Regular readers of Wembley Matters will be aware of concerns over the fragmentation of education in the borough as free schools are proposed and academy conversions take place. The provision of additional school places has been ad hoc and often last minute and led by the Regeneration department of the Council rather than Children and Families.
An Education commission set up by Chief Executive Christine Gilbert, a former head of Ofsted, is reporting to the next Cabinet on Monday. The report is to be welcomed but needs a much wider discussion. It is hard to see how how its far-reaching recommendations can be given proper consideration at a meeting with much else on the agenda and a lead member for Children and Families only a few weeks into her post.
The introduction starkly sets out the issues which in effect also constitutes a critique of the lack of leadership on education in the borough, a matter also raised on this blog.
Brent boasts impressive results in early years education and at key stage 1. Its GCSE results
are close to the London average and its key stage 5 results are higher than the London
average. But these achievements obscure less flattering statistics.
Given the excellent education the youngest children in Brent receive, it would be reasonable
to expect progress would be equally impressive by the time they reach key stage 2.
Unfortunately, it is not. Brent lags the London average at key stage 2 and its position
relative to the other 32 boroughs is getting worse: it slipped from 15th place in 2012 to 22nd
last year. This trend cannot be allowed to continue.
A few years ago, Brent outperformed most London authorities at GCSE, now it barely
manages to be average. Although overall its youngsters perform creditably,
disproportionately few of them get the highest grades. And even though a third of the
authority’s secondary schools are classed as ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted – compared to less
than a quarter nationally – it has the highest proportion of ‘Inadequate’ schools in London.
Unfortunately, these failings are magnified by a lack of shared vision and the absence of a
strong, energetic relationship between the local authority and its schools. All want the best for the children in their care but too often good intentions are unsupported by good practice. And where good practice exists it is too rarely shared.
In short, education in Brent is muddling through; scrambling reactively to avoid immediate
problems when it should be planning ahead, pulling together and setting its sights on
becoming one of the highest performing boroughs in London so that children and young
people thrive in all Brent Schools.
There are 34 recommendations in the report which I reproduce below. The full report needs careful consideration but two things immediately strike me. One is the contradiction betweem the authority cutting back on its School Improvement Service whilst at the same time wanting to get to know its schools better and have early warning of any difficulties. Will handing over responsibility to the Brent Schools Partnership, an organisation at an early stage of development, be sufficient to address this problem. There is a worrying absence of any reference to the role of School Improvement Partners (SIPs), the 'inspectors' of old, in the school improvement process, and consideration of their effectiveness and quality control.
Secondly, given the fact that Crest Academy, City Academy and now Alperton Academy have received less than Good, and sometimes Inadequate Ofsted ratings, and the failure of two planned Free Schools to open, is the proposed cooperation with academy and free school providers a viable option?
The impact of cuts and staffing uncertainties is honestly assessed:
Feedback
to the Commission indicated that the Council’s approach towards many issues is
not sufficiently strategic or ambitious. It is described as often being too
reactive and too late.
The
Commission was given the example of the abolition of assessment levels, as
announced by the Secretary of State. There seems little preparation for this
and, consequently, a risk that each school will act separately, resulting in a
lack of common language about assessment and learning across the borough.
Another example is the lack of
forward planning for free schools meals capacity.
Head teachers believe that, to
some extent, significant reductions in education staffing, particularly at
managerial levels, have made this inevitable.
Another factor is the lack of
continuity of staff within the Council. Lots of interim posts add to the
challenges of long-term strategic planning and reduce the drive to implement
agreed priorities.
Establishing a staffing structure, which has resilience and continuity,
should be a priority for the new Director, Children and Young People
RECOMMENDATIONS
Education
Strategy and Leadership
1.
The local authority should set
out a clear statement about its own role, within the changing education
landscape, for discussion with the education community. This should be rooted
in ambitious aspirations for and expectations of Brent Children and Brent
Schools. The statement should underline the moral imperative for all schools in
the borough to have shared ownership for the education of all children in every
Brent school.
2.
The role of the governing body
as an important force for support, challenge and improvement should be
recognised and the local authority should invest in the development of
governors.
3.
A strategic group involving the
principal education partners should be established, chaired by the new Director
of Children and Young People, to drive forward the education strategy in
conjunction with key education partners.
4.
This new strategic group should
develop and agree the vision for education in the borough. This must not be a
protracted process. The resulting vision should lead to a strategy which
contains a few key goals that are owned by all key participants and result in
well-defined, agreed actions.
5.
The local authority, in
collaboration with schools themselves, should set out challenging but
achievable excellence targets demonstrating high expectations for children in
the borough. The Commission believes that these excellence targets should
include an expectation that all schools in the authority will be good or better
within three years and that outcomes at key stages 2 and 4 will be at least 2%
above the London average within three years.
6.
The Leader of the Council and
the Lead Member for Education should establish a forum for meeting on a termly
basis with a group of representative head teachers to ensure the education
strategy is being taken forward and to reinforce the importance of education as
part of the political agenda of the council.
Planning School Places
7.
The local authority should
produce an agreed strategy for place planning. The quality of education and the
potential for school improvement in any expansions should be the foremost
priority when determining the programme of expansion.
8.
The Council should appoint one
head of service to be responsible for drawing up and implementing all aspects
of the place planning strategy across the two departments that currently have
responsibilities for place planning.
9.
The new Director of Children
and Young People should urgently review the authority’s arrangements for
projecting the future school population and the geographical spread across the
Borough to ensure they are rigorous and fit for purpose.
10. The local authority should be proactive in encouraging the best
schools in Brent and free school providers to set up new schools in areas where
extra places are needed. The Council should encourage open competition in order
to establish new schools.
11. The place planning strategy, and future updates about its progress,
should be kept under review and progress should be discussed with school
leaders, chairs of governors, academies, and faith and community groups, on a
regular basis.
Knowing
Brent Schools
12. To support school improvement, the local authority should put in
place a system to provide each school with a picture of how they perform
against both local and national indicators. These would be a range of
quantitative and qualitative indicators. The process for designing this system,
in particular the evidence used, should be co-produced with schools, both head
teachers and governors.
13. To support their role as champions and guardians of the needs and
interest of children, the local authority should produce an annual report that
should be easily accessible to parents and the local community. This should set
out achievements and progress in education in Brent, as well as highlighting
challenges and areas for development. It should be sent to the governing bodies
of all schools in Brent as well as academy trusts, Ofsted and the Secretary of
State.
14. The local authority should urgently investigate, with schools, the
introduction of a data tracking system that can be used to risk assess the
progress and performance of schools within the school year as well as at the
end of the year. This system should be co-produced with head teachers and
school governors.
15. Through the new strategic group, an agreed programme of peer reviews
should be established between schools, drawing on best practice in models
elsewhere. The peer review model should influence Brent’s current Rapid
Improvement Groups (RIG) process. Regular development opportunities should be
provided for teachers to observe good practice in other schools.
16. The local authority and schools should devise a programme of
activities to showcase excellence and interesting practice in education in
Brent
17. The local authority, in conjunction with the Brent Schools
Partnership and teaching schools, should publish case studies of good practice
in local schools, before the end of 2014. This should give a clear picture of
what good and outstanding schools look like in practice.
18. An annual schools awards scheme should be established in 2014/15 to
recognise and celebrate practice in Brent schools.
Promoting and supporting
school - to - school networks
19. As part of its changing role, the local authority should work
together with all education partners to build the capacity and effectiveness of
the Brent School Partnership. This should include its ability to commission
teaching schools and other excellent providers in Brent.
20. The Brent School Partnership and the local authority should be
encouraged to learn lessons for school partnerships from other authorities and
from families of schools, such as chains, federations and trusts.
21. Mechanisms should be put in place across all schools in the borough
for school-to- school challenge and support in order to improve practice and
build shared ownership for the education of all children in Brent schools. The
local authority should play a key role, encouraging schools to consider the
benefits of cluster and other partnership arrangements and to break down any
barriers that may prevent such collaboration.
22. The local authority should provide funding to the Brent School
Partnership to appoint a full time Director, or coordinator, for two years with
a formal review built into the end of year 1.
23. The new strategic group (see recommendation 2) should work with the
Brent School Partnership steering group to agree a set of priorities and a
costed programme for action in the school year, 2014-2015, for all schools. The
local education authority should provide financial support to incentivise
collaboration and work in clusters or networks. It should also agree a process
for how the Brent School Partnership and teaching schools might be commissioned
to provide and broker support for schools causing concern, including use of the
Rapid Improvement Group process.
Providing
challenge to address weaknesses
24. There should be more forensic examination of the schools that are
assessed as being at risk or requiring improvement through investigation of
teaching and its impact on learning in the classroom.
25. There is a need for more effective support for schools that are
struggling, drawing on the wider capacity and expertise of other Brent schools.
26. The local authority should be bolder in deploying executive heads,
NLEs, LLEs, teaching schools, federations and academy sponsors to ensure that
schools judged inadequate or requiring improvement have the necessary
leadership and governance expertise to drive improvement.
27. The local authority needs to identify underperformance at an early
stage and to be prepared to be more robust in how it addresses concerns,
including issues relating to underperformance in leadership.
Improving
school governance
28. All schools in Brent should review their governance arrangements and
consider reconstituting their governing body in line with the new regulations.
29. The local authority should complete and implement its review for
nominating local authority governors with a view to speeding up the process,
drawing in a wider pool of talent and making the skills and capacity of
nominees the primary criteria for nomination.
30. The local authority should produce guidance for schools on
conducting audits of governor skills.
31. The local authority should give greater priority within the governor
development programme to understanding and using data and to supporting the
role of governors in school improvement.
32. The local authority should broker collaborations between pairs of
governing bodies to scrutinise each other’s performance data and to engender
confidence and skill in providing constructive challenge.
33. The local authority should look at opportunities for governors to
observe how each other works, perhaps on a cluster or network basis, and
through developing contacts in other boroughs to observe and learn about good
practice.
34. The best chairs of governors should be encouraged to seek
accreditation as National Leaders of Governance and be deployed to support
other chairs.
THE FULL REPORT IS AVAILABLE HERE
