School’s out for Harris academy teachers in turnover that ‘should ring alarm bells’

One of England’s largest and most successful academy chains is seeing hundreds of teachers leave its schools each year, to be replaced by new staff, Education Guardian can reveal.

More than 1,000 teachers have left schools in the Harris Federation over the past three academic years, according to a freedom of information request provided to Bridget Chapman, chair of the Anti Academies Alliance.

The data shows 465 teachers leaving Harris schools in 2014-15, 422 in 2013-14 and 375 in 2012-13.

Precise calculations as to what proportion of Harris teachers leave each year are difficult. Cross-checking with Department for Education statistics on the number of teachers in each school suggests the figure could be as high as 30%, though this is disputed by Harris. Latest DfE data records that Harris schools employed 1,116 teachers as of 2013-14.

By contrast, the most recent data on teacher turnover suggests that schools across the country see only 11% of teachers leaving each year. Harris says the figure is higher in London, at 19%, though has not provided the source of that number.

The FOI figures show large numbers leaving particular secondary schools in 2014-15: for example, 34 from Harris Falconwood, in Welling, Kent; and 32 from Harris’s flagship school in Crystal Palace, south London. Some 18 teachers are revealed as having left Harris primary academy Benson, also in south London.

The figures come amid repeated claims to us by sources close to Harris schools that the chain works its largely young staff very hard, although there may be other explanations for many teachers leaving particular schools, such as teachers moving schools within the growing Harris empire.

Chapman says: “In the community schools where I have worked, this kind of turnover would really ring alarm bells.”

Harris itself did not wish to respond further, except to say that its teacher-leaving data included supply staff and student teachers.

Federation trustees look on the Bright side

An academy chain that last year had only two schools paid two of its governing trustees £300,000 between them for their work for the year, it has emerged.

Stockport-based Bright Tribe, run by the multi-millionaire venture capitalist and philanthropist Michael Dwan, also paid another member of staff £70-£80,000 and a further two £60-£70,000.

The figures are set out in annual accounts for the year 2013-14, at which time the chain, which describes itself as “a new breed of academy trust”, had a single secondary school and one primary, with 1,353 pupils between them.

The two trustees include David Hopkins, a former chief adviser on school standards to the Labour government, who is billed as the chain’s director of education and was paid £140,000-£145,000. Joe Smith, at the time the chain’s chief operating officer and also a trustee, was paid £155,000-£160,000.

The chain also forked out £238,745 in payoffs to 12 people in 2013-14, the accounts show, with two individuals receiving £30,000 each.

In the past year, Bright Tribe has taken on a further five schools. In a statement, the Bright Tribe Trust says six of its seven schools had been “failing” when taken over, and all were now in line to improve. “The trust converted its first academy in January 2014. As a result the first year of trading should be viewed as a start-up period.”

It adds: “During this period the trust received £3m of sponsor support,” suggesting, perhaps, that this donation – presumably from Dwan – helped to fund the directors’ salaries.

Free school discovers limits to freedom

Remarkably, these details in Bright Tribe’s accounts (pdf) were brought to our attention by the founders of a free school, Grindon Hall Christian school in Sunderland, which fears the Department for Education is set to impose Bright Tribe on it as a sponsor.

Grindon Hall failed an Ofsted inspection in January. The DfE says it has also been given two financial notices to improve, so action had to be taken. The school’s founders, however, say 350 parents have backed its claim to be given a choice of sponsor.

Readers of this column have become familiar with the concept of “forced academies”. This may be the first case of a “forced free school”.

Two little time, too many Ofsted judgments

Colin Richards, Ofsted’s former head of primary inspections, says school inspection is now “totally and absolutely impossible” because inspectors are instructed, by the handbook that governs their work, to make at least 102 different judgments on a school’s quality in just two days of an inspection. Will Ofsted take up a challenge to explain how this can be done?

“School inspection is impossible under the current inspection regime because of the sheer bewildering number of highly complex and interrelated judgments that inspectors are required to make in a very limited period of time,” Richards writes on the website Schools Improvement.

“No one short of the Almighty (no, not even [chief inspector Sir Michael] Wilshaw!) could manage it.”

Richards has written to Sean Harford, Ofsted’s national director for education, seeking guidance on how inspectors should do their job.

Ofsted tells us that Harford will respond to Richards “in due course”, and that it is “never the intention” that inspectors consider “all of the elements identified in the school inspection handbook”. Richards responds: “That’s not what the handbook says.” We suspect this will run and run.