Education Committee Reports On Regional Schools Commissioners - “There is a lack of transparency”
Today sees the publication of an extensive report by the Education Committee on the role of Regional Schools Commissioners (RSCs) – a group of government officials each responsible for overseeing academy schools in one of eight different regions across the country. The eight RSCs were first appointed in 2014, and originally tasked with intervening in […]
Today sees the publication of an extensive report by the Education Committee on the role of Regional Schools Commissioners (RSCs) – a group of government officials each responsible for overseeing academy schools in one of eight different regions across the country.
The eight RSCs were first appointed in 2014, and originally tasked with intervening in cases where academies in their region were found to be underperforming. They were also given responsibility for approving new free schools, and each assigned a ‘headteacher board’ made of academy heads drawn from the region to advise on and scrutinise the RSC’s decisions.
In July 2015 they were given the additional responsibility of approving conversions of underperforming maintained schools into academies. Their role may soon expand even further under proposals set out within the Education and Adoption Bill, prompting the Education Committee to launch an inquiry into what the role of RSCs currently is in practice, what it ought to be and how RSCs themselves should be held accountable.
More problems than benefits
One of the main concerns raised in the report is that the specific role of RSCs remains unclear, with a need for them to build more effective relationships with local communities, schools and local authorities. The report also highlights a perceived lack of consistency in how different RSCs exercise their role, quoting the Academies Enterprise Trust as saying “Expectations and targets for schools seem unclear and at the whim of an individual RSC.”
The report’s recommendations include having the National Schools Commissioner see to it that consistency is maintained between RSCs and across regions, that the RSC decision-making frameworks be published to ensure greater transparency, and that the role of the headteacher board be properly clarified – whether its purpose is to simply advise, if it constitutes a decision-making body in itself.
The report also criticises how the eight RSC regions are currently designated, highlighting how ‘The division of London between three regions creates more problems than benefits’. The Committee’s instead recommends that the RSC regions be made to match the eight regions used by Ofsted, which would entail London becoming a single region and the East Midlands assigned a region of its own (versus the current designation of ‘East Midlands and the Humber’).
Finally, the report also includes a recommendation from the Committee that the impact of RSCs “Should be measured in terms of improvements in outcomes for young people, rather than merely the volume of activity”. Acknowledging plans by the government to review RSC’s key performance indicators, the Committee goes on to note the need for the revised KPI’s to prevent potential conflicts of interest, and to ensure that RSC decisions are motivated by school improvement and not by academy creation targets.
The report is available to read in full from the Education Committee’s website [PDF]
