Category: Governance

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) has published a guide for governing boards on Understanding your Data (external link). The new guide sets out the broad range of information governing boards might consider when fulfilling their core functions of setting the right strategic direction for the school or trust, holding school leaders to account for educational performance and ensuring value for money. The guidance also features optional templates and explanations on how to use exceptions reports, comparisons to key benchmarking data and features a list of useful resources.

In the foreword of the guide, EFSA chief executive Eileen Milner writes, “this is not about collecting more data, but collecting the right information… You can use this resource to refine your board reporting and to actually reduce the amount of data collection and associated work.”

Your evidence base will support you to develop, monitor and deliver your school or trust strategy, inform discussions about the curriculum, education standards and ensure probity in the deployment of resources. Any information collected should align with the strategic improvement priorities of the school or trust and agreed on at the beginning of the year in partnership with executive leaders to avoid excessive workload and duplication.

The DfE has commissioned the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), an independent research charity, to collate and assess the views of teachers, leaders and those governing on the teacher pay framework. IES is looking for another nine governors/trustees to participate in this important research via two online focus group sessions at a time convenient to you. Your responses will be treated confidentially and anonymised at all times. The findings of the project, to be delivered to the DfE in September 2018, will help to inform any future proposed changes to optimise the existing teachers’ pay framework.

IES will be exploring views on how the pay framework, including features such as Teaching and Learning Responsibility allowances, currently operates in your school over the course of an hour long session. Descriptions on the various structures will be covered in the session. IES would like to offer you £25, to thank you for your time in taking part in the research.

Please contact: joanne.doherty@employment-studies.co.uk  or call 01273 763419 to speak to a researcher with any questions you may have and to arrange a convenient time for the online focus group.

If you would like to contact DfE about this research please email Nicola Mackenzie at: jobshare.MACKENZIE-PEACHEY@education.gov.uk  

In a speech to the Bryanston Education Summit (external link), Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman set out three principles informing the development of the 2019 Ofsted framework:

• Giving schools more than a grade: inspection reports should give a clear assessment of strengths and weaknesses, with a focus on capacity and insight into what is distinctive about a school.
• Using data appropriately: ensuring that there is “no reward for gaming” and “focusing on the key data that really matters” rather than scrutinising every sub-group of pupils at school level.
• Wider societal issues: avoiding a situation “where schools are expected to address every one of society’s ills and inspection is supposed to be the tool to ensure they do it”.

On improving the process of inspection for school leaders and staff, she said: “I want to make sure as much inspection resource as possible is on site engaging with leaders and teachers, having those professional conversations, not just polishing written reports.”

Spielman also emphasised the importance of ensuring inspection reports provide parents with useful information about schools, including information that is up-to-date. She related that Ofsted are currently in discussion with the Department for Education on reviewing ‘outstanding’ schools’ exemption from inspection.

Spielman spoke about the role of Ofsted in providing information about school performance for those responsible for intervening in schools, such as regional schools commissioners and local authorities.

The Academies Financial Handbook 2018 has been published with effect from September 2018. Compliance with this handbook is a requirement for academy trusts. The handbook strengthens expectations about the process for setting executive pay and explains new requirements for related party transactions.

The Department for Education (DfE) has published (external link)  pre-key stage standards for pupils who are working below the overall standard of national curriculum assessments but are engaged in subject-specific study. The new standards have been published for Key Stage 1 (external link)  and Key Stage 2 (external link)

These will be used for the small proportion of pupils who are unable to work to the standard of the national curriculum, many of whom have special educational needs. The DfE say that the change “will help ensure these pupils are better supported to transition onto the national curriculum, when and if they are ready to do so… [and] give schools the information they need to make sure these children are realising their full potential”.

Governing boards need to be confident in the information provided to them by executive leaders in order to hold them to account effectively for the progress and attainment of all pupils, including those with special educational needs. Those governing should ensure that they understand how the new standards will be used in their school and should work with school leaders to ensure that the appropriate level of information is provided to them.

The National Governance Association (NGA) and Tes Magazine are carrying out their annual survey with those governing England’s state-funded schools.

Click here to have your say!

Closing date: Monday 11 June

The survey is open to all governors, trustees and academy committee members in England. You do not have to be an NGA member to take part – please share the survey with others on your governing board and your wider networks!

Through taking part, you will help to build a picture of who is governing our schools and of governance practice, and to shed light on the impact of government policies on schools.

A full report of the findings from last year’s survey is available here (external link)

The Department for Education (DfE) has announced further details about its ‘future talent fund’ (external link)

The fund is intended to test new strategies for helping the most talented disadvantaged pupils maintain their high performance. It is a response to the significant disparity in outcomes between the most able students at the end of key stage two who are entitled to free school meals and those who are not entitled to free school meals.

Applications for the funding itself will open in the autumn. State-funded schools, multi-academy trusts, independent schools, universities, charities and research organisations will all be eligible to apply, although the projects themselves must be delivered in non-selective, state-funded secondary schools.

This is the latest addition in a series of schemes announced by the DfE intended to support disadvantaged pupils and raise standards, with this particular scheme looking to “encourage evidence-led interventions, including those that could be funded by schools using their Pupil Premium funding”.