Ofsted to intervene over ‘failing’ education authorities
This ofsted story suggests tensions and struggles facing rural authorities seeking to support school improvement in a difficult financial climate. It tells us:
The introduction of the new inspection regime comes after the regulator warned of a postcode lottery in education standards across England.
More than half of primary schools in Coventry, Derby and Thurrock in Essex were rated no better than satisfactory last year – the highest failure rate in the country.
Numbers were as high as four-in-10 in another 20 areas including Bristol, Portsmouth, Reading, Wolverhampton and London’s Hackney, it emerged.
Under the new plans, inspectors will be sent into councils with high numbers of struggling schools to inspect their school improvement departments.
The watchdog will assess:
• The ability of councils to identify failing schools and effectively intervene;
• The impact of authority programmes designed to support schools and the speed it takes to turn around the worst performers;
• Whether councils get value-for-money out of school improvement schemes;
• The amount of support and challenge introduced for school governors.
Currently, Ofsted rates individual schools on a four-point scale – from “outstanding” to “inadequate”.
But the new regime will be cut down to just two levels, with inspectors arriving “at a conclusion of whether such functions are being exercised effectively or not”.
Sir Michael said: “If England has any pretentions to be a world-leading education system, we must have higher ambitions and be absolutely committed as a nation to doing something about the wide variations in standards across our country.”
But Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said the move was a “highly political” intervention aimed at promoting more private intervention in state education.