Regional Schools Commissioners: more light touch, not a lot more power

Pushing academies to expand: Dr Tim Coulson Photograph: Office of the RSC

Whether you think of a local education authority – the body which used to be in charge of all state-funded schools in its area – as a watchful pair of eyes or as a dead hand, the reality of expanding academies is to take more schools out from under its control.

Those of the ‘watchful eyes’ persuasion, who would welcome more local scrutiny of academies, will draw little comfort from the eight new Regional Schools Commissioners (RSCs) appointed over the summer to oversee the performance of academies and free schools in England. But with little new impetus to the academies policy, neither is there much to cheer for the ‘dead hand’ camp.

The man with the RSC brief for Hackney is Dr Tim Coulson, former headteacher of William Tyndale School in Islington and previously Director for Education in Essex.

Speaking to the Hackney Citizen, Coulson is clear that he doesn’t see himself as interfering with academies or free schools, unless they get into serious trouble: “Our job really is to be finding the relatively small number of academies which are performing badly and find ways of working with them.”

Coulson’s new job has been created to deal with what he calls the ‘size issue’ of overseeing academies, noting that there are now nearly 5,000 academies and free schools across the country, up from less than 500 in 2010 when the coalition government came to power. “You can’t run that through one national structure,” he says.

Coulson is responsible for an area which stretches over seven London boroughs (including Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets) and four counties, from Essex in the south to Norfolk in the north – containing an estimated 500 academies.

“It’s not a hands-on role with every academy in the region,” he explains, noting that in his previous job as Director for Education in Essex he was responsible for roughly the same number of schools. But critics contend that the ‘size issue’ will persist.

Fiona Millar, education journalist and co-founder of the Local Schools Network, a campaign group which supports parents in conventional state-funded schools, says that “it’s absurd to have eight regional commissioners overseeing all academies in England,” arguing that oversight should be concentrated in much smaller areas and include all types of state-funded school in its remit.

“We agree with the idea that there should be a middle tier,” she says. “But there ought to be more local oversight of all schools.” ­

Both Millar and Coulson agree that this will not be provided by the RSCs: Coulson emphasises that his responsibility is “school improvement in academies”.

Coulson’s priority is to encourage successful academies to expand. The advantage of a large and various region, in his view, is that it provides a good opportunity for comparing achievement and distributing educational practice.

“What I’m really keen to do is extend some of the really good practice that goes on in London boroughs and spread it out a bit.” Good schools should, he says, consider setting up a whole new school elsewhere in the region, or team up with a school where “things are going less well.”

Coulson has few worries about the “pretty strong education system” in Hackney, which he characterises as “one of the strongest parts of the region.”

“I’m old enough to remember a time when Hackney wasn’t a great place for education,” he reflects. “People now talk about Hackney with great respect.”

Coulson would like to see Hackney schools setting up branches outside London, but it isn’t clear what new contribution the office of RSC will make to any efforts to encourage them to do so.

Coulson will be able to approve academy applications in his region, but he will have no power to offer any new incentives for schools to expand beyond the ‘sponsor capacity payments’ already available from the Department for Education, aimed at schools intending to become academy chains and worth up to £75,000 for schools that meet certain requirements.

Instead, he will exert his influence as a senior education figure: “I will contact every school that’s judged outstanding [by Ofsted] and say I’d really love to encourage you to have a look at this.”

The RSC’s powers over failing schools are slightly more varied. As well as being able to remove a particular school from the management of an academy trust, Coulson will be able to make less drastic changes to governance and leadership. However, these powers are not new, having been devolved to RSCs from the Secretary of State.

The role of RSC makes sense if you agree with the academies project: limited oversight and heightened autonomy for individual schools — a logical administrative move as the number of academies increases. But they haven’t been appointed to regulate academies and they don’t have much power to push the government’s schools reforms either.

A more localised tier may emerge in due course if the number of academies in an RSC’s region once again becomes unmanageable. But RSCs are a holding measure. But real change in the way we do education in this country will only come with a major shift in the political agenda. For now, it’s a stalemate.