DfE’s “swift” school intervention drive failing on own terms?

Four years ago, a Department for Education spokesperson responded to Labour plans for a shake-up of the academies and free schools system by arguing that these schools were held “more rigorously to account” than was possible in the non-academy sector.

Specifically, the spokesperson argued, turnarounds could be quicker in academies, as “local authorities have presided over schools which have been in special measures year on year and done nothing – there are 40 council-run schools that have been in special measures for 18 months or longer”.

So, having recently analysed figures which suggest the DfE is still having a problem effecting quick turnarounds, I decided to look at the latest data from Ofsted.

And these show that the situation is virtually unchanged from that of 2014, when the DfE had thought it so bad that the data were worth highlighting in that criticism of Labour's proposed policy.

For 43 schools have been in special measures for at least 18 months, the latest Ofsted data (based on the situation at March 31^st, 2018) show.

More than half of those – 24 – are academies. And even the remaining 19 schools should now be seen as the DfE’s problem, rather than that of local authorities, since legislation which became active in 2016 means that all schools failing Ofsteds have to be academised, in a situation overseen by central government.

Indeed, as this website reported back in February, in many cases the DfE moves to take ownership of the process by starting the mechanism for converting schools into academies even before the Ofsted report which will fail it is published.

As such, it can now be argued that the DfE* has presided over 43 schools that have been in special measures for at least 18 months.

I delved deeper into some of the data around schools remaining in limbo for protracted periods in a series of articles when, a topic that Schools Week also explores in its latest edition.

It is not clear at all that making the complicated legal changes which are required to convert a school into academy status will be the quickest way of turning institutions around.

Indeed, some of the schools on the current list of those which have been in special measures for at least 18 months show the challenges facing the government’s new regime.

Sedgehill school, a community comprehensive in Lewisham, south London, has been in special measures since May 2016, the Ofsted data show.

Yet it is in a protracted limbo period in relation to being turned into an academy:  latest DfE spreadsheets state that its expected date to take on academy status is September 2020. The school has been supported by the United Learning chain recently but a long-term sponsor has yet to be found.

Similarly, Haydon Bridge Community High School, in Hexham, Northumberland, has been in special measures since February 2015. An academy sponsor, Bright Tribe, was lined up but has since pulled out.

Given the above, you may wonder why there is a question mark against the headline. Is it not clear that the DfE’s intervention drive is failing, on the terms that that spokesperson set out in 2016?

Well, further checking on figures from 2016 suggest there may at least be some nuance in answering that question.

 

I went back two years, looking at Ofsted’s spreadsheets for school inspection judgements as they were at the end of March, 2016.

 

I chose that date as it was just before the law changed so that schools failing Ofsteds had to become academies.

I looked at the numbers, at that time, which had gone at least 18 months since failing an Ofsted, and found them slightly higher – but it seems pretty marginal – than they are now, with 54 schools having been in special measures for at least 18 months as of March 2016.

When you look at the numbers in special measures for at least a year, it is fair to say that there has been a reduction since 2016, when 148 were in that position. As of March 2018, the number had fallen to 120.

It is difficult to know, without further analysis, why exactly this might be. It’s possible that fewer schools are failing Ofsteds in the first place. It might be that the action of converting a school into an academy is taking place towards the end of the year after a school was put in special measures. If this were the case, the school would then start with a “clean” Ofsted record, so would disappear from these spreadsheets.

As that last sentence implies, it is, of course, possible to question the terms of the government’s approach. If the DfE is able to preside over a school being turned into an academy, and thus losing its Ofsted “failing” record, does this mean, in reality, that its problems have really gone away?

But it’s also important to question whether the DfE is succeeding, even on its own terms. The numbers of schools still in special measures after 18 months suggest that what seemed a simplistic criticism back in 2014 is rebounding on the DfE, now.

 *The situation may be even worse for the DfE, on a comparison between 2014 and 2018, than the quote on which I’ve based this article suggests.

The DfE spokesperson is quoted in the April 2014 news article with which this blog begins as stating that 40 “council-run schools” had been in special measures for at least 18 months.

But official Ofsted data for the situation on the day that article appeared – 30^th April 2014 – show only 36 schools had been adjudged “inadequate” – an Ofsted category which embraces schools in in “serious weakness” as well as those in special measures - for 18 months or more. Some 33 of these were local authority schools.