The government’s “Parent Pledge”, aimed at ensuring support for pupils who fall behind in maths and English, has been dismissed by a headteachers’ leader as a “political gimmick” that could stoke tensions between parents and schools.
The Department for Education White Paper, published today (28 March), will say that teachers will identify children who need help, provide targeted support through “a range of proven methods such as small group tuition” and keep parents informed about their child’s progress.
It says this will support its aim to ensure the government meets targets - announced in the Levelling Up White Paper - for 90 per cent of pupils to achieve the expected standard in key stage 2 reading, writing and maths by 2030.
In 2019, 65 per cent of pupils achieved this standard.
But a headteacher’s leader has warned that the plan could create tensions between parents and schools faced with unrealistic demands.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The Parent Pledge seems like a policy gimmick designed to grab headlines. In reality, any child who falls behind in English and maths will already receive timely and evidence-led support and this is already communicated to parents via existing channels such as parents’ evenings.”
‘Schools already have robust systems for tracking progress’
Schools already have robust assessment systems for tracking progress, he said.
He added: “The danger of the Parent Pledge is that it will build an expectation of an entitlement to various forms of additional support on demand.
“This is not realistic as schools have limited resources and have to meet the needs of all their students. We fear that this will simply create tensions between parents and schools, rather than helping them to work together.”
However, Robert Halfon MP, chairman of the Commons Education Select Committee, said increasing parental engagement through the Parent Pledge would “help break down long-standing and often complicated barriers that exist to help increase attendance, especially in relation to the 124,000 ‘ghost children’ who have dropped out of the school system following the outbreak of the pandemic”.
The White Paper also includes new secondary school targets that aim to see the national average GCSE grade in both English language and maths increase from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 by 2030.
Other proposals include moving all schools into multi-academy trusts (MATs) by 2030, allowing councils to run academy trusts and asking schools to ensure they remain open for 32.5 hours a week.
The proposals, overall, have received a mixed reaction from across the school sector.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, highlighted the need for more school funding to achieve the plans, as well as more details on how the ambitions would be realised.
He warned that the government’s academisation target was likely to be controversial, saying: “Successive government reforms have left us with an incoherent and messy school system - with different arrangements governing local authority schools and academies. But the ambition to tidy up the system risks being a distraction if the government fails to present a compelling case.”
“Should the government resort to compulsion, the ambition will become destructive,” he added.
‘Deep concerns’
One of the main changes outlined in the White Paper is the commitment to ensuring all schools move into MATs by 2030, along with a plan to review how to regulate and hold MATs to account.
The government has said the review will consider how best to hold trusts accountable against a new strong trust definition “focused on the quality and inclusivity of the education they provide, how they improve schools and maintain their local identity, how they protect value for money for the taxpayer and how they develop their workforce.”
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts (CST), said academy trusts that are set up by councils should be regulated in the same way as any other academy trust and that “safeguards should be in place to effectively manage any potential for conflicts of interest, including limits on local authority involvement on the trust board”.
Ms Cruddas also said the CST was “deeply concerned about the proposal for a school to be able to make a request to the regulator to leave a trust”.
This proposal has not been included in the DfE’s announcement about the White Paper today but the full document is due to be published this morning.
Ms Cruddas added: “This proposal fails to understand that the trust is the legal entity - it is not an ‘authority’ somehow separate from its schools. We have shared our concerns about this proposal and will continue to make the case that this is a retrograde step.”
Tes has approached the DfE for a comment.
Ms Cruddas also said that the CST broadly supported the definition of a strong trust, set out in the White Paper, but “would argue that high quality, inclusive education and school improvement should not be considered as separate elements of the definition”.
She added: “A trust delivers high quality, inclusive education through its school improvement practices.”
‘Coherent plan’ needed on Covid recovery
Elsewhere, research and think tank leaders highlighted the need for the government to address the impact of Covid on pupils’ education.
For example, Carole Willis, chief executive at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), said: “Addressing the impact of the Covid pandemic on young children’s literacy and numeracy will be crucial to ensuring their continued success in their education.
“That is why we need a coherent plan in place to ensure these vitally important subjects are prioritised as part of future recovery efforts, as well as dedicated funding to ensure schools are able to meet these plans.”
In particular, additional support needs to be put in place for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who otherwise risk being left further behind, she said.
She pointed to research showing the attainment gap had increased following the pandemic.
“This needs to be addressed immediately as an essential part of the government’s levelling up agenda,” she added.
Natalie Perera, chief executive of the Education Policy Institute (EPI), also highlighted the growing attainment gap under Covid, saying the government’s levelling up programme was ”not well funded enough to make good these learning losses and get the disadvantage gap closing again”.
Expressing scepticism around the academisation plan, she said: “The government seems to be placing a lot of weight on all schools being in a ‘strong multi-academy trust’ by 2030, but it is clear from our research that academisation is no ‘silver bullet’ for improving school performance and there may simply not be enough capacity to absorb thousands of schools into the higher-performing MATs.”
‘Hard wired collaboration’
Several academy trust leaders have expressed broad support for the White Paper.
Rebecca Boomer-Clark, chief executive of the Academies Enterprise Trust academy chain, said she welcomed the move to a system where all schools eventually became part of a strong school trust.
She added: “Hard wired collaboration at scale will improve system resilience and open up exciting opportunities for innovation. But, it is equally important that we protect diversity and choice, with individual schools reflecting the colour and context of their local communities. If we get this right, we really will start to see education making a major contribution to the levelling up agenda.”
Rowena Hackwood, chief executive of the Astrea Academy Trust, said: “Making our schools as strong as possible and providing a brilliant education to all our children is entirely what drives us. We do this by pursuing aspirational standards with tenacity and drive, never settling for second best and not tolerating anything that does not live up to our standards.
“For this reason, we support the ambitious drive of the White Paper and the focus on a knowledge-rich curriculum and high-quality teacher development to secure excellence for all.”
