The government is planning to scrap two key policies that have terrified headteachers up and down the country for years.

It is all part of efforts by the DfE to reform the way that schools are held to account, and shift to a system that is geared to helping schools improve, rather than punishing them for failing.

Its consultation on the future of the floor and coasting standards, and what happens if Ofsted says a school ‘requires improvement’, closes today.

Here is what you need to know:

What does the government want to do?

The consultation is about changing the trigger for the DfE to offer schools help to improve.

Quick read: Hinds to replace ‘confusing’ floor and coasting standards

Accountability: Heads want ‘requires improvement’ to replace floor standards

Ofsted: ‘Good’ schools may be ‘coasting’ too

Currently, there are two key school performance measures that serve this purpose. They are the floor and coasting standards, and are based purely on data at key stage 2 and key stage 4.

The floor standard has been around for years, while the coasting standard was introduced more recently by Nicky Morgan. If a school’s results fall below these thresholds, the DfE will offer them some support to improve.

The proposal is to scrap both of these numerical thresholds.

In their place, the government wants to use Ofsted’s ‘requires improvement’ judgement - which should be based on a more rounded picture of a school than just its data - as the trigger.

Sounds a bit technical, doesn’t it?

It is, but it is also part of a much bigger, and very important, picture.

For decades, the DfE has had what some people have seen as a punitive approach to holding schools to account: set a data threshold and name-and-shame schools that don’t meet it, with the threat of changing their leaders or converting them into an academy.

Now, with the teacher recruitment and retention crisis a more urgent concern to ministers than school standards, the government is moving towards a more supportive approach to school accountability.

The idea is to ease the pressure a bit, in the hope that it will reduce the pressure and workload on teachers and leaders, and encourage more to join, or stay in, the profession.

An important moment came last year, when the DfE said that data measures such as the floor and coasting standards would no longer be used to force schools to become academies.

Instead, they would become triggers of an offer of support to help the school to improve.

And with this consultation, the government wants to go a step further by getting rid of them altogether.

What has the reaction been?

Headteachers have welcomed the plan to replace the coasting and floor standards with Ofsted’s ‘requires improvement’ judgement.

In fact, it was one of the recommendations made by the NAHT headteachers’ union commission that looked into the school accountability system last year.

In its response to the current consultation, the NAHT is unsurprisingly supportive of the proposed change.

It writes: “Floor and coasting standards have cast a shadow of fear over many schools and school leaders. Poor test and exam results have triggered an avalanche of interventions, based on a presumption of school failure.”

So all’s well with the world?

It’s never that simple.

Now that Ofsted’s judgement is likely to become the trigger to get help to struggling schools, questions are being asked as to whether Ofsted is up to the task.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, says the jury is out on whether Ofsted has “the kind of nuance and speed” to pick up when a school is at risk of being judged as ‘requires improvement’ and needs to be inspected.

Nick Brook, of the NAHT, has highlighted an anomaly that could actually see this new system delay some schools getting the help they need by up to two years.

And although data measures such as the floor and coasting standards can no longer lead to schools being forced to become academies, it is still the law that any non-academy that is judged ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted must convert.

That is something that NAHT criticised in its response to the current consultation.

Thanks, I never knew that school accountability measures were so interesting. Now I’m dying to tell the government what I think about them. What should I do?

Get on with it! The consultation closes at noon today.