Retirement of Mr Patrick Leeson as head of Kent Education & Children's Services Directorate

Mr Leeson was appointed to Kent in 2011, from his previous role as Director, Development, Education and Care for OFSTED, bringing experience that has been central to his work here. Before that he was Director of Learning and Children's Services at the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and from these two positions brought an outstanding skills range for his leadership of education in Kent County Council, the largest Local Authority in the country. He is I think widely acknowledged to be by some way the best of at least the four most recent Kent Chief Education Officers. 

In an interview shortly after his appointment, he said: " My main job is to ensure that standards are good and children get better outcomes. Standards are good in secondary schools and most are either good or outstanding, which is great. But there are not enough good or outstanding primary schools. That's a key issue". An article I wrote at the time, underlines the depth of the then problem with Kent primary schools achieving just 42% Good or Outstanding OFSTED outcomes in the previous 18 months, compared with a national figure of 52%. In the six years post, his personal commitment to this task and his achievement in meeting it have been outstanding, with Kent primary schools achieving 85% Good or Outstanding schools for inspections in 2016-17, compared to a national average of 78% over the same period, whilst secondary schools, both selective and non-selective, have retained their strong position, with 80% of non-selective schools assessed as ‘Good’, almost equaling the national average for all schools of 82%. Unfortunately, because of a misreading of the data, presumably by his staff, Mr Leeson reports this as: 'of the 51 schools inspected in the last school year 61% were judged to be good or outstanding, and 37% were rated as requiring improvement. This rate was lower than the previous year when 72% were judged to be good or better', with a refusal by KCC to correct the error to the correct, much better outcome I have identified.

He has had to overcome enormous obstacles, primarily the rapid expansion of academies in Kent, to a total of 84% of all secondary schools, and 33% of primaries, who have chosen or been forced to change status for a variety of reasons. These include many stronger schools who made the move because they believe they are best able to manage their own affairs, or chased the money, or because they were dissatisfied with the service offered by KCC. Others have been forced to become academies because of their poor standards whilst under KCC control, including many of the 58% who Required Improvement or were found Inadequate by OFSTED from 2011 onward. As a result KCC has lost any control of a large swathe of the education sector, and is only able to operate by influence or persuasion with those academies that are willing to co-operate.

A powerful tool in his armoury has been the setting up of the Kent Association of Headteachers bringing all heads who wished to be involved together, to inform policy amongst other roles. Apart from an initial short-term disastrous leader, he has been extremely fortunate or alternatively skilled in recruiting the next two chairs who have presided over the organisation, Christine Gilbert CBE, after retiring as Head of OFSTED, followed by Pam Jones, OBE, an outstanding Executive Headteacher of the excellent Cedar Federation of schools, with a strong personal commitment to KCC.

We have also seen much greater openness under Mr Leeson’s leadership, although some KCC officers still too often ‘know best’ when hiding unhelpful matters, not yet having come to terms with the fact that the balance of power has changed.  

It is no secret that Mr Leeson and a number of his senior officers dislike me, primarily I believe because of my record in exposing aspects of KCC mismanagement that have led to damage to children’s education and teachers’ careers. Probably the two most public examples of this are the Lilac Sky and Furness School scandal and the ‘disappearing heads’ scandal, both described extensively elsewhere on this site.