Government-appointed school improvement experts have said they are being given as little as three days to work with struggling schools, which is not long enough to implement long-term improvement strategies.
This is one of the key findings from a report, published by the Department for Education, that examines the impact of its Trust and School Improvement programme (TSI) for the 2021-22 academic year.
This programme is designed to provide dedicated support to struggling settings by appointing a “system leader” - either a National Leader of Education (NLE) or a trust CEO - to work with them on implementing school-improvement strategies.
For schools or single-academy trusts, three days of support is offered if they received a “requires improvement” (RI) rating during the 2021-22 academic year from Ofsted or entered the year on the back of a second RI rating in a row. For multi-academy trusts, five days of support is offered.
System leaders: We need more time
In the research for the report, 61 per cent of system leaders tasked with helping schools said that three days was not enough time to support a school, while almost two-fifths (38 per cent) of those helping MATs said more than five days was needed.
One system leader highlighted how a school they were tasked with supporting had received 34 priorities for improvement. “The support I could offer was just too little,” they said.
Another system leader said that the scale of the problems encountered often meant the scope of what could be achieved was limited.
“When you enter this process you discover other areas not [initially] apparent. These areas also need support but we are limited by the three-five days and we need more to bring in other experts to support the school/MAT with the issues they face,” they said.
The reference to bringing in”‘other experts” is another point that the report notes, with several system leader respondents saying they did not appreciate how much resource beyond themselves would be required when working with a school.
“Some system leaders also spoke about providing (at times significantly) more staff resource and/or days allocated in order to make a difference,” the report says.
However, the report also says that schools and MATs that received this help appeared to be less concerned by the amount of time they had with the system leader. Two-fifths (40 per cent) of schools said they thought more time was needed, and just over one in eight trusts (14 per cent).
However, both sides agreed that if no prior relationship existed, a lot of time was lost establishing communications and getting an understanding of the areas that needed addressing to make a real difference.
“Both system leaders and recipients of support also often mentioned that it took time to build relationships and get a good view of the improvement needs,” the report says.
“Where this relationship was not already in place, then this relationship-building and diagnostic phase could use up most of the allocation.”
Despite these issues, the overall consensus among those involved was that the pairings between system leaders and struggling schools and MATs was positive, with regard to the relevance, focus and timing of support, and the match between a school or MAT and its system leader.
The report responses were drawn from one-to-one interviews with 20 system leaders and nine school leaders and nine trust leaders receiving support, while an online survey included responses from 159 system leaders, 73 leaders of a supported school and 59 leaders of a supported trust.
The DfE has been approached for comment.
