Prime minister to send rescue teams into failing schools

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/12/failing-schools-rescue-teams-squad-teachers-assist

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A hit squad of centrally employed teachers is to be created to be dispatched into so-called failing schools, David Cameron will announce on Monday.

Describing 500 schools as still failing, the prime minister will also give the hitherto low profile eight regional school commissioners extra powers to remove their leadership if deemed necessary.

Cameron, anxious to move away from the diet of Europe and immigration that has dominated political debate, will say experts will be consulted to help develop the “rescue package” which will be included in the Conservatives’ general election manifesto.

A National Teaching Service (NTS), funded by central government, is to be created, and would be made up of high-quality teachers ready to be sent out to poorly performing schools.

Regional school commissioners, who are unelected former head teachers and teaching experts, would be able to intervene in any state school ruled inadequate by the education watchdog, Ofsted.

It is the first initiative Cameron has undertaken with the new education secretary, Nicky Morgan, drafted into the cabinet to replace the unpopular Michael Gove. Morgan said that it had become necessary to “go further” and target schools where she said “failure has become ingrained”. She added: “We will not tolerate failure, and where we find it we will use tried and trusted interventions to turn things around in the interests of young people everywhere.”

The regional commissioners were largely developed by Gove as he realised the rapid extension of city academies meant the department for education was directly responsible for the oversight of thousands of academy and free schools in what was rapidly becoming an act of unwieldy centralisation.

Under the new model, the commissioners will be able to order immediate personnel changes to governing bodies, introduce standard punishment tariffs for bad behaviour, and bring in behaviour experts to implement new policies on classroom discipline, school uniform standards and homework. They would also have powers to make “immediate personnel changes to the governing body to improve the calibre of leadership and ensure they have the skills they need to improve”. Ofsted has largely been left to rate schools, but there was no systematic means of improving schools’ performance. It is not yet clear how the new commissioners would work with the under-fire Ofsted under the Conservative plans.

Last week it emerged that Gove had discussed how to remove Sir Michael Wilshaw as chief inspector of schools, but he responded on Friday, vowing to carry on in his position and claiming that he was a victim of “smear campaigns”.

The former education secretary David Blunkett, in a report in May to the current shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt, had proposed a new, more democratic, middle-tier body to oversee improvement of local schools led by a new local Directors of School Standards. The proposal was largely modelled on the successful London Challenge responsible for improving school standards in the capital.

Hunt, just back from studying the widely praised Singapore education system, added:“Ministers are now trying to play catch-up but the public will see that it is this government’s damaging schools policy that has failed pupils.”