William Prescott is a researcher at Bright Blue.
The last few years have not been kind to UK schools. The attainment gap between poorer students and their wealthier peers is as large as it was 20 years ago thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, the UK’s public finances are in a parlous state. The good news is that low-cost, conservative measures exist to help improve the UK’s worst-performing schools.
Since Benjamin Disraeli’s time, Conservatives have been concerned with improving the lives of ordinary people, and education has long been a key aspect of this. As far back as 1902, a Conservative Government took the first steps towards establishing a state-funded secondary school system. It was Rab Butler, a Conservative minister, whose landmark 1944 Education Act expanded secondary school access to working-class children. Conservatives too introduced England’s first national curriculum in 1988.
Ensuring the best educational opportunities for all is crucial to fulfilling the Conservative aim of helping people to help themselves and to ensure that everyone’s talents can be used to benefit society. However, while Conservatives have long acknowledged the power of the state to make a positive difference, they recognise that there is a real limit to what the state should do and what it can afford. Though expensive top-down proposals may seem attractive on paper, less far-reaching initiatives designed with individual schools, teachers, and communities in mind are often more effective.
As of 2020, more than 200,000 students attended ‘stuck’ schools, which are consistently unable to achieve a ‘good’ Ofsted rating. Typically these schools are in difficult locations, and have a higher proportion of deprived students, higher proportions of SEND students, unstable pupil numbers, and a high staff turnover rate. Making matters worse, measures intended to drive improvement, like negative Ofsted inspections, can help to create a “vicious cycle”, where schools receiving lower Ofsted grades attract more deprived students, which in turn contributes to more staff leaving and continued low Ofsted grades.
The Government’s preferred mechanism to improve poor-performing schools is academisation. According to the 2022 Schools White Paper, all schools are to become part of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) by 2030. The idea is that, by joining MATs, schools can pool resources, enabling better-performing schools within a MAT to lift the performance of weaker ones, as well as saving on administrative costs. The Government argues that underperforming schools have the ‘most urgent need for the benefits that strong trusts can bring’.
Unfortunately, the evidence that this works in practice is uneven. While some MATs have excelled, others have not — not all MATs have the capacity to provide the necessary internal support. Moreover, such a one-size-fits-all strategy is unlikely to suit all circumstances and sits uneasily with the conservative tradition and its preference to maintain existing institutions where possible. Finally, rushing all schools to transition into MATs by 2030 would likely require substantial additional resources to avoid compromising educational quality even further. Sometimes cheaper, localised, and more effective options exist.
First, to deliver the best education, all schools need to attract, develop and retain the best available teachers. Controlling behaviour, and being seen to do so, is a key aspect of this. The Sutton Trust found that a “clearly enforced and effective behaviour policy” was a factor likely to encourage teachers to “seriously consider” working at a school in special measures within an educationally disengaged community. By contrast, teachers coming from schools in more prosperous areas will likely be dissuaded by the prospect of having to spend more time controlling students’ behaviour and catch-up sessions to make up for disrupted lessons.
Ofsted too has noted that behaviour policy has been “fundamental” to the success in turning around previously underperforming schools. Having the school leadership take responsibility for behaviour policy also has, according to Ofsted focus groups of teachers with experience in schools with behavioural problems, “a large impact on the retention of high-quality teachers”. As the Sutton Trust pointed out, the senior leadership’s time is the only expense this would involve.
Similarly, professional development, led by other serving teachers whether in one’s own school or a different one, can allow for a more individualised way to transfer current knowledge than by attending more conventional ‘off-site’ courses by external consultants. This could involve, for example, more experienced personnel in one school mentoring a more junior colleague holding the same position in another school, or more opportunities to observe lessons outside one’s own school.
As the Education Development Trust pointed out, the teacher-to-teacher approach to personal development was a key factor in turning around London’s previously-struggling inner-city schools in the early 2000s. Such peer-to-peer interactions are unlikely to cost the taxpayers large sums and stand in contrast to the sorts of top-down measures generally preferred on the Left.
Secondly, struggling schools could be encouraged to develop more effective partnerships on school-to-school and community levels. For example, the School Improvement Commission suggested government could foster partnerships between MATs, local authorities and maintained schools. Especially valuable would be for schools that have overcome poor performance to share their experiences with ones that still struggle. With its extensive institutional knowledge, Ofsted is especially well-positioned to facilitate such connections. Once again, the main cost would be in existing employees’ time.
Finally, changes to the Ofsted inspection regime could deliver a more cost-effective inspection regime. As the UCL Education Policy Institute pointed out, stuck schools are subjected to regular inspections, up to four within two years, which does give schools enough time to make the changes expected of them. Further complicating matters, the varied size and make-up of inspection teams across schools means that consistent feedback is harder to give and genuine progress harder to monitor. By ensuring an adequate gap between inspections and carrying them out in a more consistent way, schools could gain more with the same, or potentially less, resources.
Of course, improving the UK’s struggling schools will not solve all the problems faced by disadvantaged schools — troubled family backgrounds, substance abuse problems and different attitudes towards education will always complicate that task. However, by making troubled schools more attractive to quality staff, encouraging more effective partnerships and making Ofsted more effective, we can make a real difference without burdening the Exchequer.
William Prescott is a researcher at Bright Blue.
The last few years have not been kind to UK schools. The attainment gap between poorer students and their wealthier peers is as large as it was 20 years ago thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, the UK’s public finances are in a parlous state. The good news is that low-cost, conservative measures exist to help improve the UK’s worst-performing schools.
Since Benjamin Disraeli’s time, Conservatives have been concerned with improving the lives of ordinary people, and education has long been a key aspect of this. As far back as 1902, a Conservative Government took the first steps towards establishing a state-funded secondary school system. It was Rab Butler, a Conservative minister, whose landmark 1944 Education Act expanded secondary school access to working-class children. Conservatives too introduced England’s first national curriculum in 1988.
Ensuring the best educational opportunities for all is crucial to fulfilling the Conservative aim of helping people to help themselves and to ensure that everyone’s talents can be used to benefit society. However, while Conservatives have long acknowledged the power of the state to make a positive difference, they recognise that there is a real limit to what the state should do and what it can afford. Though expensive top-down proposals may seem attractive on paper, less far-reaching initiatives designed with individual schools, teachers, and communities in mind are often more effective.
As of 2020, more than 200,000 students attended ‘stuck’ schools, which are consistently unable to achieve a ‘good’ Ofsted rating. Typically these schools are in difficult locations, and have a higher proportion of deprived students, higher proportions of SEND students, unstable pupil numbers, and a high staff turnover rate. Making matters worse, measures intended to drive improvement, like negative Ofsted inspections, can help to create a “vicious cycle”, where schools receiving lower Ofsted grades attract more deprived students, which in turn contributes to more staff leaving and continued low Ofsted grades.
The Government’s preferred mechanism to improve poor-performing schools is academisation. According to the 2022 Schools White Paper, all schools are to become part of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) by 2030. The idea is that, by joining MATs, schools can pool resources, enabling better-performing schools within a MAT to lift the performance of weaker ones, as well as saving on administrative costs. The Government argues that underperforming schools have the ‘most urgent need for the benefits that strong trusts can bring’.
Unfortunately, the evidence that this works in practice is uneven. While some MATs have excelled, others have not — not all MATs have the capacity to provide the necessary internal support. Moreover, such a one-size-fits-all strategy is unlikely to suit all circumstances and sits uneasily with the conservative tradition and its preference to maintain existing institutions where possible. Finally, rushing all schools to transition into MATs by 2030 would likely require substantial additional resources to avoid compromising educational quality even further. Sometimes cheaper, localised, and more effective options exist.
First, to deliver the best education, all schools need to attract, develop and retain the best available teachers. Controlling behaviour, and being seen to do so, is a key aspect of this. The Sutton Trust found that a “clearly enforced and effective behaviour policy” was a factor likely to encourage teachers to “seriously consider” working at a school in special measures within an educationally disengaged community. By contrast, teachers coming from schools in more prosperous areas will likely be dissuaded by the prospect of having to spend more time controlling students’ behaviour and catch-up sessions to make up for disrupted lessons.
Ofsted too has noted that behaviour policy has been “fundamental” to the success in turning around previously underperforming schools. Having the school leadership take responsibility for behaviour policy also has, according to Ofsted focus groups of teachers with experience in schools with behavioural problems, “a large impact on the retention of high-quality teachers”. As the Sutton Trust pointed out, the senior leadership’s time is the only expense this would involve.
Similarly, professional development, led by other serving teachers whether in one’s own school or a different one, can allow for a more individualised way to transfer current knowledge than by attending more conventional ‘off-site’ courses by external consultants. This could involve, for example, more experienced personnel in one school mentoring a more junior colleague holding the same position in another school, or more opportunities to observe lessons outside one’s own school.
As the Education Development Trust pointed out, the teacher-to-teacher approach to personal development was a key factor in turning around London’s previously-struggling inner-city schools in the early 2000s. Such peer-to-peer interactions are unlikely to cost the taxpayers large sums and stand in contrast to the sorts of top-down measures generally preferred on the Left.
Secondly, struggling schools could be encouraged to develop more effective partnerships on school-to-school and community levels. For example, the School Improvement Commission suggested government could foster partnerships between MATs, local authorities and maintained schools. Especially valuable would be for schools that have overcome poor performance to share their experiences with ones that still struggle. With its extensive institutional knowledge, Ofsted is especially well-positioned to facilitate such connections. Once again, the main cost would be in existing employees’ time.
Finally, changes to the Ofsted inspection regime could deliver a more cost-effective inspection regime. As the UCL Education Policy Institute pointed out, stuck schools are subjected to regular inspections, up to four within two years, which does give schools enough time to make the changes expected of them. Further complicating matters, the varied size and make-up of inspection teams across schools means that consistent feedback is harder to give and genuine progress harder to monitor. By ensuring an adequate gap between inspections and carrying them out in a more consistent way, schools could gain more with the same, or potentially less, resources.
Of course, improving the UK’s struggling schools will not solve all the problems faced by disadvantaged schools — troubled family backgrounds, substance abuse problems and different attitudes towards education will always complicate that task. However, by making troubled schools more attractive to quality staff, encouraging more effective partnerships and making Ofsted more effective, we can make a real difference without burdening the Exchequer.