our school system – the way ahead

2 | Our school system – the way ahead

key figures at the roundtable

Name Position and Company

Nick MacKenzie (Chair) Partner, Browne Jacobson

Debbie Clinton Acting CEO, Diverse Academies Learning Partnership

Leora Cruddas Chief Executive Officer, FASNA

Rowan Ferguson Head of School Policy, Church of England Education Office

Christine Fischer Assistant Director and Head of Legal, Catholic Education Service

John Fowler Policy Manager Local Government Information Unit (LGiU)

Richard Greenhalgh Chair, United Learning

Alice Grimes Policy Advisor, CBI

Steve Hodsman Chair, Delta Academies Trust

Emma Knights Chief Executive, National Governance Association

Malcolm Trobe Deputy General Secretary, Association of School and College Leaders

Les Walton Chair, Northern Education Trust

Philip Wood Solicitor, Browne Jacobson

Our school system – the way ahead | 3

About the roundtable .....................................................04

Introduction.................................................................05

Executive Summary / Key Recommendations .........................07

The system

Do we genuinely have a self-improving school system? .......08

Setting the vision ....................................................09

Who should be driving the system? ...............................10

Redefining autonomy ................................................11

The curriculum

Determining the approach: the skills v knowledge debate ...12

Implementation challenges: .......................................15

Accountability & financial pressures .......................15

Teacher supply & retention ..................................16

About Browne Jacobson ..................................................18

The information and opinions expressed in this report are no substitute for legal advice. It is guidance only, if in doubt please telephone 0370 270 6000. The information contained within this report is and shall remain the property of Browne Jacobson.

This document may not be reproduced without the prior consent of Browne Jacobson. © Browne Jacobson LLP 2018

contents


Browne Jacobson would like to thank the key education sector stakeholders who attended our latest roundtable discussion, chaired by Nick MacKenzie, Partner at Browne Jacobson.

This report reflects the thoughts and views that were introduced in a white paper Browne Jacobson issued in preparation for the event and those that also emerged at our roundtable. It puts forward a series of key recommendations for further consideration by stakeholders on the self-improving school system. In the report, where we refer to the panel, we are referring to the attendees of the roundtable as a whole.

The content of this report does not reflect the views of any one individual who attended or the organisation they represent.

about the roundtable

“Who, or what, is driving the system currently?”


introduction

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the start of the ‘self-improving school system’ concept we are at a cross-road for our schools’ system. Do we continue to have a desire to develop a genuinely school-led system or do the tensions that exist between the professional independence of school leaders on one hand and the desire for centralised control on the other lead us in a different direction?

The system

It is clearly possible to argue about both the precise origins and start date of the self-improving schools system. There is no doubt different forms of support within the schools system have existed over the last 30 years but for our purposes let’s take 2010 as the start date for the concept of the ‘self-improving school system’ as we currently know it.

In July 2010 the National College published Professor Hargreaves ‘Creating a self-improving school system’ and the Coalition Government’s Academies Act received Royal Assent. The concept of Teaching Schools was launched in the same year.

In the years since, the self-improving school system has developed with multi-academy trusts (MATs) increasingly dominating the headlines and policy thinking as the pre-eminent school structure at the heart of the self-improving school system. Whilst undoubtedly Teaching Schools have at times played a supporting role in this thinking, has the significance and value of their role in the system been overlooked?

Finally, has the value and role of local collaborations and partnerships been ignored almost completely? So often the focus seems to be on remediation and intervention rather than the development of best practice leading to even more effective practice.

This of course is only part of the story. Approximately one third of state funded schools are now academies. This means two thirds are not. That said 71% of secondary schools are academies whereas only 28% of primary schools are academes. This means that children starting in reception in September are likely to be educated in both a maintained school and an academy. Does our self-improving school system cater adequately for both?

Shifting focus and reflecting on the leadership of the system for a moment, the Secretary of State for Education’s announcement on 4th May 2018 outlining high level principles for a clear accountability system reflects the reality of current tensions:

• between school leaders and the policy makers; and

• between the two key regulators – the Department for Education (DfE) (thorough the National Schools Commissioner and the RSCs) and Ofsted about who ‘inspects’ MATs.

It therefore feels apt to reflect on the state of the self-improving school system and its future direction of travel.

What is the system delivering?

Whilst the first theme of this roundtable was to look at the future of the system we also wanted to explore the role our schools, academies and multi-academy trusts should be playing in terms of equipping the workforce of the future with the skills that they are likely to need to succeed in the workplace. With the

focus on accountability and compliance in our school system this is a significant challenge where the recent reforms have prioritised a rigid core body of knowledge.

The challenge is only added to by the uncertainty around Brexit and the impact it may have on our economy and trading relationships around the world. Additionally, whilst it appears there are as many people who believe that technological advances and AI will lead to a new industrial revolution as there are people who dismiss it as hype, it is hard to argue that there will not be significant developments in the work place by the time a child starting in reception this year leaves full-time education or training. Are there inadvertent barriers and constraints in the system that could be tackled and removed?

There are so many interesting aspects to these challenges for our school system that need to be discussed; not least, by way of example, the impact of the current recruitment and retention challenges in the sector.

We hope that this report will contribute to debate about the way ahead for the self-improving school system and stimulate further serious debate about how to support our schools to deliver both the knowledge and skills our children and young people will need to thrive in 2030 and beyond.

Nick MacKenzie Browne Jacobson LLP

June 2018


executive summary / key recommendations

Our research, experience and discussions at the roundtable leads Browne Jacobson to make the following observations and recommendations:

• as a priority we need to go back to first principles and establish a national consensus for the vision for our education system, perhaps through a national commission. Whatever the method, the vision needs to articulate the purpose of the education system, who it serves and what it will deliver.

• urgent work is required to articulate and implement an effective model for system governance. This model should provide for coherence and co-ordination across the system so that parents, communities, businesses and other stakeholders can understand how it works. It should also determine at what level are we going to allow an element of independent decision-making? The work of the think piece published by the Teaching Schools Council and FASNA on system governance in May 2018 appears to provide a good basis to move discussions forward. The description of three inter-locking but independent components to system governance - the improvement space, the inspection space and the intervention space - appear particularly helpful.

• school and system leaders need to be more vocal in challenging the barriers to the development of a truly self-improving school system so that the benefits of a highly autonomous system as envisaged by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) can be realised.

• recognising that ‘autonomy’ has become a loaded phrase, the sector needs to redefine and create a consensus as to what is meant by autonomy and what it is for. This should make clear that autonomy should be exercised on behalf of,

and in the best interests of learners. Similar to the concept of the ‘servant leader’, the concept of autonomy in our schools system should not be about protecting the rights of adults and institutions.

• the range of school intervention tools need to be reconsidered as there is now an appetite for a formal arrangement whereby schools can be supported on their school improvement journey without permanently joining a MAT. Perhaps some of the concepts from the Accredited Schools Group programme dropped in 2010 could be revisited.

• MAT leaders and the professional/industry bodies that support MATs should consider how they can support the creation of greater integration and networks between MATs with the intention of benefiting all schools in the areas they operate and not solely the academies within their MATs.

• the curriculum offer should be based on a broad consensus on the needs of the whole person providing breadth and depth in order to prepare young people for the future.

• on the issue of teacher supply, recruitment and retention, this needs to be a co-ordinated national strategy where the DfE has meaningfully engaged with the sector, employers and business about what they want when determining the routes into teaching.

• we also need to look at providing a model for different career pathways that will meet the well documented challenges faced in recruiting and retaining staff.


Do we genuinely have a self-improving school system?

We appear to be at a cross-road for the self-improving school system. When you look at the reality on the ground there is a question mark about whether the system is genuinely school-led. Whilst the Government set out with a principle of autonomy being provided to schools along with high accountability, over time this principle seems to have been eroded, particularly in response to high-profile failings in the system. Whilst it is important for the Government to keep rigorous oversight of the system, it can often feel like the DfE is setting the rules and intervening directly based on the inappropriate behaviour of a few to the detriment of the majority and therefore undermining the founding concepts of recent reforms.

There has been a gradual increase, year by year, in the requirements on academies. Where once there was a great deal of freedom in areas like governance and finance, there is now an Academies Financial Handbook that provides limits on the freedom of academy trusts. Any government is going

to want to ensure there are certain regulatory restrictions in order to run an effective school system and to reduce the risk of an institution failing, with all the political and practical difficulties that would cause. Yet the reality of this regulation, and perhaps more importantly the policy and practice of its implementation, is at odds with the high autonomy and high accountability that has so often been the mantra of governments over the last 10 years.

Since 2010 the DfE has increasingly been moving from a department of government that is involved in the creation and communication of policy to an organisation that is more closely involved in the delivery and day to day decision making within the school sector, in a way that it has not been before. This can be seen from the way that the DfE talks about itself as becoming more focused on service delivery. The DfE (through the Regional Schools Commissioners) undertakes its own reviews of MATs (albeit these will now be scaled back) separate to the inspections conducted by Ofsted and makes decisions to approve academy closures, openings, changes to governance, and other significant changes such as those relating to age ranges.

the system

“There are some of us who always thought that actually, collaboration was a much, much more important part of school improvement than autonomy.”


Increasingly the DfE promotes ‘best practice’ that it wants schools to adopt in areas such as governance. This is despite stating in its strategy documents that it is concerned with ‘outcomes, not methods’.

The panel challenged whether we really have a self-improving school system in the English schools system. One panel member articulated perfectly the situation “I think the Department itself adds to the confusion because it doesn’t know, really, whether it wants a self-improving school system or whether it wants a top-down, centrally-organised system, and the result is, it sends out confusing messages.” Others argued that there is a compelling case and perhaps a professional responsibility for the system leaders to take control of what one panel member described the “hybrid mess” described above.

Another panel member strongly argued that “The MAT system, as the evidence and the data clearly articulate, is very, very immature, and it’s our job not to react to lack of government policy and poor, inconsistent policy, but actually to take control of that, which after all, is where the academies system began in the very first place. We seem to have lost sight of that.”

Interestingly, another panel member who generally supported the premise of the self-improving school system cautioned against the limits of a self-improving school system that was too introspective and the importance for the system to recognise its limits and where it would be sensible to look outside the sector for key learnings and expertise. This was echoed by others who cautioned against the arrogance of leadership in the sector and the failure to learn from others. As one panel member put it “I’ve never met a great leader that hasn’t learned from outside the sector.”

Whilst we look at ‘autonomy’ in more detail later there was a concern amongst the panel about the DfE’s approach to the autonomy of school leaders. One panel member summed up the challenge as follows “the way that I visualise things at the moment is that the Government is on a unicycle and it’s, sort of, balancing its way from big government to small government, and what keeps happening is something goes wrong as they reduce controls. They fall off the unicycle and then they’re slightly further back again…. The vision, I think, is small government, but how we get there. The unicycle is still wobbling…”

The panel were concerned that the current reality was that the DfE was often measuring and challenging leaders on the wrong things. One example given was the recent letter to every trust that paid executives over £150,000 asking them to justify why they had set the pay at that level. As one panel member put it “what I do see is our worry that they’re actually focusing on the wrong things with regard to autonomy”. A related risk was also identified that the education system could follow the path of others where the Government pushes centralisation of the wrong things and ultimately puts at risk the basic concepts that were at the heart of the evidence used to justify the current self-improving school system.

Setting the vision

There was a strong consensus from the panel of a need to have a national vision for our education system. One panel member commented “We are regularly asked for our vision. ‘Where are things going? What’s your ultimate goal?’ One of the things I think is missing at the moment is, from a national perspective, around, ‘What’s the vision for education?’”

The call for a vision should not be confused with a call for more reforms and/or initiatives but rather recognition of the need for greater coherence and alignment in the sector about what is the purpose of our education system. Who is it for and what it should be delivering? In the words of another panel member “Ultimately, what it should be about is, ‘What is the purpose of education? What it is for? What we want to achieve? What sort of society do we want to build?’ It’s a much bigger question, and we need to be looking at that focus again.” With Brexit looming this feels like an apt question and absolutely the right time to answer these questions.

Clearly, within the work of setting the national vision will be the discussion about how we fund that vision and how we ensure we have enough teachers and leaders in the system to deliver the vision on the ground.

There was broad support across the panel for a national commission to establish the vision. However, some expressed caution to ensure that the approach taken did not risk taking education “out of ideology or out of the political space”. Whilst historically there has been a cost to education remaining in the political space through constant reforms, if there was a national consensus on the destination, this could mitigate against those risks.

The panel were concerned that the current reality was that the DfE was often measuring and challenging leaders on the wrong things.


Who should be driving the system?

Once there is a consensus on the vision, you can then turn to the question of who should be driving the system. It was clear from the discussion that there is confusion in the sector about who is driving the system. There are lots of policies, initiatives and KPIs for different parts of the system but a question-mark as to the coherence and co-ordination of the different actors in the system.

More broadly there is a concern that the focus on academies and MATs has meant that the contribution and needs of a large part of the system is not even recognised. What is the role of Teaching Schools going forward? The ambition for 500 Teaching Schools was announced in 2010 long before locally based MATs were a key part of the policy but their role with the continuing growth of MATs is unclear. Beyond Teachings Schools there are a wide range of different locally based partnerships that are effective and, in reality, were the bedrock of early work on the self-improving school system that seemed to be completely ignored in policy terms. Arguably, the self-improving school system has been narrowed to only mean formal structural support via an academy solution, which is far narrower than the initial concept.

Interestingly, if you look back at Professor Hargreaves “Creating a self-improving school system” (2010) he outlined a 5 year vision which included:

“As headteachers change, so do some cluster arrangements. It is the voluntary membership and flexible ties that make the family cluster so attractive and effective…..At the leading edge of such developments are clusters reaching a high level of maturity: they are reaping in full the benefits of family arrangements. Criteria for cluster

effectiveness have been devised and disseminated. More schools are attracted to join clusters as the benefits become better known.”

The panel were very concerned about the importance of local partnerships and concerned that the importance of place based education was being overlooked entirely. Some on the panel also raised the fact that many in the system wanted to see the ability for schools to be able to “take in a school to help it, and save it and then set it on its way again.”

Another interesting theme identified by the panel was the importance of growing collaboration between MATs. This would appear to represent an exciting new aspect to the self-improving school system. Clearly this is happening but only in pockets. As one panel member said “so the whole theme for me of this, is to try, kind of quieten on autonomy and work hard on integration and helping each other”. It would be worth exploring whether these collaborations could also embrace other local providers in order to provide genuine placed based solutions that benefit the whole system in those localities.

The panel debated the importance of structures in the system. On the one hand people understand that the system should not be about structures but the reality is that structures deliver the education system so they are vitally

“To me autonomy of the curriculum has just been ignored.”

The growing collaboration between MATs would appear to represent an exciting new aspect to the self-improving school system.


important. A panel member suggested what was needed was to determine at what level do we want coherence and coordination within the system? At what level we are going to allow an element of independent decision-making? They went onto to say that “One of the things we’ve got is a lack of strategy for a series of initiatives. The fact is, you have so many different initiatives out there… one of the issues I’ve always had is, the more different structures you have, the more boundaries you have. From a leadership point of view, the more boundaries you have to manage, the more complex it is.”

Building on this another panel member described a think piece that was published in May 2018, around the time of the Rt Hon Damian Hinds MP, Secretary of State for Education published his statement outlining principles for a clear and simple accountability system, by The Teaching Schools Council and FASNA that looks at the governance of the system. It is not the place in this report to describe in detail the proposition set out in that think piece but in summary it considers three inter-locking but independent components to system governance which were shared with the panel:

• the improvement space – led by school leaders who improve schools. Others involved in improvement such as education advisors, Teaching School Alliances amongst others are enablers (and not leaders of improvement)

• the inspection space – led by Ofsted

• the intervention space – a crowded space that perhaps provides the most challenge to deliver coherence. Here there are local authorities, RSCs, ESFA and DfE.

Redefining autonomy

Until recently, the DfE has been very clear that it was in favour of a ‘school led’ system, with school leaders being given autonomy to make decisions on how best to run their school. The word ‘autonomy’ itself has become a loaded phrase with lots of baggage and very little consistency of what it really means both at sector level but also within organisations. Interestingly, reflecting on the speed the Academies Act 2010 was rushed through Parliament there was no substantive debate about the issue of autonomy. Perhaps that in part explains why we find ourselves where we are on autonomy.

The evidence provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has shown that autonomy is a key theme of school systems that perform well. This research evidence was used by Michael Gove to explain and justify the expansion of academies. When you look at the OECD research the core ingredients identified for a highly autonomous system were a focus on decisions about curriculum, assessment and resources. However, reflecting on our school system today, arguably the essential ingredients of autonomy that led to the OECD’s findings have been distorted in the debate about ‘autonomy’. As one panel member put it “you need to go back to what autonomy is for, and autonomy is about getting it right for children and young people in my view, and I think in the OECD’s view as well.”

The same panel member then went on to say “I do not believe that autonomy is a right of adults or institutions, and I think we’ve got ourselves in a bit of muddle in England, where we seem to conflate autonomous decision making, which is a right for children and young people, with the rights of adults and schools.” It is therefore essential to ask a fundamental question about what and who autonomy is for, and why we want to retain autonomy in the English education system as a concept. Whilst the panel did not come up with a definitive answer it is clear that the answer should not be one that focuses on protecting the rights of adults and institutions.


Determining the approach: the skills v knowledge debate

In our white paper before the roundtable we asked the panel to consider a prevalent challenge (and opportunity) for our school system, namely how to prepare our young people for their future. In doing so we recognised that, in many respects, schools have always had to prepare young people for an uncertain future, but the question we raised was whether the pace of change is now so great that this arguably means schools will need to adapt and face the challenge fundamentally differently than they have done in the past.

There was a vibrant discussion by the panel about the “skills versus knowledge” curriculum dichotomy that has been debated within the education sector for many years and, in particular, whether it is really a false dichotomy and an unnecessary distraction. Some argued strongly that it was a false debate, others that it was both an active and important debate to have whilst others highlighted that “the trouble with the knowledge versus skills debate is that it is sometimes

used to define people.” Acknowledging these differing views around the table, the fact that the discussion at the roundtable was so vibrant amongst these leaders in the sector would appear to support the fact that, at the very least, it is an issue that needs to be discussed and resolved. Not least because it is clear from the differing arguments that the approach taken will impact on the contribution of the schools system to improving social mobility.

Turning then to the substance of the issue, what should the focus of curriculum offer be? Much like the first part of the roundtable when the discussion turned to autonomy, the point was made that we need to focus on children and young people and not the needs of adults and institutions. One panel member argued that their organisation’s view is that “education is much more than the curriculum, it’s the formation of a person” and another that “we need to focus on what is important, and that’s the pupils. What do the pupils want?” Perhaps we should add to this, ‘what do they need?’

the curriculum

“I think that the wider development is being lost, and I do think, not just the curriculum but that wider education of the children is being lost.”


There were many strong views expressed by the panel about the best approach to the skills versus knowledge debate. Whilst it is challenging to capture the detail and nuances of all of the views of the panel here, it is clear that many see a skills and knowledge spectrum and it is a matter of getting the balance right (albeit that there might be some different emphasis on certain points depending on your point of view).

However, others strongly advocated that skills and knowledge were not mutually exclusive and that a knowledge-rich curriculum sat squarely with the idea that we cannot predict the future. Within this argument it is important to understand that those advocating a knowledge-rich approach are not talking about simply facts but deep rooted knowledge that comes from both confidence and knowledge to “enter specialist knowledge communities” where “skills are located within knowledge communities.”

One panel member was helpfully able to draw upon their experience from outside the sector and offered a different perspective on the debate by

adding the notion of ‘competencies’ to the discussion. If you take the example provided at the roundtable, effective communication, and you break it down “it’s got knowledge within it, it’s got skills within it and it’s got something else, and that’ll make things a bit more complicated.” Within this example you start with what do you want to communicate then you use your knowledge to decide with what and how you will communicate and finally, the critical ingredient, how do you get your message across?

Turning back to the opening question of this section, one panel commented “It seems to me that the basis of knowledge and competences are almost enduring, not quite, but almost. The skills, of course technology will change, so we’ll have to adjust” and then went on to advocate that a critical related challenge is the training and development of teachers (which we consider in more detail below).

The panel discussed the impact of the curriculum reforms in the late 1980s and 1990s which some argued meant that the curriculum was taken away from the

“

“

Education is much more than the curriculum, it’s the formation of a person.”

We need to have a more mature understanding about what schools are looking at achieving.”


professionals and eroded the previous consensus in education on what should be in the curriculum. Reference was made to the consensus before the 1990s on the areas of experience to cover the needs of the child, specifically “until the 1990s I had never met an educationalist who didn’t support the eight areas of experience”. Whilst the academy freedoms on the curriculum may, on the face of it, have handed some autonomy to school leaders in academies, the reality is that other factors and reforms have meant in practice central decision-making (eg national standards such as EBACC) have severely limited curriculum autonomy as envisaged by the OECD even for academies.

It therefore appears that any attempt at reaching a national consensus on the vision for education in England (as advocated earlier in this report) would also need to look to deliver a consensus on the best approach to the curriculum.

Implementation challenges

Even where you have an agreed approach on this issue it is clear that the sector faces barriers to effective implementation. Based on the roundtable we would highlight two of the most pressing to get the approach right.

Accountability & financial pressures

One panel member succinctly captured the challenge here arguing that often it is not the accountability measures themselves and not accountability that cause the problems. One panel member explained “it’s the outcomes of what happens as a result of the accountability and the performance management system that actually causes the issue”. The focus needs to be a broader and smarter range of accountability measures and “we need to have a more mature understanding about what schools are looking at achieving”.

The panel also clearly identified funding restrictions as adding to the challenge of providing the curriculum a governing board and leadership team would want to provide. This was not only about not having funds to offer the breadth of the curriculum offer and wider experiences that you would like to provide, but also from the perspective of compromising decision-making with the twin pressures of funding and accountability measures influencing leaders and governing boards to believe that they have no option but to cut to their offer to the core.

Last year’s joint TES and NGA annual governance survey identified that the

majority of governing boards were worried they were narrowing the curriculum. The challenge though as one member put it is that they “were the ones that took this decision”. This is not to ignore the dilemma facing boards. They are often faced with situations where they are told that to balance the books they cannot afford to run certain courses or activities. The reality is though “we’re seeing people make some of the wrong decisions in terms of the offer because they feel constrained by the funding”.

Governing boards will also want to reflect on their role in setting organisational performance measures, both to meet the financial pressures and ensure accountability on standards, to ensure that they are not inadvertently contributing to the problem.

Here is where being child-centric in approach can offer genuine challenge to some responses to the pressures schools face whether it be financial, accountability measures or simply the desire to expand one’s trust (whether on the organisation’s own initiative or through pressure from the RSCs). By way of example, sixth form provision came up a few times in slightly different contexts which may be helpful in highlighting the challenge. If, for example, an


the curriculum

“The messaging about us selling the profession is absolutely critical.”

organisation’s response to one of the pressures mentioned above (or perhaps a combination) was to expand its provision by opening a sixth form that could be the wrong driver. In that situation, the governing board would want to ask “Can we, in establishing a sixth form in this school, deliver the education that these children deserve? Or would they be better served somewhere else?”

Teacher supply & retention

The teacher recruitment and retention pressures for the school system are well documented. The anticipated growth in pupil numbers means that over the next six years it is anticipated another 35,000 teachers will be needed. This is a challenge in itself but the scale of the task becomes more apparent when you consider three additional aspects. First, the retention rate, or perhaps more accurately described, the attrition rate of teachers, estimated at 50% leaving the profession within the first seven years of their career. Second, the limits on the routes into the profession combined with the lower recruitment numbers at undergraduate level. Finally, the appeal of the teaching profession as a career option.

Whilst there has now been acceptance of the problem, school leaders may wonder whether the genuine acuteness and wider consequences of the challenge are still properly understood by policy-makers. The panel felt that there does not appear to be an overarching strategy from the Department on either recruitment or retention, rather “we have a series of initiatives, and to a certain extent they’ve also had their head in the sand pretending that there isn’t a problem until very recently.” The roundtable highlighted some other dimensions to the frequently discussed ones to the teacher recruitment and retention challenge.

One panel member worried about whether graduates were coming out with all the skills they needed. The example given was that repeatedly it was apparent that graduates from respected universities - for example, by being unable to justify the point of their subject in the school curriculum - did not properly understand the point of their discipline and its contribution to the wider education of a child. This was supported by others on the panel who said “I speak to people doing teacher qualifications, they know the national curriculum inside out and how it works and what’s required of it. They know about the teacher assessment arrangements, the assessment arrangements at Key Stage 2 and GCSEs but that’s about the limit. They don’t know about classroom behaviour. They don’t know where education has come from as a discipline, why we educate people, what’s it for? All those things now seem to be removed from the education professional.” This is clearly a challenge that those involved in both teacher training and education may wish to reflect on.

Who should be involved in the system of recruiting and training teachers was also another interesting part of the discussion. Not only from the perspective of the traditional arguments as to who does initial teacher training and alternative routes into the profession but also from the level of engagement

The anticipated growth in pupil numbers means that over the next six years it is anticipated another 35,000 teachers will be needed.


with employers. As one panel member commented “I wonder whether or not there’s a debate to be had around, as employers, whether we can have an influence on that system? I think the only way that that could be brokered is probably through the Department for Education”.

Turning to what the profession and leaders can contribute two themes emerged: empower professionals and sell the profession. In respect of empowerment there appeared to be recognition that the current accountability system and importantly the sectors’ interpretation and response to it was creating a problem and that we needed to “get school leaders and governors that are really able to empower professionals. They need to recognise this. That is so vital in the next stage.” Out in the sector there is a palpable feeling that a ‘compliance mind-set’ is squeezing out many of the other important aspects of a school system, including the facets of autonomy highlighted by the OECD. This is not to say that compliance is not important, it must be a given but it should not come to dominate the agenda as amongst other things it will stifle innovation and contribute negatively to the perception of teaching as a career.

The panel agreed more needed to be done to get across the message that teaching could provide a great career. One panel member commented “the first question, when you as a leader were asked ‘How are you?’ It’s ‘Busy,’ then the second one is, ‘How are you?’ ‘Tired.’ So there’s a lot to be said about, you know, what messages are we giving? What we talk about constantly is how tough it is, and it is, don’t get me wrong. It’s tough to be a teacher, it’s tough to be a leader in our schools, but we don’t talk enough

about why and what’s it all about, why you want to be a teacher, what’s it for.”

The structure of career pathways was also considered with one panel member commenting “There appears to be a hellbent need for people in the teaching profession to get vertical promotion. By that, everybody says they want to be a head. Why can’t we have horizontal promotions? Whereby, if you’ve got somebody who’s a fantastic maths teacher, and all they want to do is deliver fantastic maths lessons, why can’t we say to them, ‘Well, you’re so good, go across and help that struggling maths teacher in another school, or whatever’?” Other members of the panel highlighted the contribution of Teaching Schools and the designation of SLEs but is this another example of what is in reality an uncoordinated initiative as already mentioned above?

This also links to one aspect of the first part of this report – that the view of what actually makes up the self-improving school system has become too narrow over recent years at a policy level.

Interestingly in our last roundtable report ‘Accountability, regulation and leadership in our school system: exploring a ten year vision’ we cited the work of the Education Select Committee from 2012 on teaching careers where the career model from Singapore of three career tracks (the Teacher Track, Leadership Track and Senior Specialist Track) seemed to make good sense and appear worthy of re-examination. Perhaps this is another example of where, looking back, hard structural reforms have compromised some of the founding principles of the self-improving school system.

The promise of public consultation by the DfE with the sector this Autumn on the implementation of the high-level principles for how the accountability system for educational performance will operate, and how the different actors fit within it is a golden opportunity for the sector to reinvigorate a consensus for a self-improving school system and to start a new debate on the curriculum offer in light of current pressures. We have set out in the executive summary a number of key recommendations we would contribute to the current debate.


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Chambers and Partners 2018

Our multidisciplinary team is independently recognised as an award winning and leading provider of legal and HR services to over 1,000 education organisations from our five-office network, including independent and maintained schools, academies and their sponsors, further education colleges, diocesan boards of education, local authorities, regulatory bodies, educational charities, universities, and professional associations.

We are also one of a small elite group of law firms that are ranked in band one nationally for education by both independent legal directories, Chambers & Partners and Legal 500.

With over 40 specialist lawyers and HR consultants, we have one of the largest education teams in the country.

Nick MacKenzie, PartnerT: +44 (0)121 237 4564E: [email protected]

Mark Blois, PartnerT: +44 (0)115 976 6087E: [email protected]

Philip Wood, Solicitor T: +44 (0)330 045 2274E: [email protected]

Birmingham | Exeter | London | Manchester | Nottingham

0370 270 6000www.brownejacobson.com/education

our school system – the way ahead

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