Education Secretary to net intervention powers over under-performing schools

The Secretary of State for Education will be given the power to direct a local authority to close under-performing schools, under proposals contained in the Education Bill that was published yesterday.

The ability to direct councils in this way will apply to schools that are judged to be in special measures, require significant improvement, or have failed to comply with a warning notice.

The Secretary of State will also be given the power to direct councils to give a warning notice to an under-performing school. Ministers claim the changes will lead to raised standards.

The proposals are contained in wide-ranging draft legislation that will make significant changes to a number of key areas, including pupil behaviour and discipline, the school leaving age, inspections, examinations and student loans.

Education Secretary Michael Gove insisted the changes in the Bill would cut bureaucracy and improve behaviour, while his Shadow Andy Burnham accused him of taking schools “back to the 1950s”.

The Bill, if passed in its current form, will see schools and teachers given extra powers over pupil behaviour. In particular, schools will have the final say in expelling violent pupils, with the role of appeals panels much reduced. The legislation would mean headmasters’ decisions to expel a pupil can be reviewed but not overturned.

Appeals panels will no longer be able to reinstate expelled pupils; instead they will be able to request that the school reconsider their decision. Where a school is found to have wrongly excluded a pupil, the appeals panel can instruct them to fund the alternative education of the pupil.

Other measures in the disciplinary arena include:

• The power to search for items that disrupt learning. This will include the right to search for any banned items, as well as for objects deemed as dangerous
• Protection for teachers from pupils who tell lies. Teachers will retain anonymity until they are charged
• Making it easier to impose detentions. The Bill will remove the existing requirement to give 24 hours’ notice to a child and parents for any after-school detention they want to issue.

Ministers have also vowed to cut bureaucracy in the education system. Key measures include abolition of quangos such as the General Teaching Council for England and the Qualification and Curriculum Development Agency. Responsibility for teacher training, investigating claims of misconduct and the power to ban teachers from working in schools will be transferred to the Secretary of State.

A number of current requirements imposed on schools will be scrapped. These include the signed partnership between parents and schools – often called the ‘home-school agreement’ or ‘behaviour and attendance partnership’ – as well as the duty to cooperate with children’s trusts and to have regard to the area’s Children and Young People’s Plan. Councils will no longer have to provide school improvement partners.

On school inspections, the Bill will require Ofsted inspectors to focus on four areas – pupil achievement, teaching, leadership and management, and behaviour and safety – instead of the 27 different judgements in the existing framework.

From September 2011, outstanding schools and sixth form colleges will not face routine Ofsted inspections, instead being “free to continue doing what they do so well”. Ofsted will narrow its focus to under-performing schools.

The Education Bill is also intended to develop further changes brought in by the Academies Act last summer. Councils will be required to seek proposals for the establishment of an academy where they deem a new school is needed. Special schools, sixth forms and Pupil Referral units (PRUs) will also be able to become academies.

The Department for Education claimed this was designed to provide “alternative provision…so the benefits of free schools and academies can be extended to more pupils.” Encouragement will be given to new groups – such as charities and free schools – to run PRUs.

Other measures in the Bill include:

• Repeal of the duty on local authorities to ensure every young person has access to diplomas
• An expectation that by 2015, all children will be expected to stay in education or training until the age of 18.
• Ofqual will be required to ensure standards are maintained between different qualifications, determining whether certain exams deserve equivalence to a GCSE and that the levels of work involved in different GCSEs are the same. It will also be under a duty to compare exam standards against the highest performing systems in the world.
• A new entitlement to free Early Years provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds, while maintaining universal free entitlement for children aged three and four.

Michael Gove said: “We need tough new power to take action when things go wrong. In the worst schools there will be new intervention powers. Ofsted will focus on the worst-performing schools where they are needed most. It is unacceptable that children should suffer in schools that are not doing a good job.”

Ed Archer