The Department for Education has set out how schools will be supported regionally from next year, with Ofsted report cards set to play a key role.
Groups of civil servants and advisers known as Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams will start supporting schools in 2025, the DfE has said in a briefing to the sector this morning.
The teams will be “strongly informed” by the new Ofsted report cards after September 2025, the DfE has said.
Based on the findings of report cards, schools will be placed into one of three categories: those with minimal issues with strong capacity requiring “universal support”, those with one or several issues needing “targeted support”, and those requiring intervention.
The RISE teams will play a role in supporting schools in the first two categories.
1. Signposting for schools with ‘minimal issues’
For schools with minimal issues, RISE teams will develop a set of local area priorities, including in areas such as attendance and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
They will then signpost schools to hubs and leading schools, to help promote the sharing of good practice and support in these areas.
2. Schools needing more ‘targeted support’ to be helped by trusts and LAs
For schools requiring more targeted support, the role of RISE teams will be to commission help from a “supporting organisation” with a “strong track record of improvement”. This supporting organisation could be a trust, a local authority or another local partner.
The supporting organisation will create a support package for the school and commission wider support where needed.
For example, the supporting organisation may commission another body to support the school with attendance, if this is not a particular area of expertise for the main support organisation.
Speaking this morning, Matt Stevenson, deputy director for the South West, said: “We certainly are envisaging that a lot of - not all of it - but a lot of the support that’s offered to schools through targeted support will be provided by multi-academy trusts.”
The supporting organisation will receive funding to help with providing support, but Tes understands that work on the funding mechanism is still ongoing.
It was announced last week that the academy conversion support grant will end on 1 January 2025 and money for trusts to increase their capacity as they take on schools through the Trust Capacity Fund has been cut.
3. Schools needing intervention
For schools needing intervention, there will be no role for RISE teams - other than potentially in the short term to provide emergency support.
The DfE said structural intervention will still be necessary for a small number of schools. These schools will move into strong trusts: delivery teams in the Regions Group will ensure that this intervention happens.
Ofsted will still be the arbiter on how pupil outcomes are being impacted. There will be accountability for the delivery of support, officials said.
The DfE said it envisages that the number of schools needing more targeted support will be in the “low hundreds”. An “even smaller number of schools” are expected to need structural intervention.
Job adverts go live today
Job adverts for the new regional advisers, who will sit within the new RISE teams, go live today. The first advisers are set to be appointed for January, when they will start supporting a small number of schools.
This will be a “test and learn” period. The schools supported from January will be based on current Ofsted judgements, Tes understands.
The advisers are expected to have a track record of school improvement and leadership across phases. They can have been headteachers, multi-academy trust chief executives, local authority officers and diocesan education directors. The DfE expects many of them will be seconded part-time.
The DfE said it is looking at around two or three full-time-equivalent advisers per region for around two days a week, which may equate to four to six actual people per region working part-time.
Tes understands that the DfE will work on the policy to avoid conflicts whereby, for example, an adviser from a trust could commission their own trust to provide support to a school.
The adviser roles are being advertised at a rate of £600 a day.
Timeframe for implementation
Universal support for schools with minimal issues will start from April 2025.
The new school inspection framework is set to be in place by September 2025, when report cards will be introduced. Priorities for local areas will also be communicated at this point.
By April 2026 the DfE has said that all schools needing targeted support will have received it. Schools that need it are expected to receive targeted support for 12 to 24 months.
Speaking in a video at a briefing this morning, education secretary Bridget Phillipson said that “for too long support for school improvement has been fragmented and complex”.
“Selected senior leaders will work with my department to bring schools and trusts together locally to ensure that best practice is effectively shared,” she added.
The RISE teams will work with all state schools in each region.
Ofsted report card plans
Ofsted is due to consult from next year on a new inspection framework to launch in September when report cards are introduced.
An Ofsted spokesperson said: “Ofsted will be consulting in January on how we inspect and report our findings. We are engaging with the unions and experts on these plans.
“The Department for Education is responsible for whether and how to support or intervene in schools. The information shared today is a matter for them.”
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