This presentation explores the new 'decliners' and 'improvers' model for schools improvement and moving MATs from autonomy to standardisation.

1. Education law conferences 2018
Keynote 1: Improving education

2. Improving education: The new ‘decliners’
and ‘improvers’ model for school
improvement and moving MATs from
autonomy to standardisation
Join the conversation #BJ_EDC

3. The evolving self-improving school system
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020

4. NSC’s shift in focus
ensuring new MATs coming into the system
to
ensuring that the MATs they have in the system
are sustainable and are delivering

5. What does this mean for our Trust?
Does our governance and leadership structure in practice:
• ensure we have an appropriate strategic plan in place?
• provide for effective oversight of the execution of that plan?
• provide for effective delegation and accountability to ensure
we are delivering (educationally and operationally)?

6. NSC Theme 1 – move towards standardisation
Encouraging MATs to embark on a journey from autonomy,
through greater alignment, to arrive at standardisation across
four key areas of their operation:
• Governance
• HR
• Financial management
• School improvement

7. NSC Theme 2 – school improvement journey
NSCs school improvement formula
Strategy + capacity + pace = school improvement
Eight ‘types’, Four phases

8. Sli.do – vote now
Do you find this formula helpful when thinking about the
work you are doing in your trust?
• Yes
• No
• Not sure

10. Stabilise
• Do you understand what changes need to be made to aid
improvement?
• Have you prioritised the strategies you need to implement?
• Where are the pockets of stronger practice that you can
develop and share across schools?

11. Repair
• Are our leaders coping?
• Have we got the balance right between support and
challenge?

12. Improve
• As a board, do we need to refresh our professional expertise
and capacity?
• What are the areas we still need to repair?
• Are we getting the balance right between quality assurance
and operational improvement?

13. Sustain
• What capacity do we have to support another school?
• Are the strategies we have implemented scalable and
replicable?
• What are the risks to us reaching a performance plateau and
how do we avoid that?

14. RSC ‘inspections’
“In the past, there have undoubtedly been occasions when
education advisers, who are contracted as consultants to the
DfE to enable the RSCs to triangulate the data they have been
told about where a trust is, sometimes visited in close
proximity to an inspection.
My plan going forward is that we will now bring that to an end,
because the education advisers that work for the regional
schools commissioners must be doing their work at the trust
level.”

15. RSC ‘inspections’ cont’d
“There is no point in having two bodies both working at school
level, because the downward pressure that places on the
system is, I think, part of the workload challenge, so my view
would be the multi-academy trusts work very closely with me,
with the RSCs, with education advisers.”
Sir David Carter, February 2018, Institute of Education debate

16. RSC visits
Two reasons:
• because they want to learn more about really good work you
are doing; or
• because the RSC did not believe what they had been told
about a school.

17. Sli.do – vote now
Who do you think would be best placed to inspect MATs?
• Ofsted
• RSC team
• Other MAT
• New body
• Not needed

18. Your response …
• Strategic plan
• Governance
• Leadership & Management
• Interactions with your RSC

19. www.brownejacobson.com/education

20. Please note
The information contained in these notes is based on the
position at March 2018. It does, of course, only represent a
summary of the subject matter covered and is not intended to
be a substitute for detailed advice. If you would like to discuss
any of the matters covered in further detail, our team would
be happy to do so.
© Browne Jacobson LLP 2018. Browne Jacobson LLP is a
limited liability partnership.