My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (Ed Balls) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

I would like to update the House on progress on our school improvement strategy for secondary schools and the next steps in ensuring that every child has the chance to achieve their potential and enjoy their time in education.

In June, we launched the National Challenge, backed with new resources of £400 million to transform schools where less than 30 per cent of young people gain five or more higher-level GCSEs, including English and mathematics. I would like to pay tribute to the way in which local authorities and schools have drawn up plans to support sustainable improvements in individual schools. I am pleased to announce that I have today agreed proposals for National Challenge improvement plans in 48 local authorities. Two local authorities, Bristol and Lincolnshire, are already in a position to outline their plans today.

I welcome the way in which many local authorities, in consultation with school heads and governors, are now bringing forward imaginative and ambitious proposals including transformational plans for new academies and National Challenge trusts. These plans also include support for improvements in teaching; for more high-level teaching assistants; for individual help to meet children’s learning needs; and to support stronger middle and senior leadership. They are all designed to meet particular schools’ needs according to their particular context. We are continuing discussions with other authorities about the funding packages necessary to support their National Challenge schools, and I will update the House in due course.

While it is right that we give extra support to those schools with the lowest results and facing the most challenging circumstances, there are other schools where, despite higher GCSE results, pupils do not fulfil their earlier promise and could achieve much more. Such “coasting” schools have not yet done enough to realise their pupils’ potential.

Every child has the right to a good education that stretches them and helps them to realise their full potential. That is why today I am publishing a strategy to help these schools to raise their game and to kick-start improvement in schools that are coasting. This strategy will be supported by funding of up to £40 million to bring about improvements in these schools.

We will be asking local authorities to identify and work with the schools that they consider to be “coasting”. These are schools that have shown too little improvement in attainment and progression over a period of years. They are schools that may be achieving good enough GCSE results to earn a reasonable reputation but whose performance conceals poor progress, sometimes among its more able pupils and sometimes among those who face additional barriers to learning such as SEN. Schools like this need and respond well to challenge, but they have not always had it. They are not performing badly enough to receive an inadequate judgment from Ofsted, or to risk significant numbers of parents choosing to send their children to another school. None the less, they should be achieving better outcomes for all their pupils and providing a more exciting and challenging learning experience.

We know what the very best schools do to make significant improvements. They do not rest on their laurels; they are characterised by a “we can do better than this” attitude. They set ambitious targets for their pupils and monitor their progress, and if pupils fall off trajectory they intervene to put them back on course. This focus on progression is backed up by a personalised approach to teaching and learning and focused feedback to each pupil so that each child knows what they are aiming for and what they have to do to get there.

Every partner will have their role to play in this strategy and we want to focus the attention of parents, governors, heads and local authorities on what they should be expecting their school to achieve. We want to raise expectations of parents and empower them to challenge schools to deliver the very best for their child. We will work with local authorities to identify the schools that could benefit from this programme and engage with parents, head teachers and governing bodies to take the action needed to challenge these schools to improve. If schools do not improve, we will step up the level of challenge and expect local authorities to use their existing intervention powers.

We will be offering these schools the support from other schools and leaders who have the experience of raising performance in their own schools to help them to unlock their potential. Schools in the programme will also have access to additional funding to form trusts and federations should they want to formalise the benefits of collaborative working. Extra funding for schools to draw down additional resource will also be made available, as will training to improve their assessment for learning, tracking pupils’ progress in order to inform future planning and teaching. We will also support schools to provide high-quality after-school study to re-engage those pupils, particularly those with SEN, who have become bored and demotivated. All this will be brokered by school improvement partners, further empowered through additional training and an extra four days per year to drive improvement in these schools.

This strategy is a key part of the 10-year vision in the Children’s Plan to make this country the best place in the world for children and young people to grow up. It is part of our drive to deliver the ambition that we outlined in the Children’s Plan and continued with the National Challenge: the ambition to raise attainment and aspirations, narrow the gap and ensure educational excellence for everyone.