolutely certain of that, but there was a contract, as you know, recently put out. There were 93 organisations or individuals who received contracts under that tender document.
Lucy Frazer
Similarly, if you are able to publish that, would you be happy to do that?
Frank Green
If we are able to.
Lucy Frazer
That would be great. Would their conflicts of interest be declared anywhere if they did have any?
Frank Green
Yes. Conflicts of interest, if they are providing advice, are always declared when they are doing a piece of work.
Lucy Frazer
How does that declaration take place?
Frank Green
That would take place in the report that they have submitted to the Regional Schools Commissioner when it comes to their headteacher board meeting. That would be how it would be declared.
Lucy Frazer
So on a case-by-case, meeting-by-meeting basis?
Frank Green
Yes.
Chair
Just one last question from me. Basically, how do you think we can make the role of the regional commissioners, and indeed your role, more transparent?
Frank Green
I think that the role is reasonably transparent in the sense that their key performance indicators are there. The annual report on the performance of schools and academies will be published and there will be separate reports in there about the role of the Regional Schools Commissioner. As time goes on, we are reviewing how much more of their teacher board notes we ought to release in terms of the day-to-day operation, and that is currently under discussion. We do expect those to be fuller in time, but they are designed as advisory notes and that is why they are being protected, because individuals work in regions and need to be able to give confidential, frank advice without fear or favour.
Lucy Frazer
One more question on the same issue. Will the 93 additional people be able to cope with any additional workload from the coasting schools legislation, or will there need to be more advances after that, do you think?
Frank Green
We don’t know how big the coasting issue will be, because the coasting definition is not decided.
Lucy Frazer
We heard that earlier.
Frank Green
I know, exactly. It is very difficult to tell, but we make estimates of what things are likely to be needed and work on that, which is why the priorities are set and why that scenario is set in the way that it is.
Lucy Frazer
Just picking up on that, what is your estimate?
Frank Green
I don’t think the total package has been fully commissioned yet, which is why it might not be possible to be public about it, but the Department has made an estimate that the £12 billion should be sufficient for the next three years to cover the cost of advisers and brokers.
Chair
Frank, can I probe this issue about the definition of a coasting school again? You are the second person to stand behind the statement, “We haven’t got a definition yet,” but the reality is that you must have some idea what a coasting school looks like. You must have some kind of modelling, so have you sort of looked around and thought about the number of schools that might be needing attention?
Frank Green
Initial thoughts. Yes, we have done some initial thinking about it, because you are taking three years of data to show two criteria in each case, whether primary or secondary, that are going to be required to be met. We have done some initial modelling on coasting, and it depends on where you set the bar as how many might fall above it or below it. That is why it is hard to say for certain, but the sorts of numbers do not suggest that we are going to be dealing with more than a few hundred schools in the category on the modelling that we have been doing.
Chair
Thank you. Frank, I am going to thank you very much, especially since you have a sore throat. I have had it, and I think Lucy had it.
Lucy Frazer
I do. I have the Strepsils in my bag.
Chair
Strepsils work, and you will find—
Ian Mearns
Other brands also work.
Chair
I am not being paid for this, you know. You will find that you will recover. Thank you very much.
Frank Green
Thank you very much indeed. Oral evidence: The role of Regional Schools Commissioners, HC 401 2