Jonny Uttley, CEO of The Education Alliance multi-academy trust, based in East Yorkshire, writes for the Commission on Young Lives.
Ministers have relatively few levers to pull to make schools do what they want. Whether we like it or not, and many of us don't, one of the most effective levers is the accountability system. The metrics politicians choose to measure school success, and the carrots and sticks that come with them, can and do influence decision-making at school or trust level.
Look at the increase in EBacc uptake in secondary schools. Did this come from Nick Gibb winning the hearts and minds of teachers and parents that his personal vision of a balanced curriculum was a good one? Of course not! It came from putting it at the heart of school performance measures, along with the stick of Ofsted and the carrot of designations like Teaching School Hub, Behaviour Hub or additional MAT growth funding. Similarly, the most egregious and blatant off-rolling was reined in (to an extent) when Ofsted made it a focus of inspection and primary schools embraced systematic synthetic phonics when success in phonics screenings became a key measure.
Many agree that the next government needs to overhaul our current model, with a growing consensus that graded Ofsted judgements and context-free Progress 8 are two big-ticket items that should end up in Room 101. Some form of "balanced scorecard" would surely be a better way to recognise the complexity of the work that schools and trusts do and to report that to the communities we serve.
