As you open your new year’s edition of Tes and turn your attention to this article and picture, you may find yourself wondering: who is that? That, my friends, is Dominic Herrington, the new national schools commissioner.
His name may ring a bell with some - he hit the headlines late last year after he said that education was not on the verge of a big funding crisis. (Three guesses what the reaction of the teaching community was to that statement …) That aside, he does have plans for the academies system, which has been battered by bad press over CEO pay and failed trusts.
Herrington told Tes that first on his to-do list is “an unashamedly operational focus on making the regional schools commissioner (RSC) system, which is bedded in now, work really, really well”.
He also wants to…
* Feed RSCs’ experience into policymaking: “They know a lot about what is going on out there in the system. Bringing that back to the policy-making centre and helping with that policy making and ultimately giving advice to ministers, that’s a really important part of the role.”
* Change the perception of headteacher boards: “I suppose the way I have come at it is there’s a lot of perception out there and uncertainty about, at times, how headteacher boards have operated. I’m interested in understanding why that feedback has come in.”
* And encourage academy trusts to collaborate: “One of my roles is to ensure that they are sharing what they are doing with one another. It’s really, really important that that happens.”
