With the progress of the Schools White Paper to a draft Education Bill, universal academisation is back on the agenda.
The government’s aim is for all schools to have joined a multi-academy trust by 2030, and there is consideration of using the “2LTG” model (two less-than-“good” Ofsted grades) as a trigger for moving schools into trusts.
This echoes Ofsted’s pre-pandemic reports on “stuck” schools that identified 415 schools that it said were “stuck” in a cycle of low performance and needed better and more tailored support to improve.
This prompted us at the Education Policy Institute and Institute of Education to form a team to investigate how many schools had become “stuck” and what might contribute to this happening.
Why a school becomes ‘stuck’ with low Ofsted grades
Today we have published our research, and we found that “stuck” schools faced a cocktail of challenges but that remaining “stuck” is not predetermined, recovery is possible and struggling schools can find their way back to “good”.
However, our findings also suggest a number of contributory factors that have outside influences and make the journey more difficult than it might be.
Unsurprisingly, deprivation is a key feature of “stuck” schools - but, in addition, the effects of an adverse inspection on pupil enrolments expose the school to higher rates of pupil turnover and increasingly disadvantaged intakes.
In fact, we found evidence that there is a vicious cycle of less-than-“good” grades and rates of poverty over time, but our analysis indicated that while this made recovery harder, it was only a modest influence on subsequent Ofsted grades.
Teacher turnover: a major problem
Instead, one of the most striking findings was the teacher turnover experienced by “stuck” schools.
“Stuck” primary schools lost 73 per cent of their teachers over five years, compared with 54 per cent in schools that weren’t “stuck”, and the rates were similar for secondary schools.
“Stuck” schools were disproportionately located in middle-sized towns and cities, where they benefited from neither the recruitment benefits of big cities nor the lower levels of pupil needs in small towns and villages.
While “stuck” primary schools received £550 more funding per pupil than other schools, “stuck” secondaries only averaged an extra £80 per student with which to find new teachers and maintain pupil support.
The neighbourhood school problem
A challenging finding for policymakers was the influence of neighbouring schools on becoming “stuck”.
Schools whose neighbours had better Ofsted grades than them were more likely to remain “stuck” over time, and this “neighbour effect” was more important in explaining whether a school got “stuck” than the school’s own performance, as measured by its pupil attainment and progress.
Indeed, some of our case study schools that recovered after being “stuck” spoke of their mixed feelings in knowing that the “stuck” mantle had moved to another nearby school, rather than having been lifted from the area altogether.
This prompted us to recommend that Ofsted should consider how it can change the inspection process itself to support recovery better and assist in connecting struggling schools with those that have recovered and can give the most relevant advice on how to improve.
Our other recommendations for the government include reviewing how the school funding system affects undersubscribed “stuck” schools, in particular secondary schools, which we found not to have substantially better per-pupil funding than other schools that are not “stuck”.
Linked to this, the DfE should develop a plan to stabilise staffing at “stuck” schools.
We found that changes of headteacher following an adverse inspection contributed to increased teacher turnover and further subsequent less-than-“good” grades.
Is academisation the answer?
Our findings on academisation were quite nuanced - for secondary schools, joining a multi-academy trust after an adverse inspection outcome could help to stabilise staffing by reducing teacher turnover and providing more support to the school.
But there are two big caveats to the benefits of joining a MAT.
The first was that like the vicious cycles mentioned above, these supportive cycles from joining a MAT only made a modest contribution to subsequent Ofsted grades.
More problematic is that we did not find the same supportive cycle for primary schools joining a MAT.
There was much more statistical uncertainty about the effects on primary schools, and small potential benefits were offset by increased teacher turnover contributing to worse inspection grades.
This is in keeping with wider research into academies tha paints a picture of mixed performance - which particular MAT or local authority a school belongs to is more important than whether it is a MAT or a local authority.
Reflecting on what we learned from the “stuck” schools themselves, avoiding generic prescriptions, understanding the particular combination of challenges faced by the school, and connecting them with relevant advice and support were key to the recovery of those “stuck” schools that subsequently became “unstuck”.
If we can find ways to address the staffing stability problem and protect the funding of “stuck” schools then that would be a genuine contribution to system improvement.
Jo Hutchinson is director for social mobility and vulnerable learners at think tank The Education Policy Institute
