24 November 2006
Ministers are prepared to intervene in the 500 English schools deemed 'inadequate' following this week's Ofsted annual report, the country's most senior education official has told Public Finance.
David Bell, permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Skills, said that the sector faced a 'big challenge' to turn around a growing number of failing schools.
He added that urgent action should be taken, including a possible rise in the number of schools placed in special measures. Some schools could even be closed and replaced with academies or trusts.
Bell was speaking to PF just hours after Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, published its annual report, which showed that one in 12 of the 6,000 schools in England inspected this year was inadequate.
'We've got a big challenge now to deal with those schools that haven't made the mark,' Bell said. 'But we have the tools available. There's faster intervention in schools that are in difficulty, new approaches to deal with them. We will… not allow schools to drift forever in a poor or inadequate state.
'We'll be saying: if you don't shape up then we will look at drastic action. That might include the possibility of closing a school and setting up a new one: an academy or a trust school.'
Ironically, it was Bell who designed the tougher new Ofsted inspection regime that has been partially blamed for the rising number of schools deemed inadequate. He quit as the watchdog's chief inspector to take up his Whitehall post earlier this year.
But he denied that he had been hoist by his own petard, after commentators suggested his inspection blueprint had made his new role more difficult.
Instead, Bell countered that the standards expected of the English education system have risen.
'I think that it [the tougher inspection regime] was absolutely the right thing to do. If we'd continued to measure schools against the standards that applied when Ofsted was set up in 1992 we'd have had no expectations of things ever getting better.
'And I also take the view that the wider world and wider economy demands continual improvement. I make no apologies for setting a higher standard.'
Bell compared the findings of the Ofsted study with his own department's capability review, published this summer, which urged the DfES and its partners to improve service delivery – and warned that Whitehall and local authorities must also help to achieve improvements.
'We must work closely with all organisations, right down to individual schools, [and] ensure that national strategies are focused on early intelligence on the schools that are in difficulty.
'We've also given local government new powers, in the Education and Inspections Act, to intervene more quickly.'
However, Bell praised the 60% of schools that Ofsted deemed 'good' or 'outstanding' in its November 22 report. 'In the context of the tougher inspection regime, that's really impressive.'
Bell told PF that his department's response to the capability review – outlined in an action plan agreed with Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell – was well under way.
The review team, overseen by the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit, called on the DfES to improve its internal human resources, policy formulation and accountability and delivery functions.
Bell said that a new system of assessing staff skills and needs had been implemented.
But he rejected suggestions from the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank that ministers should retain public responsibility for creating policy, but with a new, transparent form of accountability.
This would mean that mandarins would then assume public responsibility for policy management.
Bell said such a proposal did not reflect the 'nuanced' relationship between ministers and mandarins, under which the exact division of internal responsibilities changed depending on the individuals concerned.
PFnov2006
