Category: Governance

In July, the Department for Education (DfE) announced that classroom teachers would receive a 3.5% rise from 1 September 2018. While schools will need to fund the first 1% of this rise, the government announced that £187m (in 2018/19) and £321m (in 2019/20) would be given to schools to fund the other 2.5% through a teachers’ pay grant.

To help school leaders and those governing to plan for the new teachers’ pay grant, the government has released a short guide (external link).  At this stage, the guide outlines how the pay grant is calculated for each school and how schools can expect to receive the funding. The DfE outlines that further information will be available in October, with payments being made later in the autumn.

The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) Accountability Commission has just published its final report on Improving School Accountability (external link). The review focuses on school performance measures and the role of Ofsted.

The commission aimed to address perceived flaws in the current accountability system. This includes: incentivising schools to act in their own interests rather than that of the wider community; narrowing the curriculum and encouraging teaching to the test; putting teachers and school leaders off working in challenging settings; and driving good people from the profession.

The report makes these recommendations:

• Comparative performance data (based on a three-year average) should be used to inform Ofsted judgements.
• The Department for Education (DfE) should use ‘requires improvement’ as the trigger for funded school improvement support.
• Ofsted’s role should be reformed, with a focus on identifying failure and diagnosing reasons behind a school’s struggles.
• ‘Outstanding’ schools should be subject to regular inspection.
• The ‘Outstanding’ judgement should be replaced by a robust system for identifying excellent practice.
• Ofsted should commission research into the format and nature of inspection required.
• National accreditation arrangements should be developed for peer review programmes.
• Alternative national standards for head teachers should be developed.
• The DfE’s careers progression strategy should incorporate support for recently appointed head teachers.

This report comes when Ofsted is planning the rollout of its new inspection framework, which it will implement from September 2019. With fears expressed that Ofsted is planning large-scale changes without giving teachers and system leaders’ time to reflect on or embed the changes, NAHT argue that Ofsted is at a “cross-road” and should carefully consider the findings of the accountability commission before launching a new system of inspection.  

The report says little on the role of governing boards in the accountability system. However, governing boards have an important role to play in ensuring that schools react to the pressures of accountability in an ethical manner, remain mindful of the needs of the whole community and resist any pressure to narrow the curriculum.

The Department for Education (DfE) has released new data management functionality within Analyse School Performance (ASP). ASP is the Department for Education’s (DfE’s) replacement data service for RAISEonline. ASP provides school leaders with a detailed breakdown of how schools, and different pupil groups (with a particular emphasis on disadvantaged pupils), have performed in key stage 1 and 2 (for primary schools), key stage 4 (for secondary schools) and key stage 5 (for 16-19 providers). ASP is a free to access service which requires users to login through the DfE’s sign-in portal. Those governing are entitled to login details and should speak to the individual who sends data returns at the school (in the first instance) who can help them set up an account.

The changes to ASP this week allows school named users to create a custom view by removing one or more pupils from their phonics, KS1, KS2 or KS4 data to carry out “what if” scenarios. School users are able to toggle between their default and custom views for most headline reports (a list of reports and data items which cannot be updated by data management are shown on the Data management homepage). Data management is available for the most recent year’s data held in ASP (i.e. 2017) and will be updated as and when new data becomes available.

The Commission on Religious Education has just published its final report, Religion and Worldviews: The way forward. The Commission calls for an overhaul of the subject, to include teaching about non-religious beliefs so that it better reflects the diversity of modern society.

The report sets out recommendations to improve the variable quality of RE experienced by pupils in England and to address the legal arrangements around RE which are “no longer effective” as more schools become academies. The Commission suggests a new National Plan for RE to ensure “that learning in this area remains academically rigorous and a knowledge-rich preparation for life in a world of great religion and belief diversity”. The three core elements of the plan are:

• To offer a new vision for Religion and Worldviews as “the subject should explore the important role that religious and non-religious worldviews play in all human life”.
• For all pupils to have access to high quality teaching through a statutory National Entitlement which should apply to all schools.
• For significant investment in two crucial areas: teacher education and the local structures that support local communities to continue to have a role in supporting RE.

Read the findings of the report and recommendations (external link).

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) has updated its Operational and Good Practice Guide (external link) on schools forums. Each local authority area has a schools forum, made up of representatives from schools and academies, to advise on the allocation of funding for schools.

Although the intention is that the national funding formula will eventually mean that there is no role for schools forums in deciding the allocation of funding locally, the Department for Education has announced that the current transitional phase will continue until at least 2020-21.

The guide goes through constitutional and procedural issues relating to schools forums, as well as recommending good practice to aid schools forum effectiveness. This will be of relevance to governors and trustees who have been elected to their local schools forum and to others interested in how funding is allocated to their school.

A revised edition of Keeping Children Safe in Education (external link) came into effect on 3 September.

The guidance outlines what schools and colleges must take into account to safeguard and promote children’s welfare. This document is statutory guidance that schools must follow and is essential for ensuring that safeguarding arrangements are compliant with the law. Those governing and senior leaders, particularly the designated safeguarding lead and governor/trustee responsible for safeguarding (external link), should read this document carefully and ensure that the schools’ child protection policies and procedures are up-to-date.

The governing board should also gain assurances from the senior leadership team that “all staff in their school or college read at least part one of the guidance”.  Governors Services will shortly be updating their Safeguarding role profile to reflect the changes.

The Department for Education (DfE) in consultation with school leaders, teachers and other sector experts has designed a toolkit (external link) to help schools to address workload issues. In 2016, the DfE’s Teacher Workload Survey (external link) found that the vast majority (93%) of teachers think that teacher workload is a “fairly serious problem”. It found that the top three workload concerns are marking, planning and data. The new toolkit aims to “support schools in reducing workload and to address the drivers of excessive workload at a national level". The toolkit is split into 3 stages, supporting schools leaders to:

• identify the workload issues in their school(s) with the help of workload audit tools (external link)
• address the key issues that can lead to excessive workloads in areas such as communication or data management
• evaluate the impact of actions taken.

Schools can also use the tools in each stage as standalone materials. Whilst use of the toolkit is optional, those governing may wish to ask their senior executive leader if they are aware of the tools available from the DfE to help manage staff workload.