The last government spent nearly £700 million funding 13 hubs as part of its push for a schools-led system to share best practice but has published independent evaluations on how effective they are for just four.
Nearly a thousand schools – around 1 in 25 nationally – have offered support at some point as part of a government-founded hub.
This ranges from specialising in subjects, like maths or computing hubs, to wider improvement roles, like teaching school hubs, or appointing trailblazers to share best practice in particular areas, such as flexible working ambassadors.
But, despite the rise of the school hub, experts have sounded alarm bells at the lack of independent studies into their effectiveness.
They have also been associated with pushing the previous government’s favoured education methods.
And, with a Labour government taking a fresh approach to reform and under pressure to make cutbacks, there are now questions about their future.
Schools Week investigates…
What makes a hub?
The Department for Education has six subject hubs: maths, English, computing, science, music and languages. Most are contracted out to external organisations to run.
The hubs develop “expertise in teaching a specific subject of discipline”. Generally, they share “best practice”.
But, more widely, there is no agreed definition of what a “hub” is, so we have categorised them as DfE-funded or endorsed education organisations, such as schools or colleges, which support others.
This definition captures other programmes such as the flexible working ambassadors, edtech demonstrators and the original 745 teaching schools – as well as its replacement, the teaching school hubs.
But it excludes music and careers hubs – run by other organisations or councils.
Hubs succeeded national strategies
The 13 hubs under this categorisation have received around £686 million of government funding since their inception, according to a Schools Week freedom of information request.
Hubs were the Conservative government’s successor to “national strategies”, run between 1997 and 2011, where a national team of experts and regional “field forces” worked with councils to improve training and support in schools.
David Thomas, a DfE policy advisor under the previous administration, said: “The government was very big on the school-led system and thought expertise didn’t sit in Whitehall. Schools should support other schools.”
Damian Hinds, former education secretary, explained the approach as “teachers want to learn from teachers… it’s a much more gradual, organic process, where people want to learn and other people want to share”.
Schools in poor areas disadvantaged
So, which schools are the new trailblazers?
There are criteria which schools need to meet to become hubs or lead schools in hubs.
For instance, to become a lead language hub, schools must be rated as ‘good’ or better, and have above average Ebacc entry rates, including more than 75 per cent languages entry.
Analysis by Tom Martell, a trust strategy director who previously worked on hub schemes, found that schools in the most affluent communities are over-represented.
Of lead schools, 323 are in the most affluent areas of the country, and just 183 in the most deprived parts, based on Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index bands.
Among curriculum hubs which serve secondaries, lead schools in the best-off areas were 10 times more likely to be a hub, compared with those in the poorest regions.
Risk of ‘unfairness’
A few buck the trend. Behaviour and attendance hubs, for instance, are more likely to serve disadvantaged communities.
But Martell said: “Not only does this risk unfairness, but it may also mean that we have failed to identify ‘best practice’, which was intended as a key goal for some hubs.”
As of last spring, about 40 schools had led three or more hubs. Six schools were involved in five hubs. Of the 40 schools, nearly all are now academies. Six were grammar schools.
Dr James Coughlan, head of Bishop Challoner Catholic College, in Birmingham, which is involved in six hubs, said the school felt a “moral responsibility” to share expertise.
“I think the more traditional routes to develop and progress as a practitioner typically take you away from the classroom when, actually, what you want to do is stay in the classroom but be [involved] in amazing work that you know is shaping practice nationally.”
Some of the schemes are aimed at schools with poorer intakes. For language hubs, 25 per cent of supported schools must be in an education investment area.
Show me the evidence
Despite their growth, of the 13 hubs identified, seven have had no independent evaluation published.
Two had DfE studies, while four have had external evaluations.
Math hubs, perhaps the best known and most highly regarded scheme, has received £185.4 million since 2014.
A study found they had “impacted” 4.7 million pupils in England. But there has been no wider evaluation of their effectiveness.
Schools Week understands that the DfE did look to outsource an impact and process evaluation of the programme about two years ago, but for unknown reasons it did not continue. But there are other reports which point to the positive impact of maths hubs.
Reducing vulnerability to ‘fads’
The hubs are partnerships of between 35 to 50 organisations in an area, with a lead school.
Ofsted’s 2023 maths subject report said the professional development provided by hubs could reduce leaders’ “vulnerability to quick-fix approaches or unevidenced ‘fads’”.
The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER)’s 2022 small-scale qualitative study looked at schools’ perceptions of the effectiveness of West Yorkshire maths hubs.
It found emerging outcomes for pupils included “deepened understanding and improved application of maths concepts”.
John Westwell, maths hubs lead at the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM), which runs the scheme, said they do “masses” of internal evaluation.
But “one of the problems we’ve increasingly got is that we are so big… so certain models of evaluation are quite tricky to do now.
“We have confidence that what we’re doing absolutely makes a difference, but we’re not naive enough to think it’s a magic bullet either. So, we continue to want to learn about how to most effectively support schools through the change.”
Thomas said they did not launch randomised control trials for maths hubs because “we were training in something that has got a very good evidence base”.
‘We know relatively little’
The English and leadership, equality and diversity hubs both had studies, but these were done by the DfE – their funder.
The £100 million English hubs scheme may have helped schools to weather the impact of the pandemic disruption. But it found no firm “causal” link between schools taking part and improved outcomes in the phonics screening check.
The DfE has spent £106 million on its science CPD contract since 2012-13, which includes hub funding for “science learning partnerships”.
A 2015 evaluation by the Isos Partnership found 82 per cent of subject leaders reported a “high or very high” impact of the CPD on pupils’ learning. It said there was increased engagement in science lessons.
Another 2022 evaluation by the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education (CUREE) found 66 per cent of participant teachers thought it had a positive impact on students.
EdTech demonstrators, research schools and teaching schools (the old model before they became teaching hubs) are the others that had independent studies.
But no external evaluation has been published for attendance, behaviour, computing or the flexible working ambassador schemes.
‘Evaluation needs to be thought of upfront’
An evaluation is underway on behaviour hubs, a £9 million three-year programme, with a final report due next year.
Before the election, the DfE told Schools Week that it was in “the early scoping stages of an evaluation” for its £60 million teaching school hubs programme, first launched in 2020.
But Martell said that, while hubs more generally have been able to scale “promising ideas… rigorous evaluation has never really been embedded within these approaches – meaning that we know relatively little about what has worked.
“Evaluation needs to be thought of upfront when new initiatives are being planned.”
The DfE said that, due to their “distinct aims”, different kinds of hub programmes “take different approaches to evaluating their activities”.
A spokesperson added: “The department’s support for independent evaluation and the use of evidence-based approaches in teaching and learning is exemplified through its re-endowment in 2022 of the Education Endowment Foundation.”
Language hubs evaluated
Evaluators have been appointed for the language hubs programme, launched last year, aimed at improving language teaching and boosting take-up.
Professor Li Wei, from University College London, which runs the hubs, said he would like to see “more interactions, contacts and coordination” between different subject hubs.
“There are lessons learned, we are very new so we can learn good practice from others and what they have achieved and avoid any problems. It would be really good to create a mechanism for us all to get together.”
Martell echoed this, adding: “Another challenge is that there are no processes for sharing practical insights across the different hubs. From my discussions with many different hub leaders and policy colleagues, it is striking how often the same lessons must be learnt again and again.”
The cuts begin…
Hubs have popped up and expanded over the years, but there were also recent cutbacks. The languages hubs programme faced a budget cut before the election, meaning it cannot yet recruit a second round of lead schools.
STEM Learning announced in July that, due to “changes in funding”, the SLPs would close in August.
Policy expert Loic Menzies said the last government’s “completely unstrategic and short-term” approach to hubs has resulted in a “patchy and incoherent network that has yet to provide all teachers with the quality of support they should be entitled to.
“A more coherent and properly resourced network of hubs could form part of the architecture needed to ensure high quality support and development is available in every corner of the country.”
But Hinds said they were “a product of the organic nature about how the thing came about. It wasn’t designed from scratch with an organogram, with one person at the top and all flowing down. It has been much more from the system to the system.”
What will Labour do?
Labour has said little about its views on the previous government’s hub model, but it may provide an indicator soon.
One of its manifesto pledges was for a universal “teacher training entitlement”, which is something that could potentially be delivered through the hub network.
But Jonny Uttley, chief executive officer at The Education Alliance academy trust, said: “Given the changing priorities and lack of public funding, which means government has to look at repurposing money, this is an area that Labour should look at.”
Mark Boylan, professor of education at Sheffield Hallam University, suggested the government could look at hubs on a case-by-case basis.
“There was a drive to get improved phonics teaching across all primary schools under the English hubs, but is that needed anymore?
“Whereas maths, we’ve got a significant teacher supply problem and maths hubs have only reached about 50 per cent of schools so far, suggesting they are still needed.
“So it’s asking – is it still meeting the need?”
Meanwhile Dame Alison Peacock, Chartered College of Teaching chief executive, warned against “throwing the baby out with the bathwater and losing expertise”.
She said they were a “great model, as long as it doesn’t become too controlled from the centre. [But] if there’s refreshing of some of that [model] going forward, that would be no bad thing.”
Thomas said hubs have “succeeded because committed teachers and leaders have made them do so. I hope we continue to help them grow their impact in years to come.”
