One school “coasting” for almost a decade has escaped the government’s crackdown on serial underperformers, while others who have only recently fallen into the category face intervention.
Since September, new “coasting” powers allow the government to academise or rebroker schools with two or more consecutive less than ‘good’ inspections.
But analysis by Schools Week found 16 schools have avoided academy orders or termination warning notices, despite not moving out of ‘requires improvement’ for at least eight years.
But two schools that only became coasting last year were given termination warning notices.
Stephen Morales, the chief executive of the Institute of School Business Leaders, said: “The whole system’s full of inconsistencies. Take regional directors, is there a consistent playbook they can refer to? The answer is no – it’s all over the place.”
‘No national criteria for interventions’
In all, 218 coasting letters have been sent. Just 17 led to termination warnings or academy orders, while regional directors decided to monitor or offer support to 33 other schools.
No further action was taken against 155. The remaining 13 are no longer in the scope for intervention, following improved Ofsteds.
Wellfield Academy in Lancashire was rated ‘inadequate’ in June 2012. It was revisited the following November, that time receiving a ‘requires improvement’.
The local authority-maintained school has been “coasting” – under the government’s criteria – since, despite being inspected three more times.
Meanwhile, Oasis Academy Oldham was given its first ‘inadequate’ in November 2012, just two years after the school joined the Oasis trust.
Since then, it has been rated ‘inadequate’ once more and ‘requires improvement’ on three occasions.
Regional directors decided not to take further action against Wellfield, while Oasis Academy Oldham is being monitored and given added support.
Eastern MAT was issued termination notices for Queensway Infants and Nursery school in Norfolk and West Row in Bury St Edmunds in the first warnings to be published last week.
Queensway, which Eastern took on six years ago, was given ratings of ‘requires improvement’ in 2016 and 2022. West Row received its two less than ‘good’ scores in 2017 and 2022.
Skerne Park Academy in Darlington was also given a warning notice after back-to-back ‘requires improvement’ ratings in 2018 and 2022.
Sir David Carter, the former national schools commissioner, said there was “some variance … which is unhelpful”.
“The bandwidth for an RI judgment is quite broad, so it could be the school is making strides to improve and therefore we’ve got confidence the trust knows what it’s got to do.
“What’s unhelpful is the DfE doesn’t publish the criteria for that – it lets the regional directors make that decision and that’s probably the reason why you get these strange anomalies.”
Intervention decisions ‘opaque’
When plans for the clampdown were unveiled last summer, the government insisted decisions would be made on a “case-by-case” basis.
Officials also said regional directors would “normally” order under-performing maintained schools and standalone academies to join multi-academy trusts.
But Carter said the decision-making process on academy conversions was “quite opaque”.
Regional advisory board minutes include details of decisions relating to coasting schools, but only about which trust it should join after warning notices have been issued.
They do not include details about a regional director’s decisions on whether to intervene.
But Carter did say a trust leader would have had an annual meeting with their regional director to review results, so if a trust was on the receiving end of an intervention, it would not come as a surprise”.
The decision to reprimand West Row and Queensway – both of which have only been run by Eastern for the last of their inspections – has also reignited fears schools are not being allowed a “clean start” under new trusts.
Leora Cruddas, the chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, said inspection grades “only tell part of the picture and so it is not entirely surprising there are apparently different decisions about schools that at a glance seem to be in similar situations”.
“What is important is there is as much transparency as possible”.
When asked about the performance of Oasis Academy Oldham, an Oasis Community Learning Trust spokesperson said the school was “on a positive trajectory. Outcomes, attendance and standards are all moving forward.”
A DfE spokesperson said decisions were made on a case-by-case basis, “taking account of all the relevant circumstances”, including prioritising support in “areas that need it most”.
Wellfield Academy did not respond to a request for comment.
Actually, this inconsistency could be a cause for some celebration as it might indicate that the DfE and Regional Directors understand and accept that Ofsted grades have little actual relevance to the quality of a school – particularly given the almost exact correlation between Ofsted grade and pupil ability on entry to secondary school. For example, it was always going to be the case that ‘coasting’ and ‘coastal’ would be close to interchangeable once Ofsted grades were applied.