By Vivienne Russell | 27 November 2012
Councils have limited room to turn round struggling schools, they claimed today after Ofsted highlighted ‘stark’ variations between local authority areas and called for more intervention from town halls.
Ofsted’s annual report said wide local variation in school performance was leading to ‘serious inequities’ for children.For example, a child living in Derby or Doncaster has only half the chance of attending a good or better school than a child living in Wigan or Darlington, the education watchdog said. Meanwhile, parents in Camden have a 92% chance of sending their child to a good or better primary school compared with just 42% for parents in Coventry.
Ofsted head Sir Michael Wilshaw said he wanted to inquire further into why some areas were performing badly. ‘We need to find out what is happening, and inspect where necessary. We will also work with local areas to support them and help them link up with best practice,’ he said.
In a BBC interview, Wilshaw urged councils to inform the education secretary if an academy in their area was struggling, even though these schools operate outside local authority control.
But the Local Government Association pointed out that councils’ role in school oversight had been consistently eroded. David Simmonds, chair of the LGA’s children and young people’s board, said: ‘Councils want to intervene more quickly, but decades of giving schools “greater freedom” and “protecting” them from council interference means they now have very indirect and bureaucratic ways to tackle poor performance and improve schools.’ These were also based on ‘intervention driven by Whitehall, not flexible local arrangements’, he added.
‘Ironically, the government and academy chains have more direct power than councils to quickly turn around underperforming schools.’
However, Simmonds also acknowledged that in some areas there was more to be done. He called on ministers to free councils from the red tape that hampers their intervention powers.
The report also concluded that schools in England are getting better, with the proportion rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ rising year on year. There are almost 1,000 more ‘outstanding’ schools than there were three years ago and almost 1,000 fewer ‘inadequate’ and ‘satisfactory’ schools.
Wilshaw said that giving head teachers more autonomy and control over their resources had helped bring about the change.
‘Academies are also making a difference,’ he added. ‘Most of the sponsored academies that we have inspected are better than the poor quality schools they replaced.’
Alongside its annual report, Ofsted has published an online tool called Data View, which allows school performance to be compared at national and regional levels as well as between local authorities.
A regional comparison of overall school performance shows that London is the strongest region, with the highest proportion of ‘outstanding’ (27%) primary and secondary schools and the lowest proportion (22%) of ‘satisfactory’ schools. Almost half (49%) of London schools are rated ‘good’ and 2% are ‘inadequate’. On these measures, the West Midlands was the weakest region with 17% of schools rated ‘outstanding’, 47% ‘good’, 33% ‘satisfactory’ and 4% ‘inadequate’.
Council-level data reveals that for primary schools, the London boroughs of Camden, Barnet and Richmond-upon-Thames are among the strongest performing areas, while Coventry, Derby and Wakefield are among the weakest.
Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said he was ‘not surprised’ by the variation between local authorities.
He said: ‘There has been a real lack of clarity about local authorities’ role in school improvement in the context of the expansion of academies. The report poses important questions for local and central government about the reasons for variation in standards, and it highlights the need for clarity about what an intermediate tier between the nation’s 23,500 schools and central government should look like.’
