Cameron sets out school improvement reform plans

13 Oct 14
Prime Minister David Cameron wants to give regional school commissioners additional powers to intervene at failing state schools of all kinds.

By Mark Smulian | 13 October 2014

Prime Minister David Cameron wants to give regional school commissioners additional powers to intervene at failing state schools of all kinds.

Cameron said there were some 500 schools in England judged to be failing in inspections, between them teaching 100,000 children. 

The eight commissioners, who currently oversee free schools and academies, would gain a wider remit across all schools, including those that remain in local authority control. They would be able to remove and replace failing school leaderships, change the curriculum, issue behaviour codes and pair failing school leaders with better ones to drive improvement.

‘If they succeed, we will look at what they can do for schools that are said to ‘require improvement’ – what I call coasting schools,’ the prime minister wrote in the Daily Mail,

‘Every day a school fails is a day too long. So these measures will happen fast.’

He also proposed the creation of a National Teaching Fellowship, which would ‘pay the best of the best to work in failing or inadequate schools’.

There would be a target of 1,500 ‘top teachers’ accredited to this by 2020.

However, Cameron’s comments drew a scathing condemnation for the National Association of Head Teachers.

General secretary Russell Hobby said Cameron’s plan may make good politics but would be lousy for school improvement.

‘The announcement is all the more intolerable because the government’s own policies cause more delays to school improvement than any head teacher ever could.

‘It seems that the Conservatives have learned little or nothing about schools during their tenure in office. Their only strategy for school improvement is to crack the whip; no matter that such punitive tactics make it difficult to recruit talented people to take on tough schools.’

He said the move away from local authorities to academies and free schools had caused ‘the demolition of local oversight [which] makes it impossible to spot problems before they become crises’.

However, Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Brian Lightman welcomed the proposed fellowship as having ‘the potential to provide [head teachers] with the essential support of an excellent middle and senior leadership team and first rate classroom teachers’.

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