The Department for Education is unable to say how many people work for its regional schools commissioners, despite £31 million of taxpayers’ money being spent on them this year.
The eight RSCs were introduced in 2014 to oversee and make decisions about academies in their areas.
Since then, their powers have expanded to turn all non-academies that are judged “inadequate” into academies, decide the fate of “coasting” schools and have a bigger role in school improvement.
And their budget has increased more than six-fold, from £4.7 million in their first full year of operation to an estimated £31.2 million in the current year.
However, when Tes asked the Department for Education how many people now work for the RSCs, it was told: “We don’t hold this information readily available due to restructuring to the RSC team over the years.”
Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, told Tes: “The fact that they have no idea how many staff are employed by them is a testament to a complete lack of forethought.
“The question has to be asked whether the RSC system is doing its job in the wake of Wakefield City Academies Trust, the explosion of related-party transactions in multi-academy trusts, and the issue of off-rolling. The question has to be asked: given the extra resources, what is actually happening with the RSCs.”
The rise of the RSCs has come amid growing concerns about an overlap between their work, and that of Ofsted.
The RSCs use of education advisers to visit schools and report privately to RSCs on how they are performing has led to fears they are operating a “shadow inspection regime”.
Last week, Sir David Carter, who oversees the RSCs in his role as national schools commissioner, acknowledged duplication with Ofsted, and said he would scale back school visits commissioned by RSCs.
And according to Ofsted’s board minutes for November 2017, Paul Kett, the DfE’s director general, education standards, acknowledged an overlap between the RSCs and the inspectorate’s regional directors, saying “the value for money issue this could present is part active business planning discussions at the DfE”.
The DfE claims Mr Kett’s comments were related to joint activities between RSCs and Ofsted regional directors, which were discussed at a joint event between the two groups. The comments related to their roles at that event specifically and not the overall organisational functions of the two groups, a spokesperson insisted.
But asked if it was claiming that Ofsted’s minutes were inaccurate, the Department did not respond.
This is an edited article from the 16 February edition of Tes. Subscribers can read the full article here. To subscribe, click here. This week’s Tes magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here
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