§ Mr. ChaytorTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what criteria he will use to assess the levels of sustained improvement to be achieved in order to trigger payments under his new proposals for school bonus payments. [67675]
§ Ms Estelle MorrisThe School Performance Award Scheme will reward annually the top proportion of schools which demonstrate excellent performance or significantly improve. We propose to base decisions on which schools to reward under the excellence strand on the outcomes of academic assessments in the previous academic year. Under the improvement, strand awards would be based on sustained improvement against the same indicators. We intend to make different arrangements for schools such as special schools, focusing on achievements against individualised targets, and for schools coming out of special measures more quickly than predicted.
Our detailed proposals for the School Performance Award Scheme will be set out in the Technical Consultation Document on Pay and Performance Management, to be published very shortly. We will take final decisions on the criteria to be employed for awards under the scheme in the light of responses to this consultation.