A team that has “revolutionised” a failing school system in Northumberland could be under threat after its funding was cut.
Council chiefs have been urged to find new cash to keep the county's highly-respected School Improvement Team going strong, after the government announced that it would be axing grant money. Northumberland’s school improvement service was overhauled after a damning Ofsted inspection in 2013, which concluded that there was a “significant and worrying decline” in school standards in the county and an “urgent and pressing need for significant action to establish and embed a clear vision for sustained improvement”.
Councillors were told on Thursday that the seven-strong team had “really taken the bull by the horns” and helped lead a massive turnaround in schools’ fortunes. The number of Northumberland schools rated as inadequate or requiring improvement has dropped from 40 in 2017 to 19 today – a decreasing rate that now makes Northumberland better than the national average, when it had been significantly worse just a few years ago.
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But the service faces an uncertain future, with government cash that provides around half of its income soon to be removed. The Department for Education has already slashed its School Improvement Monitoring & Brokering Grant, which was worth £388,910 in Northumberland, by 50% last month and will end it completely next April.
A report to the council’s Family and Children’s Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Thursday warned that it would be “difficult to make up for the shortfall” and that upping the costs to schools of purchasing the service would put more pressure on their stretched budgets at a time when they are already having to cope with the impact of the pandemic and energy crisis.
Coun Guy Renner-Thompson confirmed that the authority’s cabinet has asked county hall finance chiefs to find money to protect the service, currently used by 118 schools. The Tory-run council’s portfolio holder for children and young people, said: “We are committed to keeping the service going, turbo-charging it.”
Paul Rickeard, director for education for the Dioceses of Durham and Newcastle added that the money should be “locked in for the next few years at least” so that schools could be confident that the improvement team would not disappear. The committee’s chair, Wayne Daley, added that it was “totally short-sighted” of ministers to cut the funding which had helped turn around a Northumberland school system that was considered a “bit of a basket case”.
The Tory councillor called on the authority’s leadership to fully fund the school improvement team until at least the next county elections in 2025, a proposal supported unanimously by the committee. He said: “You can take a very strong message to cabinet, Guy, that this works. By withdrawing the funding the government is being completely short-sighted.”
The government said in January that part of the rationale for axing the funding was to “create greater parity” between council-maintained schools and academies. But Coun Daley insisted that all schools in Northumberland are still “part of the family” and should have access to this support whether they have become academies or not.
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