A government consultation on the broadening of its RISE school improvement teams’ remit has been delayed.
RISE targeted support has only been given to “stuck” schools, those rated ‘requires improvement’ following an earlier below-good inspection grade.
But in documents published in September, the government said it would begin “informal engagement” with those deemed to have “low or concerning attainment”.
The DfE added it would also sound out the sector over the autumn on “further options” to use the teams to address poor outcomes.
But this week, the department confirmed the consultation has been pushed back to this term. Details will be “set out in due course”.
Government papers said the informal engagement would involve RISE teams meeting with low-attaining schools to “discuss their attainment trends”.
They would then “agree actions, including how they will work with hubs, higher performing schools and other sources of well-evidenced support, such as regional networks”.
This was described as a “first step”, before the launch of the consultation.
‘Not right’ to wait for Ofsted inspection
“Ofsted should remain the principal trigger for the department’s accountability responses,” the documents added.
“It is, however, important that schools with the very lowest levels of pupil attainment benefit from rapid access to the kind of intensive support the department is providing through the targeted RISE programme.”
In these cases, the DfE said, it did “not think it is right to wait for a change in the school’s Ofsted report card to take action in schools where children are being let down”.
FFT Datalab previously examined the number of schools with Progress 8 scores of less than -0.5 in each of the past three years to understand how many could fall within the scope of the low-attainer push. In all, 277 fell below the threshold.
Of these, 163 (59 per cent) were among the 20 per cent most disadvantaged in the country.
