The pressure of new targets for 90 per cent of children to reach the expected standard in reading, writing and maths in key stage 2 by 2030 will “terrify” school leadership teams, a headteachers’ leader has warned.
Speaking at a special Tes panel discussion marking the launch of the government’s new Schools White Paper, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders’ union, said the target would be a “huge worry” for teachers.
Mr Whiteman said that while he took “some reassurance” from the fact that this was a system-level target rather than one for each individual school, he believed it would not be long before questions were asked of where single schools were in relation to the target.
Dame Alison Peacock, chief executive of the Chartered College of Teaching, said that some teachers would look at the target and say “there are points where it just feels out of reach”.
Dame Alison and Mr Whiteman were joined on the podcast panel by Natalie Perera, Leora Cruddas and Carole Willis, chief executives of the Education Policy Institute, Confederation of School Trusts and National Foundation for Educational Research respectively.
They discussed various aspects of the Schools White Paper, with the key talking points outlined below.
KS2 ambition will ‘terrify’ school leadership teams
The White Paper includes the previously announced target for 90 per cent of children reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths in key stage 2. This is an increase of 25 percentage points on the level reached in 2019.
Speaking about the policy, Dame Alison said she thought any primary teacher or primary headteacher would look at the policy and think that it was “an admirable ask” but that it may feel “out of reach” because of the “lack of resources” and because of “the children and the conditions in which they exist”.
Ms Cruddas followed this and argued school leaders should be aware that the target is a “system-level target; it isn’t a target for individual schools.”
But Mr Whiteman said that while he accepted this, the policy would still “terrify” school leaders.
He said: “When inspection teams arrive, and they start looking at the data alongside the inspection, to what extent will the inspection really truly be faithful to the idea that the target is a system-level target?
“I can tell you from my experience of school leadership teams, that will terrify them.”
Lack of ‘resources’ a key talking point
While the panellists lauded some of the policies in the White Paper, the lack of resourcing behind some was bemoaned, with this being flagged as a “key concern”.
Ms Perera said that while there was “nothing objectionable” in the paper, there were no real “game-changing policies” either, and the lack of resourcing was a worry.
She said: “A key concern relates to the resourcing. The extra money that the government previously announced is being eroded by inflation and Covid recovery-related costs. How does the government expect schools to implement many of these fairly vague policies without additional resourcing?”
Ms Willis also expressed a similar attitude to resourcing.
Speaking about the key stage 2 targets and new targets for the average GCSE grade in English language and maths to be a 5 rather than 4.5 by 2030, she said: “It’s hard to see how the ambitious targets can be reached with very little new funding available to achieve them.”
‘Conference’ of academisation praised - but implementation could be tough
As expected, the White Paper includes plans for a fully trust-led system with a single regulatory approach.
The government wants all schools to be in or moving towards multi-academy trusts (MATs) by 2030, and this formed another part of the discussion.
The panellists agreed there were positives to this policy, particularly with regards to having a coherent system, rather than schools being run by different entities.
Ms Perera said she thought there was an argument for bringing “coherence to the school system” and to have “all schools under a single regulatory framework to clearly articulate the roles of the different players in the ecosystem that we currently have”.
Operational challenges of the move were also acknowledged. Dame Alison said she was “all in favour of collaboration” and “completely agreed” with the argument about coherence, but said there was further detail that needed to be explained.
Similarly, Ms Willis said the move would be “very challenging to achieve”. Ms Cruddas added that while there had been large-scale academisation since 2010, current reform was being implemented in a “very different context”, with the effects of the pandemic looming still.
Local authorities could become ‘trust of last resort’
The strategy set out by the White Paper allows trusts established by local authorities. It states: “Local authorities will be able to establish new multi-academy trusts where too few strong trusts exist.”
Mr Whiteman expressed concern that local authorities could become the “trust of last resort” as a result of this policy, because they are only in the position to establish a trust where few strong ones exist.
He said: “One of the powers that I think needs further exploration - and it’s a power that’s brought, I think, to bring reassurance to the system - is the idea that local authorities might begin their own trusts. I worry that…the local authority will become the trust of last resort.
“And actually, the local authority has to pick up the small rural schools and other schools that…the trust might not want to bring on board because they’re difficult, and I think we need to make sure that we mitigate against that, too.
“So I think there’s an awful lot of work in that promise to further engage with communities, with families, with professionals about how that might work.”
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