Tag Archives: academies

Are rainy day savings by schools affecting outcomes?

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Is there any relationship between the reserves a school holds and the outcomes for its pupils? One thesis might be that schools that spend more of their revenue budgets, and don’t add to their reserves each year, do better for their pupils than those schools more concerned with ‘saving for a rainy day’ or adding to their reserves for some other reason. Of course, this thesis only really works with a funding model that funds schools appropriately. Nevertheless, it is question worth asking.

This post looks at the evidence around the relationship between the quoted reserves of the primary schools across three multi-academy trusts (MATs) of differing sizes. The schools are in a range of different locations, and have a range of pupil numbers, but are all located within the boundaries of a single local authority.

KS2 achievement Percentage %No of KS2 Pupils 24/25 reserves per KS2 pupil
4230 £        24,333
6916 £        16,313
6422 £        16,273
3625 £        14,480
2711 £        12,364
9111 £        12,249
4715 £        10,600
3429 £        10,172
6913 £        10,077
5016 £          9,375
5016 £          8,688
3327 £          7,667
5645 £          7,267
5648 £          6,896
6916 £          6,813
6939 £          6,692
9315 £          5,933
5831 £          5,484
8318 £          5,287
8211 £          5,091
7218 £          5,000
6531 £          4,258
5022 £          4,182
5531 £          4,129
4821 £          4,098
7359 £          3,847
5028 £          3,536
7315 £          3,467
7528 £          3,214
4827 £          3,111
7061 £          2,738
6758 £          2,535
9123 £          2,531
5657 £          2,509
8323 £          2,087
5944 £          1,864
7131 £          1,677
5770 £          1,614
9212 £          1,362
5260 £              950
7629 £              862
7260 £              700
5618 £              611
4529-£         1,655
8614-£         1,714
7919-£         2,474
5831-£         3,084
867-£         3,295
8938-£         4,756
5315-£         8,667
4825-£       11,040

The range of reserves, as taken from the reserves in the accounts filed at Companies House by the MAT, vary per KS2 pupil from a high of £24,333 per pupil, to £611 for schools with those schools with reserves. Eight schools are shown as having deficits

Leaving aside, at this point for schools with deficits, it is worth comparing the other schools in the table with the average outcome for all pupils in the local authority of 62%.

The schools in the table, are of different sizes. In the schools in the table the range of KS2 pupils extends from schools with just 11 KS2 pupils, to one with 70 KS2 pupils. Where a school has a stable intake, the KS2 reserves per pupil is easy to spread across the schools, although some schools still start pupils, at age 5, many at age 4 and a few even younger and with a nursery class, and this may make a difference to reserves.

In this era of falling rolls, allied to parental choice, some school’s KS2 numbers would overestimate the school population if grossed up across all year groups. For that reason, I have just used the KS2 pupil number for this exercise.

Six of the top 10 schools with the highest reserves per pupil had achievements below the local authority level of 62%. This compares with four of the ten schools with the lowest reserves (not with a deficit).

It is interesting to note that one MAT has 12 schools in the top 15 schools with the largest reserves per KS2 pupil, and 15 in the top 20 schools. Of the other two MATS, one has three schools in the top 20 schools by reserves per KS2 pupil, and the other just two schools.

I suspect that both these MATs more actively work with their schools than the other MAT in terms of making use of their cashflow. All the schools in this latter MAT in the top 20 by reserves are also well above average for performance levels. The position is more mixed for the other smaller MAT, but I suspect its policy is evolving as it has acquired more schools.

How much does parental choice, and falling rolls play a part in determining reserves? Certainly, primary schools that have no spare places across all year groups will do better with a funding model that is weighted towards pupil numbers than schools unable to make full classes even by mixing year groups together. In another post, I will look at school size and reserves.

It would be interesting to conduct this exercise across all schools in a local authority. However, pooling of reserves by some MATs, and a lack of visibility for the reserves of maintained and voluntary schools makes that task effectively impossible.

No doubt the DfE could ask the question about why there is so much difference in reserves per pupil between schools, and could ask if some schools could achieve more for their pupils if they kept less in their reserves? School governors, MAT trustees and the teacher associations, as well as local politicians, might also like to ask this question.

Falling rolls -who dictates the outcomes for schools: Parents or planners?

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How do you deal with the issue of falling rolls in our schools? A senior politician recently told me that there was no way they would reduce the admission number for a successful school, because the parents wouldn’t stand for it.

Interestingly when Mrs Thatcher widened the concept of parental choice in section 6 of the 1980 Education Act, the civil servants left a ‘get out’ clause allowing local authorities to override their ‘duty to meet the expressed parental preference’ because it was ‘prejudicial to the efficient use of resources’.  Back in those days, the notion of parental power was very much in its early days.

Now the politician I spoke with was only voicing the approach any retailer might take to falling sales; cut out the loss-making branches and strengthen those that make a profit. ‘Let the weakest go to the wall’, a dictum many learnt in school when studying their Skaespeare.

But, should public services operate in the same fashion? It’s worth remembering that parents are required to educate their children, and the State is the default provision for those that don’t, won’t or in most cases cannot do so in any other way.

How the State has responded to that demand from parents for schooling has changed over time. A reader reminded me of the Liberal Democrat position, as expressed by Nick Clegg during the coalition government that perhaps took parent power to the ultimate. I wrote then a blog post entitled Private education, but State Funded? | John Howson This might have been a good idea at the start of a decade of rising school rolls, but does it hold good when rolls are falling?

I guess it depends upon where you live. In a densely packed urban area, with many schools within easy distance of each other, survival of the fittest might seem logical even if the fittest was a Church School and didn’t have many pupils on free School Meals.  However, even in urban areas, change is rarely easy, and often messy, and the current funding formula for schools doesn’t help.

Schools below capacity often run at a deficit, so should academy trusts prop these schools up with cash from other schools that don’t spend all their income?  Perhaps that’s why parent power – or at least parent governors – don’t exist in most academies, in case they rumbled what was happening.

In less urban areas, the issue is more complex. Consider the following case study. Imagine a town and its locality with 5 primary schools where there is little or no house building, and post-covid relatively little movement in the housing market. The current position for one such town

is shown in the table below.

In total, the five schools had 857 pupils on roll, but with a capacity for 1141, so were operating at 75% capacity. Intake for the latest year was lower at 66% of capacity.

 TYPECURRENT ROLLCAPACITY% CAPACITYPlaces offered – latest
SCHOOL 1RC1182105613/30
SCHOOL 2CofE2993159545/45
SCHOOL 3COMMUNITY1782108516/30
SCHOOL 4ACADEMY1301966615/30
SCHOOL 5COMMUNITY1322106318/28

Schools 1-3 are in the town, and schools 4-5 are within easy travelling distance. The obvious answer might be to close one of schools 4-5, but that would create additional transport costs for the local authority; to be paid from Council Tax.

Closing the RC school is not possible, as the exiting pupils cannot be accommodated at the other two schools, as they have insufficient spare capacity, and the need would be for an additional 70 places over the current capacity. Should the RC school numbers fall further to less than 100-110, and intakes not increase at the other two town schools, it would be possible to close the RC school if each of the other two schools in the town could take an extra class. However, the restricted nature of their sites may that possibility unlikely.

What happens if the RC school remains open, and starts to run a deficit budget and, as a consequence, either the diocese eventually decided to turn the school into an academy or it is judged inadequate by ofsted, and forced to become an academy. Could the diocese transfer funds from other schools to keep the school open?

What of the future for schools 4 & 5 if they are faced with the same scenario of starting to operate on deficit budgets, and the risk to the local authority with regard to school 5 at a time of great pressure on the authority’s budget.

Should someone create a plan for the future. If so, who? The local authority, the Regional School Director, the DfE? Or does the desire of the parents for one particular school eventually affect the other four schools, and the market decides? Discuss.

For those that want to consider the issue further, I wrote a play around a school facing falling rolls in its locality to try to tease out some of the issues. You can access it at C:\Users\dataf\OneDrive\Documents\FallingRollsPlay.docx or by requesting a copy by using the comment section

Reader might also like this post from a decade ago. My concern about the future of small schools isn’t new. Are small schools doomed? | John Howson

Headteacher vacancies – a changing trend in advertising date?

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One of the advantages of studying the same field for more than 40 years is the opportunity to investigate interesting hypotheses.

But first, a bit of background. When I started collecting vacancies for headteacher posts in state schools in England, way back in the 1980s, an advert in the TES was virtually the only source for jobseekers, so data collection was easy. The exception was the 12 months in the 1980s when News International titles, including the TES, were affected by a strike that prevented publication.

From around 2000 onwards, the TES had both print and on-line vacancies to check for headteacher vacancies. These days the main source of data are the DfE vacancy site, at least for headteacher vacancies. Even so, some schools still advertise in the TES, and a few on regional job boards, especially in the North East region.

My first hunch, not really a hypothesis in the 1980s when I started the work of collecting headteacher vacancies was that faith schools had more difficulty recruiting a new headteacher than other schools, based upon the number of such schools re-advertising. An early analysis supported the hunch, and the challenge facing faith schools is still with us in an increasingly secular society.

My next hypothesis was that most vacancies for headteachers came as a result of retirements. For a number of years, the annual study of senior staff vacancies I conducted for the NAHT validated this hypothesis, at least for headteacher vacancies.

In the days when all schools in the state sector were linked with a local authority, headteachers retiring at the end of the school-year might inform their governing bodies of their decision to retire at the last meeting in the autumn term. The result, a rash of advertisements for headteachers in January, and the bulk of vacancies for headteacher posts were either advertised or re-advertised between January 1st and 30th April.  

As a result of the increasing number of schools that are now academies, I have created a new hypothesis. I wonder whether the absence of any real local governing body for each academy might have resulted in headteachers postponing announcement of their retirement to the Trust until a later date in the term starting in January and, as a result, advertisements for headteacher vacancies are now being skewed to the second half of the first quarter of the year, with fewer January advertisements?

Now we are in April, it is possible to consider the data, and compare the data for 2026 with 2006 and 2018 – sadly TeachVac didn’t collect headteacher vacancies in 2016, but at that time just concentrated on classroom teacher vacancies.  

The first thing to note is that there appear to be fewer headteacher vacancies advertised in 2026 compared with either 2006 or 2018.

YearJANUARYFEBRUARYMARCHTOTAL
2006TOTAL5093944421345
2018TOTAL3583803391077
2026FIRST175203289667
2026READVERT132285120
2026Total188225374787

Source Headbase 2006; TeachVac 2018; John Howson 2026

In 2006, the demography of the teaching profession was very different to that of today. Many more headteachers were approaching retirement in 2006, and often decided to retire before reaching the then official retirement age. Nowadays, there is no official retirement age, pension rules have changed significantly, and I suspect the actual number of headteacher retiring each year has decreased.

However, the more interesting piece of data relates to the percentage of vacancies recorded each month. In 2006 and 2018, data collection did not distinguish between first advertisement and re-advertisements during the three months, but counted all but ‘repeat’ vacancies published.

The 2026 data collection exercise I conduct is based upon a collection date, accurate to within three days of a vacancy being published, and a re-advertisement data based upon a new closing date more than four weeks after the original closing date for the vacancy for a headteacher. Re-advertisements with an April closing date have been assigned to March for the purpose of this exercise on the basis of three to four weeks between vacancy being published and closing dates.

YearJANUARYFEBRUARYMARCHtotal
2006TOTAL38%29%33%100%
2018TOTAL33%35%31%100%
2026FIRST26%30%43%100%
2026READVERT11%18%71%
2026Total24%29%48%100%

Source Headbase 2006; TeachVac 2018; John Howson 2026

The data does seem to offer some support for my hypothesis, as January only accounted for 26% of vacancies in 2026 (24% if re-advertisements are included) compared with 38% in 2006, and 33% in 2018, when academies were already a feature of the school landscape.

March 2026 accounted for 48% of headteacher vacancies, compared with 33% in 2026, and 31% in 2018. In a future post, I will delve into the issue of re-advertisements that accounted for five per cent of the vacancies in March 2026.

At some point, I will compare academies and non-academy state schools to see whether their advertising patterns for headteacher vacancies in the first three months of the year vary, and will report my findings in a future post.

School building boom is over

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The DfE has published its latest estimates of school capacity for 2024/25, together with estimates for places needed up to 2029/30 School capacity in England: academic year 2024 to 2025 – GOV.UK

There are two sets of numbers. One looks at both need and places available and calculates what might be regarded as a raw score. This looks at all spare places, regardless of location within the authority and measures that number against expected additional need. The second set just looks at additional need.

During the period between 2025/26 and 2029/30, most additional need is likely to come from changes in the housing stock, with little, if any, growth from the increase in the number of pupils in the relevant age groups. As a result, most local authorities show either no need for additional primary places or only small increases in numbers. Wandsworth is the only Inner London borough with any additional need for primary school places during the period 2025/26 and 2029/30.

The table balancing existing places with additional need shows only a handful of local authorities with a reduction in the spare capacity in the primary sector between 2025/26 and 2029/30. For most authorities, the spare place problem is expected to be worse in 2029/30 than it is in 2025/26

net spare places
OxfordshirePrimarySecondary
2025/26-11,052-6,321
2026/27-11,557-6,449
2027/28-13,117-6,959
2028/29-13,865-7,143
2029/30-14,601-7,336
Change-3,549-1,015

The table shows the estimates for Oxfordshire. Several factors could mean these data are not going to be accurate. In recent years, Oxfordshire has seen significant housebuilding, and if the construction of new housing continues, and attracts families from outside the county, then the spare places may be an overestimate.

Oxfordshire is also home to several military bases for both the army and the RAF. Although defence planning has projected the closure of some of the army bases, the current defence review and increased spending on defence might either slowdown or reverse the closure of some of the bases. If closures slow down, then this might mean pupil numbers don’t fall as expected.

The problem for both the local authority, the dioceses and the academy trusts is that Oxfordshire has many small primary schools located in villages. Often the school is the only facility left in the community. The present funding formula that is heavily biased towards pupil numbers poses a potential problem for small schools. Academy trusts can ‘vire’ funds between schools to help such schools through any temporary downturn in pupil numbers. At present local authorities do not have this ability: they should be given the power to support small village schools in the same way as MATs can.

However, as with many other rural areas, school closures look likely over the next few years if schools are not to run up deficit budgets. Such deficits would be paid off by depriving future pupils of some of their funding. With education spending likely to be squeezed to accommodate the increase in defence spending, and a greater proportion of the school funding going toward SEND pupils, there may well be some hard decisions to make.

With declining interest in established faiths, how will the dioceses react to falling rolls, if their schools are no longer viable?

One certainty is that if any school closures require additional free transport to the next nearest school, the current£20 million Oxfordshire council tax payers contribute to fund mainstream school transport will not be enough, even if fuel and other costs remain stable.

Local government reorganisation may offer a way out for politicians in areas such as Oxfordshire, but politicians in urban areas, and especially in London will not be so lucky. Time to dust off my review of falling rolls in Haringey in the 1970,s and the lessons to be learnt from those battles.

2010 and the Case for Change: a look back at what was promised

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In November 2010, the Conservative Government, and Michael Gove, as Secretary of State for Education, set out their vision for state education in a document entitled ‘The Case for Change’.

The concluding paragraph said:

“Reform should seek to strengthen the recruitment, selection and development of school teachers and leaders. It should strengthen and simplify the curriculum and qualifications, to set high standards, create curriculum coherence and avoid prescription about how to teach. It should increase both autonomy and accountability of schools, and ensure that resources are distributed and used fairy and effectively to incentivise improvement and improve equity.” The Case for Change, DfE, November 2010

Bold claims.

Looking at them in more detail, here are a few thoughts. Other suggestions welcome in the comments

Reform should seek to strengthen the recruitment, selection and development of school teachers and leaders: The move from a higher education led system of ITT to a school-based system failed. There are probably fewer trainees on employment-based routes now, as opposed to SCITTS or higher education routes, than during the Blair government era.

Between 2013 and 2023, the Conservative government presided over the longest period of under-recruitment to ITT, against their own targets for training. This failure to train enough teachers has had a profound effect on schools, ad has not been solved by the present government

should strengthen and simplify the curriculum and qualifications: Decoupling of A/S and A levels in 2015 substantially changed the post-16 landscape. The introduction of the English Baccalaureate weighted the curriculum in favour of traditional academic subjects. The change was never enforced on schools, although it was reported in the data about schools.  

set high standards: I am never quite sure what these are. Examination results improved to a point where exam board were required to change grade boundaries, so fewer entrants received the top grades.

avoid prescription about how to teach: Phonics was the prescribed method of teaching reading. The ITT curriculum was made even more prescriptive

increase both autonomy and accountability of schools: Local authority schools had almost complete autonomy, as their budgets were sacrosanct. Academies were fine if stand alone, but as part of a MAT, their autonomy could be seriously reduced, but their accountability may have increased, although there was no accountability for MATs as they weren’t subject to inspection.

ensure that resources are distributed and used fairy and effectively to incentivise improvement and improve equity: The National Pupil Funding Formula was introduced during a period of rising school rolls, with no consideration as to what would happen when rolls started to fall. A study of PTRs by the author shows London schools with generally better staffing ratios than schools in the north of England throughout the period of the conservative government. The Lib Dem Pupil Premium may have help provide extra resources for pupils on Free School Meals, but the staffing crisis often meant that schools with large number so FSM pupils found recruitment of staff an issue.  

Were the claims met? In many cases not, and the funding for schools in real terms declined during much the period the Conservative were in government making improvements harder to achieve. The failure to address the staffing crisis was, perhaps, the most important failure of the vision set out in 2010.

Happy 14th birthday, and my thanks to WordPress

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Dear Reader,

Today, Sunday 25th January 2026, marks the 14th birthday of this blog, so thanks for taking the time to read what I have written since January 2013.

Copilot tells me that 96% of blogs started in January 2013 have fallen by the wayside by 2026: but can you believe everything AI tells you?

 Sadly, WordPress doesn’t publish such statistics, but it would be interesting to know how many have persevered with what is now a somewhat outdated form of communication. Unlike others, I haven’t switched to creating a podcast, although I did experiment with one way back in 2007; but that’s another story, as is the online chatroom, pioneered with the TES back in 2003.

By the time of its 14th birthday, this blog has had over 180,00 views by more than 97,000 visitors according to WordPress of the 1,59 posts that I have written since the blog started in 2013.

The most popular has been the one on ‘how much holiday do teachers really have’, with more than 6,100 views since it first appeared on the 20th May 2022.

Of course, at the opposite end of the scale, there are many posts where I have been the only person to have read what I wrote, according to WordPress. However, on Christmas Day, 2022, someone downloaded all the posts up to that date: hopefully, they also read them.

Between October 2023 and May 2025, while I was the Cabinet Member for Children’s Services on Oxfordshire County Council, I took a holiday from posting on the blog,

Since, I started writing posts again in May of 2025, after ceasing to be an elected politician, readership has been slowly increasing, to now reach double what it was at its low point. This is mostly thanks to readers from around the world once again deciding to view what I write.

So, what do I write about? Mostly education; frequently teacher supply matters – a research interest of mine for more than 40 years, if you start when I began counting vacancies for headteachers. My interest in ITT data goes back to 1987, when as a new senior leader in a School of Education I was faced with dealing with the consequences of an 100% over-recruitment on a primary PGCE.

I am most proud of the wok on Jacob’s Law, to ensure all children have a school place even if they move home mid-year, as often happens when a child is taken into care. No school with spare places should ever refuse such a child a place. What to do if they are bright enough for a grammar school place when moving from a comprehensive system is a question the government still needs to address.

The blog will continue into its next year, but as I approach my 80th birthday in 2027, perhaps the blog won’t make its 20th birthday: who knows. And, finally another reason for not producing a podcast; you cannot see the data tables, include din many of the posts.

Thanks for reading, and a happy birthday.

Trends in academy accounts

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The 2024-25 accounts for academy trusts, covering the year up to the 31st August 2025, are now being posted at Companies House, for anyone to view. Not all Trusts have yet published their accounts. Some Trusts are large and complex, and others may not want to be in the first groups that might draw attention to their results.

This analysis is for 86 schools in one geographical area, and where the school has been in the Trust for at least two reporting periods. Two indicators are considered: the pay of the highest-ranking employee – often the Chief Executive, but in single academy trusts, normally it is the headteacher, and changes in declared reserves held by the school. This latter indicator is complicated, as some MATs pool reserves, while all others hold both reserves at the school level and for central services.

Salary Trends

So far, of the 13 Trusts reporting, there have been no really significant changes. The highest salary band reported band was £200,000-210,000, up by £10,000, the same increase of £10,000 as seen in 5 other trusts; one trust saw a £10,000 decrease; two trusts no change, and four increases in the £20,000 range. The lowest salary for the year was £100,000, for a trust with four schools.

Trusts with headquarters outside the geographical area tended to have higher salary bands for their highest paid employee than those headquartered in the local area. This might take into account the complexity of London weightings for salaries.

Changes in reserves

Here, two-year’s worth of data is available for 72 of the 86 schools in the area. The other 14 schools changed trusts, so the data for the two years is incomplete. Of the 72 schools with data for both years:

29 ended the 2025 reporting period with a deficit

43 ended with reserves

Of those schools in deficit at the end of the reporting period

14 increased their deficits over the year

5 schools went from surplus to deficit

Of schools with reserves

10 reduced the amounts of their reserves.

The other 33 increased their reserves.

The largest deficit reported in 2025 account, so far is £1,060,000 – an increase of £232,000 in one year, or more than 20%.

The largest reported surplus held by a school was £2,641,000 – up by £290,000 over the year. Another school in a MAT, but located outside the area reviewed, also had a balance of £2,400,000.

Comment

From the data on salaries, it seems that seven MATs had increases to their salary bands for the highest paid employee that were less than 10%; one MAT saw the incoming employee on a lower band than their predecessor. Five had increases in the band of the highest paid employee of more than 10%.

Four of the MATs surveyed paid their highest paid employee in a band above the salary of the local authority’s Director of Children’s Services. This is not surprising, since nationally, the highest starting salary for a headteacher in an advertised vacancy in 2026 has been £123,000.

On the issue of reserves, some schools are facing pressures while others are still adding to their reserves. I have always maintained that revenue funding should be spent in the year in which was provided, including up to 10% for a sensible reserve, based upon the profile of the past five years of expenditure where the reserve is not excessive.

Why do schools hold more than £2 million pounds of public money in their reserves? Schools in deficit, often seem to struggle to clear their deficit, and if they don’t attract pupils, then it is a challenge to ever return to a surplus without damaging the education of their pupils.

I will return to this topic when I have processed the data from the remaining MATs yet to file their accounts.

New Year Resolutions 2025 – still relevant?

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In January 2025, I penned a list of suggested amendments to the Schools Bill going through parliament. Well, the Bill is still going, and we still don’t know the outcome for SEND. But what of my other suggestions – listed below? Some, such as reducing the number of MATs has recently gained credibility on platforms such as LinkedIn. The idea of on-line schools has also gained attention as their use by ‘home schoolers’ increases.

The other suggestions have not yet been taken u, although a Select Committee at Westminster did discuss home to school transport in their session yesterday.

I still stand by all these suggestions made in this press release.

Time for radical action

Long-time education campaigner and recruitment authority, John Howson, calls upon the government to be more radical in its approach to education and schools.

My suggestions included

Academies

Some serious amalgamations might reduce overhead costs.
Could each LA area have no more than 5 MATs (1 each for CoE; RC, special schools and 2 for all other primary and secondary schools).

How much would that save in salary costs of senior staff? Would this release cash for teaching and learning?

I also suggested a new on-line school for all children missing education because they don’t have a school place along with some other important changes. 

All pupils on a school roll

(i)            All young people not in school, and between the ages of 5 and 16, and not registered either as home educated young people or with a registered private provider on the list of DfE approved schools, must be registered with a maintained on-line school, 

Notes

As the DfE accredits on-line private provision it should be able to create a category of on-line maintained school. This would allow the education of all state-funded young people to be regulated and inspected. It would end the practice of EOTAS (education other than at school) prescribed by s61 of the 2014 Education Act.

It would also allow for children moving into an area mid-year to immediately be placed on the roll of this school pending placement in a mainstream or special school. Many pupils with EHCPs transferring mid-year cannot be allocated a place in a special school because there are insufficient places. This would allow for oversight of their education by the local authority pending a placement. In a local authority such as Oxfordshire, there may be as many as 200+ pupils waiting for a school place as the school-year progresses. 

This would also assist those children forced to free home at short notice due to domestic abuse. At present, they leave everything behind and it cannot be forwarded in case it reveals the location of the refuge or other accommodation. This on-line school would provide registration without revealing a location where pupil’s work could be forwarded and education continued until the situation was resolved.

Those children in years 10 and 11 offered a part-time place at an FE college where the school doesn’t consent that are currently transferred to elective home education to allow funding to be agreed could also be transferred to the roll of this school.

Free school transport extended to 18 to match ‘learning leaving age’.

(i)            In Schedule 35B of the 1996 education Act replace ‘of compulsory school age’ with ‘Eighteen’.

(ii)           The provision free transport for pupils beyond of compulsory school age and up to the end of the school year in which the child attains 18 will only apply where the child received free travel before the of the compulsory school age and remains at the same school.

(iii)          Where the school a child attended up to the end of the compulsory school age does not provide post-16 education, transport will be provided free to the nearest post-16 education provision operating under schools’ regulation or the nearest Sixth Form College operating under Further Education regulations.

(iv)          Where a child transfers to a college or other setting operating under Further Education regulations that is not a Sixth Form College, the college will have a duty to provide, either free transport or make other suitable arrangements in a situation where the young person would have met the conditions for free transport had they remained in the school they attended until the end of their compulsory school age, up to the end of the academic year where the child reaches the age of 18.

(v)           Within the boundary of the London boroughs, school transport will be the responsibility of Transport or London. In combined Authorities with a mayor, the provision of school transport may be either a local authority ort a mayoral function by agreement. Where there is no agreement, the local authority will be responsible for any transport.

(vi)          The responsible body, either a local authority or the mayor, must produce an annual home to school transport authority for the guidance of parents and other interested in the provision of home to school transport. 

Note

This clause is to bring the transport arrangements into line with the learning leaving age of 18

Ending of selective education being treated as parental choice for transport decisions

(i)                  Where a local authority or other body responsibly for state funded secondary school education between the ages of 11 and 18 requires the passing of some form of selection for admittance to a school, regardless of whether the section process is administered by the school, a local authority or any other body, then a child admitted to their nearest selective school, or the nearest school with an available place, will be eligible for free transport up to age 18 while they remain on roll of the school, if they are an eligible child within Schedule 35B of the 1996 education Act.

Note

This clause prevents Kent and other LA with selective schools from regarding selective schools as a parental choice and, as a consequence, not providing free transport to children living more than 3 miles from the selective school.

Provision of sufficient teacher numbers in all subjects and all areas.

(i)                  Local authorities are encouraged to work with multi-academy trusts, dioceses and other promoters of schools to ensure a sufficient supply of suitable qualified teachers to ensure the delivery of the curriculum in such schools.

(ii)                Where no other provision exists, local authorities may establish and operate initial teacher training provision, as an approved provider by the Department for Education.

(iii)               Local authorities will produce an annual report to Council on the adequacy of staffing of schools within the authority.

(iv)               It shall be the duty of schools to cooperate with the local authority in providing such information as required by the local authority for the production of an annual report on the staffing of schools within the authority.

Note

With increasing teacher shortages, it is necessary to ensure a sufficient number of teachers at a local level. This clause provides for local authorities to offer initial teacher education where insufficient places are available locally in some or all phases and subjects taught by schools.

Removal of right for MATs to ‘pool’ balances of schools within the MAT in annual accounts

(i)                  When presenting their annual accounts, a mutli-academy trust must show the balances for each individual school in the account and must not ‘pool’ reserves into a single figure for the trust.

(ii)                The DfE shall publish each year a list of the salaries of all staff in academies and academy trusts earning more than £100,000 alongside the salary of the DCS for the same area where the academy or MAT are located. 

Note

This clause seeks to ensure that funds allocated to schools are spent at that school and not transferred to another school, and especially not to be used by schools in different local authority areas. The second part requires the DfE to collate information that is in MAT or academy annual accounts. but DfE should provide the data as part of their statistical information to the sector.

Schools Forum

(i)            The Cabinet Member or Committee Chair in a Committee system of local government responsible for supporting schools with the DSG and for the central block shall be a voting member of the Schools Forum. No substitute shall be allowed.

Note

This put the LA representative with control of EYFS and HNB funding on the same level of engagements as schools and others in respect of membership of a schools forum and end the anomaly of being permitted to be a member, but not to vote.

Are headteachers really staying less time in post?

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As someone that started collecting data about the turnover of head teachers way back in the 1980s, and added deputy headteacher posts in the 1990s, and when the Assistant head grade was created added those to my dataset, the latest research from the DfE on leadership turnover is very welcome. School Leadership retention, Reporting year 2024 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

However, it comes with a health warning. The methodology section contains the following

Exploratory analysis of Teacher Pension Scheme (TPS ….. suggests that the number of head teachers still in service but not being reported in the School Workforce Census has been increasing in recent years, substantially impacting the trends seen in this release. School Leadership retention: methodology – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK

This warning needs to be borne in mind when considering the trends of length of service in post. The DfE data also excluded headteachers on a temporary contract, and those over 50 where retirement is likely to be their next career move.

On the face of it headteachers are spending less time in post.

Primary
Year of CensusBase% 1 Year% 5 year
201197493.7%78.8%
2012107592.4%77.0%
2013117791.1%76.4%
2014130290.2%73.3%
2015131190.5%74.4%
2016134989.6%73.9%
2017140487.8%71.6%
2018126288.3%70.0%
2019121990.2%70.0%
202096689.2%z
2021111489.2%z
2022141488.9%z
2023127389.7%z
20241199zz

Primary head teachers in post one year after appointment seem to be around 4% less for those appointed in 2023 compared with the class of 2011. After five years, there is around an 8% decline from nearly 79% to 70%, although we have yet to see the effect of covid on turnover.

Secondary 
Year of CensusBase% 1 Year% 5 year
201124091.2%65.0%
201228991.0%64.7%
201332787.2%62.1%
201437885.4%61,4%
201538486.7%62.0%
201643084.7%60.5%
201743784.9%63.6%
201844085.0%60.2%
201942187.6%62.5%
202031790.2%z
202132983.9%z
202240484.9%z
202341685.6%z
2024419zz

For the secondary sector, turnover after one year has increased by nearly six per cent, and by around 5% after five years. In this respect, secondary teacher seems more likely to stay in post longer.

This is not surprising, as an appointment to a secondary headship historically was less likely to lead to another appointment, whereas in the primary sector many heads were first appointed to a small school and then took a subsequent headship in a larger school.

However, the defining feature of the period under discussion is the transfer of a large number of schools from maintained school status to becoming an academy. The next decade will help explain where that period of change was a temporary change in turnover rates or the creation of a new landscape where headteachers move more frequently.

The DfE research also has analysis on whether headteachers remain in any posts in a school within the sector. Again, secondary heads are more likely, (as retirements are excluded), to remain in a secondary school, whereas primary teachers are now less likely than in 2011 to remain in a school. It would be interesting to know where those teachers are now employed, and whether they are still working in education.

No doubt the pressure on the primary sector has been harder for heads to deal with than for their secondary colleagues since many primary schools do not have the same range of support staff as their secondary colleagues. Many more may have also had to content with the outcomes of an ofsted visit.  

This is a useful dataset, but it should be made more comprehensive by ensuing all MATs complete the School Workforce Census and that new categories of posts, such as Executive Headteacher, are captured within the census.

Admissions matter: vulnerable children must not be refused schooling

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SchoolsWeek has published an interesting report on admissions policies by schools. Shut out: How schools are turning away vulnerable pupils

As regular readers know, this issue has troubled me ever since I became a county councillor in 2012.

I have reproduced my previous blog post about the topic from 2021 below.

While I was a cabinet member in Oxfordshire, up until May this year, I asked officers to look into a virtual school to admit every child without a school, and not being home educated, and ensure there was some daily learning interaction with each child. Why successive governments have ignored the issue, and oppositions haven’t pressed them about it is one of my great disappointments.

It was therefore welcome, when last November, after I challenged the Minister at the ADCS conference about ensuring local authorities had power over all in-year admissions whether to maintained schools or academies to see the clause in the Bill. This is a good first step.

We all need to fight for the most vulnerable in society, and all involved in education have a special duty to do so. Children only get one change at schooling: we need to ensure it available to them

 Time for Jacob’s Law

Posted on January 23, 2021

The naming of a young person in Serious Case Review Report is rare. But this week the Report into the death of Jacob in Oxfordshire contained his name. The family gave permission, and hope it will ensure the report is more widely read and acted upon. If so, it is a brave decision, and one that I applaud.

You can read the Report at https://www.oscb.org.uk/oscb-publishes-a-child-safeguarding-practice-review-concerning-jacob/ Full report link at bottom of the press notice

Three agencies, the Police, Children’s Social Services and Education have learning points to take from the Review. In this blog, I will concentrate on the education aspects, as they contain a message heard before on this blog.

Jacob was born in Oxfordshire, later moved to Northumbria, where I suspect he was educated in a First School, and then a Middle School, before being moved in Year 6 to an ‘alternative education provision’ – presumably a PRU?

In July 2017, note the date, the family returned to Oxfordshire. The Report concludes that:

5.1 He was not on roll at any education provision and was a child missing education for 22 months

Jacob’s mandatory need for education was not provided by Oxfordshire County Council when he lived at home and when he was in the care of the local authority both in and when out of county for 5 months. Four educational settings were asked to take Jacob on roll, however largely due to his perceived behaviours and risks to other students he remained off roll for almost 2 years. Jacob’s family were offered the right of appeal when places were refused. His situation was considered by education panels such as the In Year Fair Access Panel and Children Missing Education to little effect and his needs were overseen and monitored by various professionals, including the Virtual School and the Independent Reviewing Officer Service whilst in local authority care. There were no formal dispute resolutions raised14 by Children’s Social Care and his situation was not escalated to the Education Skills and Funding Agency (ESFA) as it should have been.

Had this been an isolated case then this would be understandable, but a month before Jacob arrived back in Oxfordshire I had had an exchange in public with the Cabinet Member for Education at the June 2017 Cabinet meeting of the County Council. Not all questions are for political gain, and this was one where I genuinely thought that there was an issue to be addressed. The question asked:

Oxfordshire county council CABINET – 20 JUNE 2017 ITEM 4 – QUESTIONS FROM COUNTY COUNCILLORS

Question from Councillor Howson to Councillors Harrod and Hibbert-Biles “How many children taken into care over the past three school years and placed ‘out county’ have had to wait for more than two weeks to be taken onto the roll of a school in the area where they have been moved to and what is the longest period of time a child has waited for a place at a school in the area where they have been re-located to during this period?” 

As you will see, I asked both the Education Cabinet Member and Cllr Harrod for Children’s Social Services and received this answer:

Answer Over the past three years it has been exceptional for a Looked After Child to be taken onto the roll of an out of county school in under two weeks. Indeed, of the nine cases of primary age pupils we’ve looked at, the quickest a pupil was placed was 12 days (there were two) and the slowest was 77 days. For the 22 secondary age pupils the picture is even worse, with 3 weeks the quickest placement and a couple taking fully 6 months to get some of our most vulnerable young people into a stable school setting.

The main reason for this completely unacceptable state of affairs is that the Council has no power to direct an academy to admit a Looked After Child. The only way we can force an academy’s hand is to get a direction from the Educations & Skills Funding Agency and this, as you can see from the foregoing times, can be a very long-winded bureaucratic process.

The fact that it takes so long for academies to admit our Looked After Children shows how doggedly our officers pursue the matter; I suspect that many other local authorities simply give up when they meet an intransigent academy that doesn’t want to take responsibility for educating their vulnerable young people.

The minutes of the meeting note my supplementary question and the response as:

Supplementary: In response to an invitation from Councillor Howson for the Cabinet Member to work with Councillor Howson and the labour opposition to see what could be done Councillor Hibbert-Biles recognised that it was a national situation, and she would be asking for a meeting with local MPs and relevant minister.

How distressing to read the national recommendation in the Serious Case Review that:

Recommendation 2: This Review asks the Department for Education to acknowledge the education key learning and findings from Jacob’s Review and provide feedback as to the effectiveness of the Education and Skills Funding Agency process in resolving issues in a timely manner. The Review asks the Department of Education to provide statute and guidance to local areas and their communities on how to manage the Governance arrangements with academy run schools and local education departments who currently cannot be mandated to accept children on roll.

And in the local recommendations that:

Action Plan 2: The Education System

The key learning set out below is fully addressed in this action plan for children in the education system in Oxfordshire, overseen by the Chair of the OSCB Safeguarding in Education Sub-Group Key Learning:

An education system that ensures:

1. The paramount importance of the role of schools in keeping children safe

2. An education package is put in place in a timely manner for those children who may show challenging behaviours

3. Those children missing education are known and action is swift

This Action Plan should pay particular attention to ensuring: – Restorative work to resolve the fragmented arrangements between academy schools, alternative provisions and the local authority to ensure collective ownership – Policy and procedures to track when children are not on roll – The function of Education Panels in Oxfordshire (In Year Fair Access and Children Missing Education) – The local application of the Education Skills Funding Agency intervention – Education packages for children who may be at risk of exploitation and also present a risk to others.

For those that read the whole Report, there is further evidence on page 31 and footnote 56 of other issues about school admissions around the same time.

Here’s what I wrote on this blog on the 23rd June 2017:

In my post on 11th June, after the outcome of the general election was known, I suggested some issues that could still be addressed by a government without an overall majority. First among these was the issue of school places for young people taken into care and placed outside of the local authority. They have no guarantee of access to a new school within any given time frame at present. It seemed to me daft that a parent could be fined for taking a child out of school for two weeks to go on holiday but a local authority could wait six months for a school place to be provided for a young person taken into care.

The Cabinet Question reproduced above then appears followed by:

I found the answer deeply depressing. However, the good news is that MPs from the three political parties representing Oxfordshire constituencies have agreed to work together to take the matter forward. Thank you to MPs, Victoria Prentice, Layla Moran and Anneliese Dodds, for agreeing to seek action to remedy this state of affairs.

If readers have data about the issue elsewhere in England, I would be delighted to hear from you, so pressure can be put on officials nationally to ensure a rapid change in the rules.

I had forgotten that unique letter signed by every Oxfordshire MP after I had made my suggestion.

Nothing happened. Jacob died. We cannot wait any longer.

The DfE must act now to ensure all children have a school place within a specified time frame, whether they move to a new area or are excluded by a school. There must be a register of unplaced children of school age that is regularly reviewed by a senior officer and a politician in each local authority, and Ofsted should update the Secretary of State each year about the national picture.

It is time for a Jacob’s Law. His death will not then have been for nothing.

Read more on this BBC Report into the case https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-55841644