It is supposedly one of the most important roles in our school system: overseeing 400 academy trusts in south-west England.
But last week, barely a year after starting work as the area’s regional schools commissioner, Rebecca Clark quit.
That makes her the sixth regional schools commissioner (RSC) to announce their departure (although one has since reversed her decision). And it is not even three years since the government first introduced the eight RSCs to monitor and take decisions about the mushrooming number of academies and free schools.
This exodus of the RSCs - many of them, including Clark, to senior jobs at academy trusts - is “undermining confidence in the system”, one academy chain chief executive warns. And confidence matters, because RSCs make crucial decisions that affect the lives of millions of children across England and involve millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.
The “flight of the RSCs”, as one union leader describes it, raises questions about what the role should involve, what skills are needed to do it, and whether it needs to change as the school system continues to evolve.
Questions about why so many RSCs are leaving are bound to be exercising minds at the Department for Education now that the general election is over, and with elections to the headteacher boards (HTBs) that advise RSCs due this summer.
“For me, part of it is about the job of the RSC,” the anonymous CEO says. “From my point of view, it’s not a very interesting job.”
He argues that the former teachers who take on the role find themselves becoming civil servants and regulators rather than educationalists. It is a view echoed by one former Whitehall insider.
“I expect some of the difficulty is that it is being sold as a mini-secretary of state but it’s a mini-permanent secretary role,” he says. “They are quite visible, but at the same time all their power is bureaucratic power.
“If you are used to being ‘The Big I Am’ in your school community, you are not going to have that as an RSC.”
So is the DfE appointing the wrong sort of people to fill these key positions?
The trusts go ‘poaching’
That is the fear of Robert Hill, an education consultant and former Downing Street adviser to Tony Blair, who was one of the first to argue for the introduction of school commissioners.
“Being an RSC is very different from directly being involved in or overseeing school improvement programmes on a day-to-day basis,” he says. “It’s great that we have had former outstanding heads and multi-academy trust (MAT) leaders coming into RSC posts, but the skill set and adjustment required to be an RSC is rather different.
“It may be that some RSCs miss that hands-on contact with teachers, pupils and schools. They may see themselves more as instructional coaches than regional ‘enforcers’.”
If these are factors driving people to leave the role, there may also be others drawing them to positions elsewhere. Stephen Munday, chief executive of the Cam Academy Trust and member of the HTB for the East of England and north-east London, cites the growth of “interesting opportunities” as the number of academy trusts increases.
And Matthew Wolton, a partner specialising in academies at law firm Knights, can see why RSCs are an attractive recruitment target for MATs. “‘Poaching’ is an emotive word, but I think it’s relevant,” he has said. “All it takes is a MAT to come waving a £200,000 cheque, and there you go.
“The concern is that, from a MAT perspective, if you are looking for a CEO, someone who has been an RSC - that’s a pretty good selling point. They know how the RSC world works and what the RSCs are looking at.”
Some people close to RSCs deny that the departure of so many is a sign of a system in trouble. One insider explains that becoming an RSC is the only civil service role they are interested in, and so any career progression is bound to involve moving back into direct school management.
The insider adds that, while RSCs had limited capacity when they were first appointed, the growth of their teams, and the introduction of deputy directors last summer, means the system is now more “resilient” and less vulnerable to the loss of institutional knowledge when an individual RSC leaves.
Looking on the bright side
Sir David Carter, a former RSC who now oversees the system as national schools commissioner, has struck a positive note when RSCs have left to join academy trusts.
When Vicky Beer announced she was leaving her Lancashire and West Yorkshire role to lead the embryonic Greater Manchester Learning Trust, he tweeted that it was “exactly what RSCs should do and take their experience back to schools”. Beer later decided to remain in her RSC role.
And when Tim Coulson stepped down as the RSC for the East of England and north-east London in April, Sir David tweeted: “The experience that we get as RSC gives us an insight into system leadership that few others get. Natural development to return to MAT role.”
But for Hill, the role itself needs to evolve to have a much wider responsibility than just academies and free schools - to play a full part in working with all state schools.
“While the RSC will have to be, for some academies and MATs, the ‘bad cop’ on behalf of parents and pupils, the focus of their time should increasingly be spent on being the ‘good cop’: ie, building the capacity of the school system to effect improvement,” he adds.
Munday agrees that such a role of “knitting together” a fragmented schools system “will be crucial moving forward”.
“The focus will ultimately be on what matters - school performance, and the performance of pupils - and that will trigger everything,” he says. “I think that’s a change of focus of RSCs. There’s still the agenda of academisation, but even so, let’s remember that what really matters is how good the school system is, and how are pupils performing. That should drive everything.”
But if RSCs are going to be the ones to knit everything together, they will need to stay in the role long enough to have an impact.
