The major academy chain, its CEO and a handful of its schools’ struggles with super-high staff turnover

England’s largest primary-only academy chain may be basking in the limelight again today, its chief executive having given a “Why I’m worth it” interview, defending his �240,000-a-year salary and boasting an Ofsted record for its schools of “towards 80 per cent” rated good or better.

Yet Reach2’s recent record is far from perfect, amid serious on-the-ground concerns about the chain’s management of at least a small minority of its schools.

Copperfield academy, Gravesend

Yesterday (Thursday), the Kent Messenger carried the story of the latest in a series of headteachers to have left Copperfield academy, a primary school in Gravesend.

The paper billed this as the fifth head to have left Copperfield in five years, though we understand the correct figure might be four in five years, with the school now onto an interim head who is therefore the fifth over that period.

Parents and staff are understood to be very upset, given the popularity of Kevin Holmes, the outgoing head who started only last year.

The paper then reported, however, that the departure rate of headteachers at this school is “just the tip of the iceberg according to some parents, with one claiming her daughter has had 13 teachers in four years”.

The parent was reported saying: “Yet another headteacher has gone, leading to more unsettling changes for our children. I know I am not the only one to be upset at this news. The trust has been in charge of this school for a long time and they keep failing us. When will this stop?”

Another parent whose child is in year six told the paper her class had been taught by 11 teachers since she started. The school’s latest Ofsted report documents the fact that 11 teachers had started in September. This seems quite a feat, given that this school has two classes in most year groups.

Copperfield, which has been run by Reach2 since 2012, has been rated “requires improvement” since 2016.

An October 2017 monitoring report, though saying that Holmes and his leadership team were “determined to make a difference,” added that the “school is not improving fast enough,” amid “turbulence in staffing and leadership”, with major governance changes also documented.

“The time that has been lost through continuously changing staffing and leadership to this point means that the current team is faced with a considerable task,” added the report.

Brampton primary academy, Bexleyheath

Meanwhile, in May last year, the Ofsted failure of another Reach2 school in Kent prompted the following local paper headline: “Four headteachers in two years and rapid teacher turnover rate leads to inadequate Ofsted report for Bexleyheath school.”

Brampton primary academy in Bexleyheath “received the damning Ofsted report due to a number of issues, with most of them stemming from staffing problems,” it was reported.

The Ofsted report which failed the school said half of the teaching staff had joined at the start of the term it was inspected, in January 2017, while half of its governors were new in post in 2016. Leaders were “not focused enough on staff retention to secure improvement,” warned the report.

It added: “The high turnover of teaching staff has caused inconsistencies in the standards of teaching and learning. Parents are rightly angry at the constant disruption of their children’s learning.”

The most recent monitoring visit of this school, last month, was more positive, however, stating that the teaching workforce was now “stable” - although there was a new chair of governors - and that it was receiving good support from both Reach2 and the local authority, Bexley.

Two Croydon schools transferred away from Reach2 last year

However, last year the TES reported that Reach2 had given up two of its other schools “amid concerns about their performance”. Castle Hill academy in Croydon, south London, had been placed in special measures, Ofsted having concluded that “the trust was ineffective in appointing and retaining strong leadership for the school”.

The first line of the 2016 Ofsted report which failed it said: “Since the academy opened, frequent changes to leadership have resulted in a lack of clarity or consistency among leaders across the school.”

And Broadmead primary academy, also in Croydon, was reported as transferring to another sponsor, a Reach2 spokesperson telling the Croydon Advertiser that “we feel that the rate of improvement would accelerate under another trust”.

The May 2017 Ofsted report on Broadmead, carried out the month after it had transferred to the new trust from Reach2, said: “In the period preceding the transfer, there was significant staff turbulence, with a series of different headteachers and a rapid turnover of teaching staff.” Ofsted’s website has no record of it having been inspected in the nearly three years it was run by Reach2.

The TES piece states: “TES understands that Reach2 believes the problems of the two re-brokered south London schools did not indicate any flaws in its own model, and were specific to those two schools.”

Observations and Reach2 response

However, surveying the evidence of these recent schools’ experience, it is possible to wonder about the argument in that last quote, with the issue of staff turnover surely a very strong common factor in these schools’ recent experiences.

Asked for a response, Reach2’s spokesperson said: “Strong leadership plays an absolutely central role in raising standards in our academies. We expect excellence amongst our leaders which is why we invest so heavily in continuing professional development to support their development. Our high expectations and standards have been instrumental in turning around academies that were previously failing – only 17 per cent of our academies were good or better when they joined us, whereas now that number is 75 per cent and continues to rise.

“In the small number of cases where heads have fallen short of our standards, they have left the organisation. We make no apology for having high expectations, as we are absolutely committed to providing every child in our care with an exceptional education.” 

The robustness of this reminds me, admittedly in a more moderate way, of a story I wrote more than four years ago about another major trust – TKAT – having boasted, in evidence to a select committee, about removing two thirds of its headteachers within weeks of taking over their schools. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/28/academy-chain-axes-headteachers

This was necessary, that evidence submission had said, “to bring about the accelerated improvement needed”. But this just seemed to beg the question: how tough is too tough? Is super-tough management the best framework for the running of primary schools?

TKAT has faced its own challenges recently, having been one of the trusts to warn about financial pressures over the winter, and now facing an exodus of staff of its own at a comprehensive it runs.

Returning to Reach2, its seeming willingness to embrace high turnover in the chase for better results is an interesting approach, but it does perhaps beg the question as to whether, sometimes in the short run let alone in the long run, whether being quite so tough will be good news for the schools and communities it serves.

Do the disadvantaged communities served by these schools really benefit from such a level of turnover: I know my primary-age children would be shocked to lose even one class teacher during the year, let alone a succession. Surely schools, above all those in challenging areas, need a degree of consistency in their personnel.

And is the burnout implied by a constant churn of staff an effective strategy in the long run? The question, as perhaps implied by the Ofsted reports above, surely answers itself. And England’s overall position as both very tough on school-by-school accountability, and struggling on staff recruitment and retention, surely seems relevant to this debate.

The wider context

Reach2 does indeed sponsor 53 schools, so context is needed: this article focuses on just four of them, and school improvement – especially in schools which have struggled in the past – is very hard work. Improvements, where they come, will therefore be hard-won and should be recognised. 

Looking in detail at the inspection record, a cross-check against Ofsted data shows that only 35 of Reach2's current schools have been inspected, which is barely two thirds

Of these, Brampton is the only one currently listed as Ofsted-inadequate – though Castle Hill had been prior to leaving the organisation – while five are outstanding, 21 are good and eight are “requires improvement”. This gives a good or outstanding rate of 74.3 per cent.

Yet it is not just the organisation’s current schools which are depending on its approach proving a success. The Department for Education has invested a lot of trust in Reach2, incredibly granting it the right to open 22 new schools as part of the free schools programme (which was once, of course, billed as a from-the-ground-up initiative for parents).

There are a lot of people, then, depending on Reach’s well-remunerated CEO. It seems right that the chain’s detailed record comes in for some scrutiny.