Higher expectations of trusts, scrapping “micro-interventions” like times tables tests and removing government influence from areas such as teacher training are among the changes needed to end a “dysfunctional” relationship between government and schools, the head of the biggest multi-academy trust has said.
In a wide-ranging paper published this morning, shared exclusively with Tes, Sir Jon Coles, CEO of United Learning, sets out his blueprint for “how to do government better in education” and end what he believes is an “inefficient” relationship that leaves schools “unnecessarily helpless”.
“I think there’s an opportunity for a compete reset in the relationship between government and schools, and we should take it,” Sir Jon told Tes.
The former senior Department for Education official identifies areas for reform in terms of how the government interacts with schools, focusing on decentralising decision making and “renewing the sense of purpose in the system”.
School funding: ‘We don’t need enormous riches’
Sir Jon’s paper sets out how devolution giving schools and the sector greater control over decisions could make the system work better.
He acknowledges that the next government will come in at a “difficult moment” when schools are struggling for money and teachers, but adds: “I don’t think we need enormous riches to get this moving in a better direction.”
He told Tes that if heads started to see “budgets growing a bit in real terms” then it “would be enough to get significant reform and improvement moving”.
The DfE does not need to centrally decide everything about running a school, Sir Jon writes in the paper.
However, the school system and teaching profession are “institutionally weak” compared with other professions and public service, he adds.
This could be fixed in the short term by the government building capability in the sector’s professional bodies, such as the Chartered College of Teaching, so that the DfE can eventually hand over control of entry standards into the profession, standards to be met in the Early Career Framework and ensuring that training is high quality.
The government would need to be clear about the criteria that an organisation would have to meet to take on these responsibilities, Sir Jon told Tes.
‘Bigger, more capable trusts’
Sir Jon’s paper also sets out how the government should expect trusts to take “much more responsibility”.
He states that the government currently sets expectations of trust capability that are too low. These are then over-regulated because of a lack of confidence in having “capable, properly run institutions”.
To get out of this “vicious circle”, Sir Jon argues the government should set out higher expectations that all trusts are required to meet, including functions like a proper company secretary, health and safety, HR and a proper level of financial expertise.
Some small trusts would not be able to put all of these in place, he says, but they would be able to join with other trusts to access more capacity.
“The end result of this would be you’d have bigger, more capable trusts,” he told Tes.
“If you have bigger, more capable trusts, government could then regulate in a completely different way, because it would start from a much stronger base of knowing that trusts have all of these things in place because they’re required.”
Moving away from ‘micro-interventions’
Sir Jon added that schools should be able to set some “tests of concepts” that should replace government-set “grand national tests”.
There should be “no need for a national times table test”, he added. Instead schools should be able to routinely test children on times tables as part of daily and weekly learning.
“Moving away from that kind of micro-intervention, I think, is important,” he said.
The multiplication tables check was made statutory in 2022. When it was first announced, unions criticised it as taking time away from teaching and learning.
Sir Jon said it was right to introduce the phonics check because it has improved standards. However, he added that it would not have been necessary “if the system were working as it should do”.
“You would have informed professionalism in every school and teachers would always be ahead of the government on these things. And that’s what we need to get to,” he said.
Reforming regional decision making
Currently regional directors are at the heart of much of the decision making for the academy system.
Sir Jon criticised much of the system as being “impersonal, rule-governed and process-following”.
However, he praised the work of the South West region, which, he writes in the paper, has engaged with the sector and thought strategically about the mix of trusts it wants to see in the area and how they should grow.
Robin Walker, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, recently criticised the regional director system as being “a black box” system that lacked accountability.
Schools need support
To continue improving the system, schools need high levels of challenge but also high levels of support, Sir Jon said - but there are too many trusts where this is not in place.
This leaves “too many schools falling down the cracks” because the system “isn’t very well designed at the moment”, he told Tes.
He suggested that the government should make sure that all schools have “good quality challenge” from someone who knows them well - such as someone within a trust, within a local authority or from an outside organisation like Challenge Partners.
The government should set the framework for a system where these organisations can challenge schools to improve, but also support them and make sure they have support from a trust or local authority structure.
The DfE has been contacted for comment.
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