'Coasting', MATs and sponsorship

A look at some of the reports and comment that provide some interesting context around the impact of 'coasting' on sponsors and MATs and their financial ability to take on struggling schools.


An article in SchoolsWeek and a story in Education Investor  show James Croft, director for the Centre for Market Reform of Education saying there is a lack of sponsors with 'capacity to take on and effect the turnaround of challenging schools'.

In the Schools Week piece James wrote: 'constraints on the pooling of General Annual Grant funding, accumulation of surpluses, borrowing (whether secured against assets or on funding agreements), deployment of capital, and acquisition and disposal of fixed assets – all inhibit chains from deploying resources where they are needed most.'

The theme of there being a lack of sponsors had been raised by Warwick Mansell in December 2014 when he pointed out that somewhere between 33% and 35% of schools that were rated inadequate by Ofsted were academised within 12 months.  In his Dec 2014 Guardian column he wrote: 'we wonder if there is a shortage of sponsors willing to take over the most challenging schools'.

His latest look at the issue - May 26 2015 - provides more figures. The key one is that 240 of the 447 schools currently rated inadequate 'have yet to be converted into academies or recorded by the DfE as planned for academisation'. A closer look at the make up of this 240 unacademised group shows that 123 have been rated inadequate for more than a year.



Is there a chance that broadening the pool of schools that could face forced academisation might allow for the construction of 'packages' of schools that could pose less of a financial risk to multi-academy trust sponsors?

Does the The Bristol Post provide an example? 'The 40 Bristol schools at risk of being forced to become academies under new "coasting" rules' - the paper lists the schools with 'requires improvement' Ofsted ratings: 35 primaries and 4 secondary schools.

The BBC reports that Sir Michael Wilshaw, who supports academy takeover of coasting schools,  makes a similar argument about lack of interest - but in terms of teachers, rather than finances and sponsors: 'The big question for the government is scale... have we got enough really good head teachers who can take over those schools in federations and clusters?' From this brief mention of federations and clusters it is hard to tell if he sees them as a problem or a solution.

The BBC also said: 'Sir Michael accepts that academies can also struggle, and some have failed, and Ofsted would back interventions in any school, including academies or free schools that are regarded as "coasting"'.

Public Finance: Give councils academy accountability role, says LGA

Gives this definition of coasting: Where a school 'does not have the capacity or the plan to get themselves out of ‘requires improvement’ grade to either ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, they would be given additional support and may be converted to an academy.

The PF report said the LGA argues that central government does not have the capacity and local knowledge to oversee England’s 4,400 academies and that Councils should have greater powers to hold all schools in their areas accountable.

BBC: Queen's Speech intervention for coasting schools 

'An education bill will target so-called "coasting" schools which have shown a "prolonged period of mediocre performance"... "insufficient pupil progress", but a specific definition of what constitutes a coasting school has still be be published.'

The Education and Adoption Bill announced in the Queen's Speech will give extra powers to regional school commissioners to bring in "leadership support" from other high-achieving schools and to "speed up the process of turning schools into academies".