THE EFFECT OF REVISED OFSTED CATEGORIES ON ACADEMY CONVERSIONS

1. THE EFFECT OF REVISED OFSTED CATEGORIES ON ACADEMY CONVERSIONS Or: What to do if you have got the skids under you! A light-hearted guide to a very tough subject.

2. CAN WE RELY ON ANY FORMAL THRESHOLD FOR A “FORCED CONVERSION”? • NO. The government is very likely to change thresholds as it sees fit from time to time. • Unless you are at least good with outstanding features and/or already on a strong upwards trajectory you had best consider your options and make plans before being forced to do so.

3. CAN WE JUST STAY AS WE ARE, OR IS AN ACADEMY OUR ONLY OPTION? • An academy is not your only option unless things are so bad that the Secretary of State just insists. • You could: (a) agree an action plan with your LA that might or might not include staff changes and/or governing body changes (b) propose your own radical change of governance such as becoming Voluntary Aided – remember you do not have to be a church school to be VA (c) while remaining a maintained school become a member of a Federation with some strong schools to support you (d) the same but join a Local Collaboration Trust or other local structure with some strong schools/academies.

4. (cont) • Our view is that if you (a) developed a strong and thoughtful school development plan (b) seriously addressed any possible staffing or governance weaknesses (c) set in motion procedures to become VA and/or (d) joined a LCT with some strong partners and perhaps with some governance support as well as standards, then you could expect the DfE to support such an initiative and not necessarily to insist on conversion to an academy or to your becoming a sponsored academy unless your standards continued to decline. • This would be strengthened if you had clear LA support for such actions.

5. WHAT ABOUT BECOMING A FOUNDATION SCHOOL IN A JOINT FOUNDATION? • Possible; but we note that this is not a solution much pushed by the DfE at the moment. • We suspect that the DfE would pretty much certainly insist that you at least had a trial discussion and perhaps a consultation on becoming an academy instead. • The Foundation category is simply not the current flavour! Nor to be honest would we encourage you to think of this as a serious route, though the occasional new Foundation School is created.

6. BUT VA STILL IS? • Well, we note that the EA 2011 enables a new VA to be created without competition and without any requirement for exemption from competition. • It is not a dead model and has some strong parallels with Academies which allow it to be seen as more “autonomous”. • Because there are so many church VAs it is likely to remain a viable option for some years yet.

7. SO: • IF AN DIFFICULT OFSTED IS LOOMING THEN THERE ARE STRUCTURAL AS WELL AS YOUR NORMAL INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT PROCEDURES THAT YOU COULD ADOPT AND WHICH MIGHT AVOID A FORCED ACADEMY SOLUTION. • OTHERWISE AN ACADEMY YOU WILL BECOME!

8. SO SUPPOSE WE ARE FORCED TO BECOME AN ACADEMY? • Then quite a lot depends on which of four possibilities you fall under: • 1. The SoS closes the existing school and requires it to be replaced by a new academy. (This actually happens very rarely.) • 2. The SoS makes you an offer you cannot refuse and so you convert as a sponsored academy with an agreed amount of funding to help you face your standards issues and related matters. • 3. The SoS puts on the same pressure but so as to create a sponsored academy with only minimal initial extra finance to give you a modest impetus for a fresh start. • 4. The SoS lets you convert into a non-sponsored academy, usually insisting that you have to have support from a formal structure such as a MAT, a LUT or an LCT or direct from another academy or school.

9. OPTION 1: CLOSURE AND A NEW ACADEMY • In these circumstances the predecessor school has in reality no role or influence on the nature of the new academy and there is no continuity of staffing or governance between the two. • Sorry, but you are being replaced! Goodbye!

10. OPTION 2: CONVERSION INTO A SPONSORED ACADEMY WITH MAJOR FUNDING • There is continuity between the predecessor school and the academy but the DfE is going to require major changes of governance and of staffing. • Funding is available for redundancies and for a serious level of support for transformation of ethos and standards. • If you are a church school your diocese (or other appropriate body) will have first refusal to be your sponsor. Dioceses are creating appropriate Multi-Academy Trusts for this purpose.

11. (cont) • If you are not a church school you will be made offers and/or pressed into taking on a sponsor. You just might get away with creating your own sponsoring body at the local level, but would have to show strong evidence to the DfE for it to give such a new body sponsor status. • You might have a strong neighbouring academy (or indeed maintained school) that could and would be your sponsor. This might or might not be an attractive solution for you or the DfE. It also might or might not be attractive for the other academy/school, as there are quite big risks for it in taking on such a responsibility.

12. (cont) • Be warned: this is a big area for those that want power and income without responsibility or accountability. • You need to look very carefully at and explore very thoroughly with the DfE the options you are given. • DfE regional officials do not appear to be consistent one to another as to their approaches, but to be fair everybody is feeling their way. • Don’t be afraid to argue and debate: this is a very big decision for your school. Don’t just go into a particular relationship of this kind just because the DfE says you must.

13. OPTION 3: CONVERSION INTO A SPONSORED ACADEMY WITH MINOR FUNDING • Much the same points apply but with even more bite as you do not have any significant money to buy your way out of trouble. • Having a capable sponsor with whom you can get on is key. • So maybe belonging to a Multi-Academy Trust and/or a Local Collaboration Trust or (for non-church schools) a Local Umbrella Trust will be a solution.

14. OPTION 4: CONVERTING INTO A NON-SPONSORED ACADEMY • The DfE is only likely to allow this if you have a very strong support structure around you: • You are part of a MAT; • Or part of a Local Umbrella Trust; • Or part of a Local Collaboration Trust. • So some comments on all of these and associated matters follow. • But first:

15. CAN’T WE JUST CONVERT INTO A STAND ALONE ACADEMY WITH INFORMAL LINKS? • YES. Of course you can – if the DfE will let you. You may already form part of a local cluster, whether under School Collaboration Regulations or not. Perhaps you are already part of a Federation under School Federation Regulations. • You can become an academy and retain your existing informal cluster links but note that neither Collaboration Regulations nor Federation Regulations apply to academies. So you can’t be an academy and at the same time a formal member of a Collaboration or a Federation. We advise that it is unhelpful to use these words about academies, as they often lead to confusion and this can become very important when you ask where responsibility really lies. • The question is, will the informal links be strong enough to make the required difference to standards.

16. (cont) • However an academy can buy services (including its Principal) from wherever it wants (provided that the DfE will let you) and thus a school could become an academy and buy some of its leadership and staffing from the Federation of which it used to be a member. • Note, though, that this would not make such an academy a member of the Federation or put it under the authority of the Federation Governing Body. • If the DfE agreed, then a Federation could sponsor a stand alone academy, but normally only if the academy is not a church academy (unless the Federation is a church Federation).

17. SO A WEAK SCHOOL CAN STAND ALONE AS AN ACADEMY? • In theory yes, but very unlikely in practice that you could convince the DfE that this would work to raise standards. You would have to have some very strong informal agreements in respect of standards, staffing and governance. • The DfE also (and surely rightly) will not let you convert into arrangements that you could in fact simply walk away from a few terms later.

18. SO A MAT THEN? IS THAT THE SAME AS A CHAIN? • This is certainly one of the options and one favoured by the DfE. • Yes, it looks to us as though when the DfE says a chain they mean a big MAT. Of course a chain might in fact run several big MATs from the same back-office headquarters. • Once in a MAT you are owned and controlled by it and normally could never get out unless the MAT itself lets you. Some argue that it would be a good model to have a tough MAT that worked on sorting out the issues and raising standards and that it could and should then let an academy change to stand alone. It would be possible to have criteria in the MAT to allow for this.

19. BUT MATs CAN HAVE SCHEMES OF DELEGATION, CAN’T THEY? • YES. But such a scheme can never remove the ultimate power and control of the MAT Directors. They have the legal responsibility and cannot give it away. • So if you are offered a MAT with a Scheme of Delegation that appears to give your Local Governing Body real and permanent control then be suspicious, especially if the MAT is suggesting that the membership of your governing body need not change from what it was when you were a school. After all (remembering that we are talking about OFSTED category schools here) your governance is pretty much bound to have some need for overhaul, so why is this MAT suggesting leaving it alone?

20. (cont) • So a Scheme of Delegation needs to be realistic to your situation (and you need to be realistic). Otherwise belonging to the MAT may not help address the issues that OFSTED is raising. • If you are a leading academy in a MAT then you also need to think very carefully about Schemes of Delegation and of what you are really wanting to create in your MAT. Will you end up with responsibility but no power? That would not be a good outcome for a high performing school, as your reputation will suffer if you are seen not to be improveing your colleagues in the MAT. • If you aren’t careful a big MAT simply becomes a lot of stand-alone academies with a big back office above it – a sort of small LA. So think hard.

21. CAN ALL SORTS OF ACADEMIES COMBINE IN A MAT? • Easily in the sponsored situation, but not easily otherwise. • VC and Community schools can easily combine into a MAT but for VA this is very difficult because they lose their governance model and other factors that are in fact part of the VA strength. We therefore advise against VAs normally in mixed MATs. • However, if you are (as we envisage here) a weak school being offered a Sponsorship MAT as a possible solution then: • (a) all dioceses (we believe) are creating special MATs for church schools in this position. These are of course sponsor-led MATs and therefore use the VA-converter academy articles (Model 1 on the DfE website). So these can take in both ex-VAs and ex-VCs. No problem.

22. (cont) • (b) Non-church MATs are also in existence which also are sponsor-led. They could be a big existing chain or there may be a smaller local suitable MAT. Or you could combine with willing strong local schools to create a new sponsor-type MAT of your own if you can convince the DfE that this will work. • Church of England MATs set up for this purpose can also normally take in a Community School converter. This would not make it a church school but it would be a full member of the church MAT and would access all its services and those of the diocesan structure behind it.

23. WHAT ABOUT COMMERCIAL EDUCATION COMPANIES? • Some are setting up their own MAT or MATs and a non-church school being pushed to convert could join one if all parties were willing. • Others are selling their school improvement services to MATs, as there is (in the case of those schools being pushed to convert and given a serious budget) some money to buy these in. • A third option is for such a company to become a minority member of a MAT company and thus work at cost from the inside. • All of these need the most careful agreements and the DfE normally makes you look at them very carefully indeed. So you should!

24. SCHOOL LEVEL CAPACITY • For, after all, most of the expertise is actually to be found in schools themselves and we think that experience around the country suggests that the best and most sustained developments occur when schools/academies share their expertise and skills with one another. • That can be done either totally informally (but remember the DfE will want you tied in if you are a weak school) or under some kind of continuing formal arrangement. • In either case some decent arrangement will be required so that costs can be met – ie so that you can pay one another when you use each other’s personnel or services.

25. LUTs, LCTs AND MUTUAL TRADING COMPANIES • There appear to us to be three formal arrangements that are possible for stand alone academies to act in strong support/partnership with one another. • 1. The DfE model Local Umbrella Trusts. • 2. The church model Local Collaboration Trusts (which can also be used by non-church schools) • 3. Mutual Trading Companies. • Remember too that you can just share informally ie just work together and occasionally buy things from one another – if that is acceptable to the DfE in your particular situation. You could record an informal partnership of this kind in some kind of partnership agreement to give it a bit more substance.

26. LOCAL UMBRELLA TRUSTS • The key word is “Umbrella”. This is a trust that you and the other academies create but which is then above you in the sense that it appoints some or even the majority of your members and governors. • In our view the Umbrella element is the real strength of the Umbrella Trust and consequently if you set it up in such a way that the Umbrella body hardly ever meets and has no effective functions then you are missing a key aspect of its possibilities. We imagine that OFSTED in the future will be on the look-out for Umbrella Trust that are merely pieces of paper pasted over cracks, since after all the DfE wants Umbrella Trusts actually to work in transforming weaker schools.

27. (cont) • Umbrella Trusts can enable (in a formal legal context) the sharing of staff, budgets and governance as well as providing a forum for mutual policy and decision making. • These functions make them strong bodies to support weak schools, provided that the stronger local academies in the trust are willing to play their part. The LUT can call the individual academy company to account. • Be warned though that an Umbrella Trust (like a local MAT) can be the vehicle for a megalomaniac Principal intent on creating a local empire, a large income and a national reputation. Sorry to be cynical! • Umbrella Trusts and their academies must have strong governance as well as strong professional leadership and a collaborative ethos. If you build it all on the Principal you miss out a key factor for long term sustained good quality.

28. LOCAL COLLABORATION TRUSTS • The key word here is “collaboration”. • These are trusts that you and the other academies create but which do not normally have any power to appoint members or governors to the academies. • Hence they are wholly “servant” bodies, controlled by the member academies. • However they also enable (in a formal legal context) the sharing of staff, budgets and governance as well as providing a forum for mutual policy and decision making. If you all agree, they can call individual academies to account as part of the mutuality.

29. (cont) • They are thus also able to be strong bodies supporting weak schools and the DfE recognises this. • Consequently it will let a weak school convert as part of a LCT and will give a special £25K grant for the establishment of an LCT just as they do for an LUT. It may require some governance support from the LCT to a weak school and this can be done when required, even though it is not the norm. • There is less chance of empire building in an LCT. But you certainly can have a CEO if that is what the academies want. • The LCT is designed so that (in this period of change) both academies and maintained schools (and indeed independent schools and other bodies) can be members. This is to give maximum flexibility for you.

30. MUTUAL TRADING COMPANIES • A third way in which you can have a formal structure is to establish not a trust but just a company owned by you all and which gives you a vehicle for doing and procuring things together. • This may not be enough for the DfE if weaker schools are involved, as it would normally be too easy for such a school to pull out. • You might also need a trading company in addition to a trust if you are likely to be selling your services a lot to third parties. This is because charities (trusts) are limited in the extent to which they can trade externally. Of course the members of the trust can trade between themselves internally as much as they want.

31. CHOOSING THE BEST OPTIONS • We have a general paper which we have circulated on “Working Together”. This looks at the whole picture of the various kinds of collaboration for both schools and academies and contains a final section on choices. • However schools in or likely to be in OFSTED categories really only have open to them those options that the DfE believes to be appropriate for them as structures that will help them improve. • These are the ones we have listed in this presentation:

32. SUMMARY • POSSIBLE PRE-EMPTION OF THE ACADEMY OPTION BY CHANGING TO VA WITH OTHER SUPPORTIVE STRUCTURES. • SPONSORED ACADEMY AS PART OF A MAT OR CHAIN. • SPONSORED OR CONVERTER STAND ALONE ACADEMY WITH INFORMAL SUPPORT STRUCTURE. • SPONSORED OR CONVERTER STAND ALONE ACADEMY WITH LUT. • SPONSORED OR CONVERTER STAND ALONE ACADEMY WITH LCT. • SPONSORED OR CONVERTER STAND ALONE ACADEMY WITH MUTUAL TRADING COMPANY PARTNERS.

33. FINALLY • WE WISH YOU WELL IN WHATEVER ROUTE AHEAD YOU TAKE – OR HAVE PUSHED UPON YOU. • THIS IS A TOUGH AND CHALLENGING BUSINESS BUT WITH THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE AIMS: • THE BEST EDUCATION WE CAN MANAGE TO GIVE TO OUR YOUNG PEOPLE AND • A GOOD, SUPPORTIVE AND STIMULATING WORKING ENVIRONMENT FOR ALL STAFF AND • SIMILARLY A GOOD, SUPPORTIVE AND STIMULATING ROLE FOR ALL INVOLVED AS GOVERNORS AND ACADEMY COMPANY MEMBERS.