School Accountability Reform Consultation: Response
(2 days, 2 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for Education (Bridget Phillipson)
Today I am announcing the Government’s response to their consultation on school accountability reform. It is vital we have a better accountability system that sets clear expectations, facilitates improvement and spreads excellence to drive high and rising standards for every child throughout each phase of their education. I would like to thank all who responded to the consultation—the Government value the feedback.
The consultation received 870 responses and officials met with stakeholders including groups representing teachers, school leaders, governors and local authorities, and with parents to discuss the proposals. It ran in parallel to Ofsted’s consultation on education inspection reform and report cards. Ofsted is publishing its response today also.
My Department consulted on:
our approach to improving school accountability, and the principles guiding our work, so there is a shared understanding of what drives our approach;
the Department’s future vision for school profiles—an accessible digital service providing information about schools, supporting parental choice and collaboration between schools; and
new arrangements for intervention in maintained schools and academies, including when academisation to change the governance of a school is needed to drive high and rising standards for every child.
The consultation demonstrated strong support for our accountability principles. In response to feedback, we have further strengthened our commitment to inclusion, ensuring that our reforms support all children and young people, regardless of circumstances. This supports the Government’s opportunity mission to break the link between background and success. Ofsted will also introduce inclusion as a stand-alone evaluation area in its renewed inspection framework, reinforcing its importance across the system.
There was also strong support for school profiles, with 77% of respondents agreeing that they should be the central source for up-to-date information on school performance. This academic year, we will develop two new digital services to support parents and schools. The first is school profiles, giving parents a more rounded picture by bringing useful information about schools together in one place and helping them to make informed decisions about their children’s education. The second is a digital school improvement service that will help schools compare their performance with other schools and support collaboration and sharing of best practice.
Subject to the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, structural intervention through issuing of academy orders will continue to be the default approach for schools in special measures, because no child should be left in a school that does not have the capacity to improve. For those schools that Ofsted judges do have capacity to improve, from September 2026 our regional improvement for standards and excellence—RISE— teams will get in quickly, working with the responsible body to begin implementing interventions to drive rapid and sustainable improvements. If, for whatever reason, a school in this position has not improved sufficiently within 18 months, we will normally issue an academy order to ensure it gets the leadership and support it needs. We will also expand RISE support to those schools with very low levels of pupil attainment with a further consultation on this. Using a combination of structural and RISE mandatory interventions we will drive improvement activity with, on average, around twice as many mandatory interventions as were covered in the two years prior to the policy change.
We welcome Sinéad Mc Brearty’s independent report on the workload and wellbeing implications of the inspection reforms, which Ofsted commissioned, and which it has published today. We are committed to ensuring, in line with our principles, that our reforms take into account the context in which schools and providers operate, and the impact of our arrangements on workload and the wellbeing of leaders, teachers and staff.
The Department’s reforms have been designed to work alongside Ofsted’s renewed education inspection framework and new report cards, the details of which have been published today as part of its consultation response.
Ofsted’s new approach completes the move away from oversimplistic single headline grades to providing parents and staff with a much clearer, much broader picture of how schools are performing—that is what report cards will provide. The renewed framework strengthens accountability and will help to drive high and rising standards. This includes a stronger focus on achievement, attendance, inclusion and how the needs of disadvantaged and vulnerable children and young people are being met. Enhanced monitoring will mean a swifter return from inspectors to check that progress is being made where it is needed.
Taken together, the measures announced by the Department and Ofsted today give parents the clear and reliable information they need to make informed choices about their child’s education. And they will give school leaders, staff and responsible bodies the necessary information and support to help all schools move forward towards excellence.
Copies of the Department for Education’s and Ofsted’s consultation responses will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.
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NHS Performance Data Tool and NHS Trust League Tables
(2 days, 2 hours ago)
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The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
I am updating the House about the publication of a data tool and league tables that make NHS performance under the NHS oversight framework open and accessible. This delivers a commitment in the “10 year health plan for England: fit for the future” to publish new league tables and as part of our plan for change, ensuring our investment in the NHS delivers meaningful outcomes, greater efficiency, and real value for patients.
At last year’s NHS providers conference, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced league tables as part of our plan to stop rewarding failure and to create a better and more transparent health service. We know that this is more important than ever, and the public expect better care and value following the record investment in the NHS made by this Government. This is why today NHS England has published these league tables, along with a data tool that gives a high-level view of the performance of NHS trusts. With this, the public will be able to see how their local NHS organisations are performing, including data on key areas such as urgent and emergency care, ambulances and electives—data that MPs and peers can also draw upon. Everyone can now see for themselves how their local services are doing and better hold their local NHS organisations to account.
The top trusts will be rewarded for their performance with greater autonomy, including the ability to reinvest surplus budgets into frontline improvements, such as diagnostic equipment and hospital repairs. We are also introducing a new wave of foundation trusts, which will give the best-performing trusts more freedom to shape services around local needs.
Meanwhile, trusts facing the greatest challenges will receive enhanced support to drive improvement, with senior leaders held accountable through performance-linked pay. The best NHS leaders will be offered high pay to take on the toughest jobs, sending them into challenged services and turning them around.
This is not a “name and shame” exercise; we know that there is amazing work carried out every day in every NHS organisation, and the information we are releasing will shine a light on the achievements of the frontline and back-office staff who push hard every day to improve the lives of everyone in this country. We are publishing these tables to drive high-level performance changes and, where needed, to inform difficult conversations about organisational performance, to inspire improvement and deliver a better NHS for all. We are also improving the fundamentals of oversight through the NHS oversight framework, which NHS England published on 26 June. It sets out a revised transparent approach to the oversight of integrated care boards and trusts following feedback from these organisations and wider system partners. The streamlined set of metrics within the new framework will enable systems and providers to focus on the recovery that we know the NHS needs, while maintaining quality, safety and patient experience. Trusts will be placed into one of four segments based on their performance against these metrics. The framework explains how NHS England will use the segmentation of providers to inform incentives and consequences for performance, and support improvement.
This is a transitional year for ICBs, as they transform in line with NHS England’s model ICB blueprint to focus on strategic commissioning and implement plans to meet the running cost reductions the Government require. We have decided, therefore, that they will not be scored, segmented or ranked this year. NHS England will still conduct annual assessments of ICBs to review how well each is performing its statutory duties, and will introduce ranking in the next performance year, 2026-27.
The league tables, data tool and underpinning framework are an important first step in both the recovery and the transformation of our health service in line with the 10-year plan. We will continue to refine our approach to both the league tables and the data tool in the light of feedback from the NHS, experts, and the public. They will make what the NHS is good at—and what it needs to improve—more visible to the public, so that they can hold us to account for its successes and failures.
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Integrated Care Boards: Running Costs and Boundary Alignment with Strategic Authorities
(2 days, 2 hours ago)
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The Minister for Secondary Care (Karin Smyth)
Today I am updating the House on progress towards reducing the running costs of integrated care boards and the Government’s ambition to align the boundaries of integrated care boards and strategic authorities where feasible.
We have committed to reducing the running costs of ICBs and to redirect this funding to frontline services. To deliver this, our “10 Year Health Plan” sets out that ICBs must focus on their role as strategic commissioners, ensuring the best possible value in securing local services that improve population health and reduce inequalities.
In directing ICBs to focus on strategic commissioning, we are reducing duplication of functions that are undertaken by other NHS organisations such as performance management and assurance, freeing up vital resources.
To deliver a reduction in running costs in this financial year, a number of ICBs will cluster together to share leadership and functions; clustering ICBs remain legally separate organisations with their own financial allocations. It will mean that during this financial year the number of ICB senior leadership teams will go from 42 to 26.
In the longer term, there will be fewer, larger ICBs enabling them to harness a shared budget of sufficient size to improve efficiency and reduce running costs. Our ambition is for these ICBs to be coterminous with one or more strategic authorities wherever feasible, a commitment made in the “English Devolution White Paper” and reaffirmed in our “10 Year Health Plan”.
Aligning public service boundaries facilitates service integration, harnesses the opportunities of strategic planning between the NHS and strategic authorities, and supports delivery of a “health in all policies” approach.
I am today announcing the first of these new ICB footprints. These will come into effect on 1 April 2026 and are:
Norfolk and Suffolk ICB
Essex ICB
Hampshire and the Isle of Wight ICB
Surrey and Sussex ICB
North West and North Central London ICB
Thames Valley ICB
Central East ICB (Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Luton, Milton Keynes, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough).
In the case of Thames Valley ICB and Central East ICB, we are progressing with these new ICB footprints on the understanding that these may be reviewed in future to allow for alignment with any future strategic authorities, and newly established unitary authorities resulting from local government reorganisation.
Next summer, as local government reform progresses, we plan to decide further ICB mergers and boundary changes to come into effect on 1 April 2027.
The Department of Health and Social Care, alongside NHS England and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, will continue to work closely together, and with ICBs and their local partners, to ensure future changes to ICB footprints achieve the best outcomes for patients and citizens. ICB leaders will continue to engage with all local partners, including Members of this House, on the further development of plans, as we stride towards delivering the ambitions set out in our “10 Year Health Plan”.
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