Teachers have never been “more enslaved” in some classrooms despite there being a “school-led freedom” culture in the education system over the past 15 years, a Department for Education adviser has said.
Speaking at the Confederation of School Trusts’ (CST) conference, Sir Kevan Collins said that some schools risk creating “a narrow compliance culture which doesn’t last”.
“There is an irony in the school-led and freedom kind of culture that we’ve worked on in the last 15 years. In some classrooms, I’ve never seen teachers more enslaved,” he said.
‘Compliance culture’ in some schools
Sir Kevan added: “I think we’ve sometimes slipped into a shallow compliance culture where you see people being told what to do down to the degree of the slide stack you’re going to use in every lesson.
“And I personally worry about that in relation to responsibility for the children.”
In schools with these cultures, teacher retention becomes a problem, he said.
Sir Kevan, a DfE non-executive board member, was speaking as part of a panel on school standards at the conference in Birmingham, where multi-academy trust CEOs spoke about how the system can best support schools to get better.
Asked in the panel discussion who is ultimately accountable for school improvement, Sir Kevan said: “I sometimes think that you can outsource responsibility to an accountability framework, and I want people, particularly teachers, to take responsibility for the children right in front of them today.”
He was speaking after the DfE announced its plan for new Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams earlier this week.
Under this new system, which will be “strongly informed” by the Ofsted inspection report cards that will launch after September 2025, schools will have three levels of support available: signposting on to good practice for schools with minimal issues; more targeted support from another organisation for those with some issues; and structural intervention for “a small number of schools”.
CST said in a briefing earlier this week that it has some “big questions” about accountability under the new RISE teams approach.
Chief executive Leora Cruddas has told its members that the DfE has given CST assurance that, when RISE teams connect a school with a supporting organisation, the organisation will be responsible for providing that support and remain accountable for any funding it gets, but the school’s responsible body will still be accountable for improving the school.
Important role for regional directors
Claire Heald, CEO of the Cam Academy Trust, said that regional directors could play an important role in identifying where strengths lie in their regions, so that other trusts can be signposted to support easily.
Meanwhile, Sir Kevan highlighted two issues that he has concerns about in the current system: inclusion and the disadvantage-related attainment gap.
He said that he is “agnostic about [school] structures” and that while we have improved standards, we now we need to go further for the children and communities “we’re not yet serving”.
Building capacity, accountability and resources are the three big levers that can be pulled nationally to support schools to improve, Sir Kevan added.
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