West Yorkshire’s new schools boss in academy call

Paul Smith is one of eight regional school commissioners (RSCs) who have been appointed to oversee local decision-making over both the opening and monitoring of academies and free schools. Under the new system, Yorkshire has been split into three regions. Mr Smith is responsible for a “region” which covers both Lancashire and West Yorkshire.

He told The Yorkshire Post that he wanted to ensure all academies in the county were good or better, and that he has had held talks with local councils about how more strong performing academy sponsors could be brought in to or found from within West Yorkshire. Mr Smith said the creation of an area which combined Lancashire and Yorkshire could benefit schools on both sides of the Pennines.

He highlighted the success of the Greater Manchester Challenge, a three-year programme which has been credited with a continuing rise in standards as an example of “school-to-school improvement” which Yorkshire could learn from. He also praised the work of academy sponsors from West Yorkshire such as Outwood – which developed from Outwood Grange Academy in Wakefield and Dixons, a growing chain which runs schools in Bradford, as examples of success.

Mr Smith said he took up the RSC post because he wanted to help schools collaborate to raise standards and said he believed the way to do this was through “multi academy trusts”.

The Department for Education (DfE) has created RSCs this year. Academies and free schools are run autonomously with greater freedoms over curriculum, timetable and budgets. The DfE has encouraged outstanding and good schools to convert to academies and also converted underperforming schools into academies – with leadership being provided by outside sponsor.

However, there have been concerns that the DfE cannot effectively monitor more than 4,000 academies from Whitehall.

Now regional RSCS are in place to provide local decision making over academy conversions and to holding existing academies to account.

Mr Smith said it was a concern that Yorkshire has fewer pupils achieving five good GCSEs including English and maths than other regions of the country and said he wanted parents to able to choose from a range of good schools.

He called for more strong performing schools to be involved in multi academy trusts – organisations which sponsor more than one school – in West Yorkshire. He said: “My message would be that if you are a stand alone academy which is good or outstanding then you should look to join an existing multi academy trust (MAT) or set up your own trust to take forward what you have done very successfully to other schools.”

Yorkshire is covered by three RSCs. Mr Smith is responsible for Lancashire and West Yorkshire. Janet Renou, the former head of Skipton Girls’, is RSC for the the North, (North Yorkshire, the North-East and Cumbria) and Jenny Bexon-Smith is RSC for the Humber and the East Midlands – an area covering South Yorkshire, Hull, the East Riding, York and parts of the Midlands.