School Accountability and Intervention

Monday 3rd February 2025 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Education (Bridget Phillipson)]

I am today launching a 12-week consultation on proposals to reform school accountability and announcing the next steps on the Government’s manifesto commitment to deliver regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) teams. Ofsted has also published its consultation on inspection reform and report cards today.

The proposals in these consultations are essential for delivering high and rising standards for every child, and to the Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity by working to ensure that every family, no matter where they live, can be confident of sending their child to a good local school.

In September 2024, my Department announced we would work on delivering a better accountability system that sets clear expectations, encourages improvement, and spreads excellence to drive high and rising standards for every child. Ofsted’s new report cards will raise the bar on what we expect from schools while providing a more complete picture of school performance. They will provide greater clarity on a school’s strengths and areas for improvement for the benefit of parents and school staff and encourage schools to work together to spread success. In contrast, single headline grades were low information for parents and high stakes for schools which is why we took swift action to remove them. They were too vague and left too many struggling schools without the support they needed to improve. The publication of these consultations is the next major step in delivering upon the Government’s manifesto commitments on school accountability, inspection, and improvement.

My Department is consulting on:

Our approach to improving school accountability, and some principles to guide our ongoing work in this area;

the Department’s future vision for implementation of school profiles—a new digital service which would provide more complete information about schools for parents. It includes proposals for bringing together Ofsted’s report cards with a range of up-to-date performance information. The consultation seeks views on if there is other information about the nature and quality of provision that should be included; and

new arrangements for intervention in maintained schools and academies including proposals for how the Department will identify schools for mandatory targeted RISE interventions, and the circumstances where we would change the organisation that governs a school. The plans, subject to consultation, will entail the Department mandating intervention in approximately twice as many schools per year. There will also be a universal RISE support service for all schools to support ongoing improvement across the school system.

Alongside launching the consultation, we have today announced the initial school eligibility criteria we will use for targeted RISE interventions starting this month. We are making available over £20 million for targeted RISE interventions over the next 15 months.

We are also announcing today that supporting all schools to improve pupil attendance will be the first national priority for the universal RISE support service.

The previous Government’s approach to improving schools was blunt and too slow. We will structurally intervene swiftly with schools with the most serious issues but will also broaden our approach to tackling failure, providing bespoke, intensive and timely intervention, to the different challenges identified in Ofsted report cards. Our approach will additionally help to spread best practice and foster a self-improving school system which our new RISE teams will act as a catalyst to help drive.

Copies of the Department for Education consultation and the Ofsted consultation will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.

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