The new term opened with a bang earlier this month with the freshly elected Labour government unveiling a shake-up of inspection, curriculum and school improvement.

Many of the changes, such as a scorecard approach to school inspection, have been long called for and were welcomed by the sector, but measures impacting how schools are managed regionally have sparked widespread questions about the nature of the new government’s vision for the overall management of school improvement.

The lack of clarity has led to those with an existing or potential role in the regional management of schools, including academy trusts, councils and metro mayors, to jostle for access to the various levers of local control.

There have been some clues about what the wider direction of travel might be, however.

Alongside its announcement of the introduction of the new Ofsted scorecard approach earlier this month, the Department for Education said its manifesto-trailed regional improvement teams would launch early next year to support struggling schools.

Regional teams to include ‘the best leaders and teachers’

The department said the teams “will draw on the best leaders and teachers in the country, as well as wider organisations with strong school improvement capacity” to support schools, which could be any state-funded organisations, including special schools.

And it told Tes it will engage with the sector to find the best way to appoint advisers for “these high-calibre regional improvement teams”.

It has also emerged that the DfE is setting up a new Register of External Experts, to be in place before March 2025 when the current register expires.

In an email to academy trusts, sent last week and seen by Tes, the department said it was looking for qualified education professionals “with a proven record of developing, supporting or leading schools and trusts” to join this register of external experts.

But it is unclear how new ministers see the regional improvement role of multi-academy trusts fitting into its vision for regional school improvement.

The previous government wanted all state schools to be in, or moving towards joining, a multi-academy trust by 2030, and viewed placing underperforming schools into MATs as the go-to solution for school improvement.

However, some are now asking if MATs’ dominant role will be diminished as regional improvement teams are rolled out next year.

• Reform: Regional improvement teams launching in 2025
• Mayors: Regional leaders want more of a say on schools 
• Analysis: Is this how DfE’s regional improvement teams could work?

In an exclusive interview at the start of term, the education secretary Bridget Phillipson told Tes that academy trusts have “an important role to play” but added that her focus was “on the school itself regardless of the name above the door”. She also warned that there had been insufficient focus on making sure “all schools were getting the support they need to improve, regardless of structure”.

The Confederation of School Trusts (CST) argued earlier this year that improvement should be delivered by organisations rather than individuals.

Speaking to Tes about how the new regional teams will work, deputy chief executive Steve Rollett says it would be “only sensible” to use the “massive amount of expertise within school trusts”.

Schools joining a MAT is “in many cases the most effective way of doing that” he says, adding that trusts already do a lot of support work with both maintained and academy external schools, and CST “hopes that the regional improvement teams can capitalise on this”.

Troubleshooters don’t work

Tom Campbell, CEO of E-ACT, which has 38 primary and secondary schools in the North and South of England, agrees: “There is a deep and rich seam of school improvement expertise within academy trusts and it will be important to draw on this - with trusts bringing their local understanding and national appreciation of the issues to bear.”

And Rowena Hackwood, CEO of Astrea, which has 26 primary and secondary schools in South Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire, points out that trusts have the “capacity and track record of school improvement”, adding that “the sector stands ready to support the DfE’s plans for the new regional improvement teams”.

“As trust leaders, we don’t see our responsibilities ending at our school gates; we have a wider responsibility to the whole education eco-system, and where we can bring extra capacity to help, we are keen to do so,” she says.

The CST’s “school improvement architecture” paper also suggests that the government should make space for “softer interventions” to allow schools to receive support from MATs without requiring them to change their governance and join a trust.

Rollett says: “The crucial thing we hear from members is that support must be long-term, sustainable and avoid taking expertise away from the front line.” Experience in the sector has shown that the “troubleshooter” approach, where someone comes in for a few days and then disappears, “just doesn’t work”, he adds.

‘We must safeguard a system that is already fractured’

There are also questions about what the DfE will expect from its regional improvement teams.

Concerns had already been raised earlier this year, by school sector leaders and local communities, about a lack of transparency surrounding the current DfE regional director’s decision-making system. The DfE has not said whether RDs will continue in their current role of approving the brokering of schools into MATs, although forthcoming Regional Advisory Board meetings - which RDs chair and where final decisions are made over a school’s future - have been put on hold for the time being.

The DfE has also ended the automatic academisation of schools with consistent “requires improvement” judgements - but has not indicated how such schools will be managed in future.

Seamus Murphy, the chief executive of Turner Schools academy trust, which has seven primary, secondary and sixth-form schools and colleges in Kent, questions whether the new teams will be built using existing capacities, such as systems leaders or national leaders of education.

“If not, what safeguards are in place to ensure that the regional teams are exceptional practitioners with the right background to support schools?” he asks.

He adds: “I would also want to know what safeguards are in place to ensure that these regional improvement teams are not going to create further challenges to a system that is already fractured.”

Meanwhile, other regional and local government leaders are hoping to stake their claim for a role in school accountability in their areas.

Metro mayors are making the case to be more involved in how schools in their regions operate after the prime minister Sir Keir Starmer indicated he wanted to see more devolution.

Local councils are also hoping a change in government will mean a resetting of their role in schools.

Local authority school role eroded ‘by design’

Heather Sandy, chair of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services education policy committee, tells Tes that the previous government’s policies had eroded the role of the local authorities in schools “by design”.

She adds that councils’ retainment of statutory duties in areas such as special educational needs provision, and ensuring pupils have sufficient school places, has hampered the inclusion agenda in schools, which is now set to be an area of increased focus for Ofsted.

“If the person responsible for improving a school is not responsible for exclusions across an area, for SEND [special educational needs and disabilities], for home-to-school transport, for place planning, then you drive a different set of behaviours that will work for an individual establishment, but not necessarily for that community,” she says.

However, this is now set to change: the government is planning to introduce a Children’s Wellbeing Bill, which proposes to require all state schools to cooperate with the local authority on admissions, inclusion and place planning.

When asked if councils and maintained schools should be more directly involved in the DfE’s new regional improvement teams, Sandy says: “It would ultimately be most beneficial for learners if there was no differentiation between an academy or maintained school, and an LA or a MAT; the best skills and experience should be brought to bear to improve performance and learner outcomes.”

But the calls for greater local government involvement in school oversight and support come against a backdrop of financial uncertainty for town halls, with more than half of local authorities warning that they would be insolvent within three years if a change in government policy moved high needs deficits on to council books.

Great teachers and leaders are already stretched

Lord Knight, the former schools minister, says it is unlikely that local councils would return to having significant school improvement roles anytime soon owing to a lack of available funding.

He believes regional improvement teams’ expertise “would be brokered by regional directors to find what is essentially peer support”.

“School leaders will respect the work of their peers more than a consultant or government civil servant,” he says.

However, Pepe Di’lasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, raises concern over taking expertise away from the front line.

“I applaud that we are looking at a different way of doing things, but it needs careful management because we haven’t got loads of spare capacity of great teachers and leaders knocking about sat in cafés with nothing to do,” he says.

Di’lasio adds that he welcomes the idea of regional improvement teams that can be embedded in their local communities and understand an area’s problems, but says this should not mean a “ballooning” of central services, with roles being duplicated across different parts of the system.

The responses from council and academy trust organisations alike suggest that, across the school sector, there is a desire to move beyond the dividing lines of the past.

But how it will overcome the challenge of driving school improvement coherently with both national and regional oversight across a fragmented system remains to be seen.

For the latest education news and analysis delivered every weekday morning, sign up for the Tes Daily newsletter