Need to know: How struggling schools get support

The government is planning to scrap two key policies that have terrified headteachers up and down the country for years.It is all part of efforts by the DfE to reform the way that schools are held to account, and shift to a system that is geared to helping schools improve, rather than punishing them for failing.Its consultation on the future of the floor and coasting standards, and what happens if Ofsted says a school ‘requires improvement’, closes today.Here is what you need to know: Currently, there are two key school performance measures that serve this purpose. They are the floor and coasting standards, and are based purely on data at key stage 2 and key stage 4.The floor standard has been around for years, while the coasting standard was introduced more recently by Nicky Morgan. If a school’s results fall below these thresholds, the DfE will offer them some support to improve. The proposal is to scrap both of these numerical thresholds.In their place, the government wants to use Ofsted’s ‘requires improvement’ judgement – which should be based on a more rounded picture of a school than just its data – as the trigger. For decades, the DfE has had what some people have seen as a punitive approach to holding schools to account: set a data threshold and name-and-shame schools that don’t meet it, with the threat of changing their leaders or converting them into an academy.