OFSTED Notice to improve - implications?

[AlexandraMary]

A local school has just been told by OFSTED that they have been given a 'notice to improve'. The head has walked out, apparently.

What happens next? Is this the same thing as 'special measures' or better/worse? Is there a chance of them closing the school?

They'll have money and support thrown at them like it's going out of fashion, in order to get improvement before the next inspection (in about 12 months). If there's no improvement, then I think it's special measures (more support, more money, possible new SLT) - it takes a long time to get to the point of closure (and in all honesty it would probably just reopen as an Academy)

Thanks flisspaps (great name btw)

It's already an academy, and it's already been renamed / rebranded, had bags of £££ thrown at it, had a new superhead flown in, etc. I wonder what else they can do.

If its already an academy you are stuffed I'm afraid.

THe LEA has no rights or powers over them to parachute in staff and support - and it will only do so if the school has a contract for it and asks.
Academies are ONLY answerable to either their sponsor or Whitehall
if the SMT do not ask for help nothing will change
and Ofsted cannot force them to do so.

Is it a sponsored academy (pre May 2010) ?

TalkinPeace2 is only partly correct.

As the school is an academy the academy trust must prepare a statement of action and submit it to OFSTED. This must include details of action already taken, the additional support the trust will commission, the steps needed to improve the leadership and management of the school, the arrangements to inform and consult parents, the scope for bringing in partner organisations to help and an action plan. If the school was not an academy this statement of action would be produced by the LA.

If OFSTED is unhappy with the statement of action it will tell the academy how to improve it. If the academy still does not produce a statement of action that satisfies OFSTED or it fails to improve the Secretary of State can appoint additional governors, replace the existing governors, stop funding the academy or close the academy. This is similar to the LA's powers of intervention for non-academies.

The support offered by LAs to non-academies causing concern varies widely. Many (possibly most) LAs delegate all of their school improvement budget to schools which means they will not provide any additional funding nor will they parachute in staff and support. The school has to fund everything that is needed itself. In those LAs the support from the LA to non-academies is limited to writing the statement of action.

By the way, at least one major teaching union wants to see the powers of LAs to intervene in schools causing concern substantially reduced. I believe their argument is that the job of turning round a failing school should be left to the teachers.

I am DELIGHTED to stand corrected
BUT
how long will all of that take?
In an LEA school its a matter of days.
In the Sponsored academy that I have discussed in the past it took nearly two terms.

I wonder if your school is one of these mentioned in this Indie article?

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/eight-academies-given-improvement-notice-7675721.html

It seems that neither the SofS or the EFA (was the YPLA) are taking any responsibility for failing academies, nor know what to do.

Oh, but Gove told a Select Committee the next day that local authorities could tender to sponsor failing academies, so maybe the school will go full circle?

Well thought out approach to education, this academy agenda, isn't it?

The statement of action should be prepared within 10 working days of the final inspection report. It will, of course, take longer than that for the school to come out of notice to improve or special measures.

The article Rosebud05 links to is itself somewhat confused (as is the letter from Michael Rosen she linked to on another thread which, amongst many other howlers, implies that it is harder to find out which academies are on notice to improve or in special measures than it is for non-academies). Let me start with the situation for non-academies.

Ofsted can place a school on notice to improve or put it into special measures. No-one else has that responsibility. The school will remain on notice to improve/in special measures until Ofsted say otherwise.

If parents have a complaint and are unhappy with the response they receive from the school they can take that complaint to the LA.

The LA can issue a formal warning notice to any school if they feel that, although it is not performing poorly enough to be considered inadequate by Ofsted, it is nevertheless performing poorly in relation to its intake, past results or similar schools. They can also issue a warning notice if they consider there is a threat to pupil safety. Obviously it is possible for a warning notice to be triggered as a result of complaints from parents. The Secretary of State can require an LA to issue a formal warning notice to a school.

Looking at academies:

Ofsted can place an academy on notice to improve or put it into special measures. No-one else has that responsibility. The academy will remain on notice to improve/in special measures until Ofsted say otherwise.

If parents have a complaint and are unhappy with the response they receive from the academy they can take the complaint to the EFA. It appears that at least some staff at EFA are not aware of this. That is clearly a problem that needs to be resolved.

The Secretary of State can issue a formal warning notice to any academy. Obviously it is possible for a warning notice to be triggered as a result of complaints from parents.

A friend works at a school which is on a 'Notice to improve'. They were placed on this because they were deemed satisfactory. Previously you'd be placed on notice to improve if the school is considered unsatisfactory but it's all change now and cynic in me would say its to ensure more schools become academies. (Appreciate this school is an academy). Friend's school has been on notice for 3 years, however theyve recently had academy sponsors visiting and it feels a forgone conclusion of what the local ed authority are planning.

Any school whether state or private, has a duty to ensure improvements are made as and where necessary. As a parent OP you must be worried sick about what is going to happen? Hopefully the package of support will be up to the standard of what a local authority would throw at a school and teachers do not want to be part of a failing school! They'll be putting in maximum effort to ensure the school pulls itself out of the danger zone and if the Head has walked that may not be such a bad thing?

I wish you luck with this.

Thankfully I'm not (yet) a parent, but it is our catchment school.

Thanks for all the advice, really useful.

I'm so confused by this academy business. I've just had another look - they're not an academy apparently, but a foundation trust school. Forced through because it was a failing school a decade ago, and has been for a while. I thought that meant it was an academy, but apparently not. I think foundation schools have some private sector involvement, but not as much as an academy?

Foundation schools replaced grant maintained schools in the late 1990s. In essence they are the same as faith schools but generally without the faith element, but just to confuse matters there are a few foundation schools that are also faith schools. There is no private sector involvement in running a foundation school. If you want to know more there is a detailed description on the DfE website here.

As this is a foundation school it will be up to the LA to draw up the statement of action. The LA may provide additional funding and support but that depends very much on where you are. If the LA has delegated its school improvement budget to individual schools any help from the LA will be limited.

Most schools that go on notice to improve or into special measures come out again. As the head has apparently walked out the school will clearly get new leadership. Hopefully that will prove to be exactly what is needed.

Thanks prh47. Am confused re the private sector element as the foundation trustees are a Ltd company who run schools all over the world. The local paper are on it, so hope it will become clearer soon.

The school has been in and out of special measures but never higher than a 3 - I think it will take a lot for the local reputation to change.

There have been 6 or 7 heads in the last decade. :(

All charities are actually constituted as companies limited by guarantee. They are still in the charitable sector rather than the private sector. I wasn't aware of any foundation schools where the foundation trust operates internationally but I'm not saying there aren't any.

If you would like to PM me with the LA and name of the school I will check its status.

YHM prh47, thank you.

Do elucidate the other howlers in Michael Rosen's letter, prh.

He makes the odd factual blunder but he's on the button with the zeitgeist.

But actually few factual errors than Michael Gove, who continues to insist that academy conversion is a guarantee of school improvement, when it very, very obviously isn't.

Gove does not insist that academy conversion is a guarantee of school improvement as far as I am aware. His opponents say he makes this claim but I can find no evidence that he has actually done so. As I understand it he argues (rightly or wrongly) that the evidence points to conversion being the best option which is not the same thing. To use an analogy, chemotherapy may be the best option for treating cancer but that doesn't mean it guarantees a cure.

On the Rosen letter, my apologies. I may have looked at the wrong one yesterday. I found it when I was searching for something rather than by following your link and assumed it was the correct one. I didn't realise he had written more than one, but then I don't read the Guardian (or any other daily paper). However, to pick a couple of points from the second paragraph of the letter posted on Monday:

First, we're not allowed to know what or where these academies are. With local authority schools, we have accountability and transparency with online Ofsted reports, sometimes followed by local newspaper headlines

This refers to the eight academies served with pre-warning notices mentioned in Gove's appearance before the Education Select Committee.

THE FACTS:

• LAs do not generally publish pre-warning notices or warning notices issued to LA-maintained schools. Nothing is published by Ofsted for such schools nor, in most cases, are there headlines in the local papers. There are, of course, some exceptions where such notices have become very public.
• Ofsted reports for academies are freely available online despite Rosen's clear implication that they are not. When an academy goes on notice to improve or into special measures the publicity in the press is generally far greater than for a local authority school.

And we have the academy accounts that dare not be made public

THE FACTS:

• Most LAs do not publish accounts for individual schools. However, the school must respond to an FoI request.
• An academy trust is constituted as a company limited by guarantee (the usual legal form used by most charities). You can get the accounts for any academy trust from Companies House. Alternatively the academy must respond to an FoI request.

The rest of the letter clearly demonstrates that Rosen, like the Independent's reporter, does not understand the difference between the processes for dealing with a failing school and those for handling parents' complaints. I don't propose to pick through that in detail.

AlexandraMary - Thanks for your PM. I should have recognised the area, at least. This is an unusual foundation school. Most have no private sector involvement. This one was regarded as a radical departure when it opened as a foundation school in 2002. But yes, there is, as you say, a private company involved with this one. As far as I can see direct governance is through a charitable trust which is what I would expect.

In terms of responsibilities this doesn't change anything. It is still up to the LA to draw up the statement of action. Meanwhile the school seems to have appointed an interim head teacher already.

Thanks phr47bridge, that does clarify things.

I wonder whether the school will become an academy, and if it does, whether that will make any difference.

So the only 'howler' was the one that you'd already identified - that Ofsted reports for all schools including academies are in the public domain.

As you point out, the accounts of LA schools can be accessed through FOI requests. Income and expenditure per pupil is available on the DfE performance tables. That of academies is not. Academy trusts may have to respond to FOI requests, but don't have to provide the information requested. There have been several attempts to find out both the funding agreement and income and expenditure per pupil at Mossbourne, for example, which have repeatedly been refused.

Weren't looking very hard then.

The funding agreement for Mossbourne is here apart from Annex 9 and Annexes 10A-D.

In the year ended 31st August 2009 Mossbourne had 966 students. Total income was £10.39M and expenditure was £10.11M. So that's income of £10,755 per student, spending of £10,466 per student. That information is available for free on the internet.

Figures for 2010 and 2011 are available on the Companies House website. It will cost you the grand sum of £2 to get copies of Mossbourne's accounts for those years.

Or sign up for Duedil
and get the accounts, lists of directors, other things they are involved in etc for free

That is an incomplete document. The details of the financial agreements between the SoS and the academy are redacted.

As is standard for such documents. If you want to know how much it cost to establish the academy and how much money came from the government for that purpose take a look at the academy's accounts. It is all there.

The accounts that you have to pay for, you mean?

Mossbourne's accounts up to 2009 are available on the internet for free. And I hardly think that paying £1 to Companies House to get a year's accounts is a major imposition.