Project page: England

England has seen a number of changes over the last couple of years with the aim of establishing a ‘self-improving education system’. Changes include the establishment of teaching schools, national leaders of education, the academisation of schools and increasing numbers and sizes of aggregations of schools in federations and chains, and school improvement partnerships in England. This has raised the profile of collaboration and networking as key drivers for school improvement and issues questions about the role of Inspectorates of Education, Regional Schools Commissioners and Local Education Authorities and how they should change their methods to enable and enhance school to school evaluation and improvement. Our project aims to enhance our understanding of monitoring and inspection methods that are effective in supporting such school to school evaluation and improvement, and specifically:

  • What is the role of HMI, Ofsted and the Regional Schools Commissioners in a self-improving education system?
  • How can inspections and monitoring (such as focused inspections of MATs) be effective in enhancing school-to-school (networked) improvement and evaluation?
  • How can they effectively adapt to improvement and evaluation activities in the trust

The study will be coordinated by the Institute of Education (IOE) and will be implemented between 1 September 2014 and 1 September 2017.

For further information click here and watch these videos.

Preliminary findings from a case study of external accountability of a Multi-Academy Trust

This presentation includes preliminary findings of a case study in which we explored the impact of external accountability on four mechanisms of network-internal quality control and the properties of (mandated) interorganisational networks (governance, size and growth). We employed an explorative case study approach of the external accountability of a newly established educational network (Multi-Academy Trust) and how schools and the Trust are held accountable by the English Inspectorate of Education, Ofsted, and the Department of Education (through Regional Schools Commissioners; RSCs).

Research instruments to study external accountability of Multi-Academy Trusts

The folder below contains the workplan of the case study research and the instruments used to collect data in England.

download Download the case study workplan
download Download the instruments (zip-file)