Types of academy order
There are, broadly speaking, 2 routes to become an academy. One is by applying, the other is through intervention.
There is a legal document known as an academy order which is used as part of the process of becoming an academy. In simple terms, once that has been issued the conversion can proceed.
For conversions that happen due to intervention following an "Inadequate" rating from Ofsted, a directive academy order (DAO) is issued. This is set out in the Academies Act 2010.
Getting projects with directive academy orders into Prepare
The team has previously done work to bring due to intervention conversions into Prepare.
Recording when directive academy orders are revoked
While the directive academy order compels the school to convert, it can be revoked in exceptional circumstances.
Reasons it may be revoked include:
- new inspection rates the school Good or Outstanding
- safeguarding concerns resolved
- school closure
Revocation can only be granted by a minister
The decision to revoke a directive academy order can only be taken by a minister. That decision effectively ends that version of the conversion project.
Depending on the circumstances, a school may decide to continue with the conversion or they may decide to remain with the local authority.
Why we record this decision
When the decision to revoke a DAO is taken, our systems need to be able to record that it happened.
There are several reasons for this:
- the school may no longer convert at all
- the school may still want to convert, but the funding it is eligible for may change
- grant funding teams need to be aware of what funds to prepare and when
- caseworkers and delivery officers need to know which projects they no longer need to work on
- data about these projects needs to be removed from or changed in data exports
- there needs to be an auditable account of the decision to ensure due process was followed
How we designed the record a revocation journey in Prepare
In Prepare, users record decisions about projects in a tab that is separate to the project's task list.
Those decisions are about whether a project is approved or not by the advisory board and regional director, or somebody with delegated decision-making authority.
These are significant checkpoints during the lifetime of a project.
Our research findings
You can read our research findings to understand what informed out design decisions.
Where to start the journey
Our thinking was that revoking a DAO felt similarly significant to an advisory board's decision. Arguably even more so as it puts an immediate stop the project and could end the school's conversion entirely.
It's a decision made by a minister. Other decisions made by ministers could already be captured through the existing record a decision journey.
For that reason, and due to the requirement to deliver this functionality quickly in order to help the department move off the legacy technology we are replacing, we added revoking a DAO there.
How users record the decision to revoke the DAO
Users navigate to the "Decision" tab on the project.
Once there they can choose to record the decision to revoke the DAO.
To record the decision, they must:
- confirm that the decision has been made by the minister
- confirm legal letters notifying the school of the decision have been sent and saved
- select the reasons for the revocation and provide details
- enter the name of the minister who made the decision
- enter the date the decision was taken
Before they start
We took inspiration from the start using a service pattern to help users make sure they had all the information they needed before beginning the journey.
Confirm the necessary steps have been taken first
They then had to confirm the decision had been made by the minister and relevant letters sent to the school.
If any of those check boxes are not ticked, then a notification banner is presented to the user to emphasise that this must be done first.
Choosing the reason
Users select the reason from a list of options.
Once a reason is selected, a free text field appears underneath that check box.
This enables the user to enter a detailed explanation of the decision.
This information is used by teams who monitor DAO conversion projects and report on them.
This helps DfE and the government to understand if there are recurring problems with these projects and anything that can be done to help a school or DfE to improve.
Entering the decision maker's information
We know that only a minister can make this decision, so we are able to assign that role without any user input.
When recording other types of decisions, users have a list of possibly decision maker roles to choose from. Then they must enter a name.
For DAO revocations, all the user needs to do is enter the minister's name.
Entering and checking the remaining details
After that, users must enter the date the decision was made.
At the end of the journey, users are shown a check your answers page. This gives them a chance to review the information they've entered before they record it.
What we'll do next
These changes are live and in use. As ever, we'll continue to monitor them, gather feedback from users and learn if and how we can improve the process.
September 2024 update: Adding a new reason for revocation
Following the July 2024 general election, the government changed. With that comes changes in approach to many policies.
In September 2024, the new government made the decision to revoke many directive academy orders that had been issued by the previous government.
This was for cases where rather than being rated "Inadequate" by Ofsted, a school had received 2 "Requires Improvement" ratings.
The new government wanted to take a different approach to helping schools in that situation.
This trigger for revocation did not fit in to the current list of reasons we had in our systems.
Working with colleagues in policy teams we added another reason to cover this, "Change to government policy".