The Department for Education has revealed the that are receiving targeted support from its new Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) advisers.
The published list includes the 32 initial schools in the first cohort for RISE support - three of which are no longer deemed to be stuck after their latest Ofsted inspection - and 186 schools that are receiving support from the summer term onwards.
Of these 215 stuck schools that will be the first to receive RISE support, 177 are academies, university technical colleges or free schools. The rest are community, foundation or voluntary-aided/controlled schools.
Within that 177, 70 are mainstream converter academy schools and 89 are mainstream sponsored academies.
North West receiving most support
The North West has the most schools receiving support at 31, followed by the South East at 30.
Only seven schools in London are receiving targeted support from a RISE adviser in these first spring and summer cohorts.
The list includes 16 schools in the North East, 22 in Yorkshire and the Humber, 29 in the West Midlands, 25 in the South West, 28 in the East of England and 27 in the East Midlands.
At least half of the stuck schools receiving support are secondaries (112), while 90 are primaries. Nine are special schools, two are pupil referral units and one does not have a phase listed.
The DfE defines schools as stuck if they were rated as “requires improvement” at their most recent graded Ofsted inspection and were previously less than “good”.
The three schools that were initially part of the programme in the first wave of 32 schools that have now been removed after a positive Ofsted inspection are Ormiston Denes Academy, Meadowside School and Glebefields Primary School.
Ofsted no longer gives schools an overall, single-word effectiveness grade, but each of these schools was rated as being “good” in all sub-judgement categories.
RISE scheme expansion
The DfE announced the expansion of the RISE scheme last week with the appointment of 45 new advisers. In both the first and second waves of appointments, the majority of advisers have come from academy backgrounds.
Announcing the next phase, the DfE said dozens of schools on the list of stuck schools in need of support have been in this situation for more than six years, and 42 of them for more than 11 years.
However, leaders have raised concerns about the transparency of the programme so far. Trust leaders told Tes they had concerns around the transparency of how support is procured for the stuck schools, with one raising that this has yet to be set out by the DfE.
So far, the DfE has named three multi-academy trusts that are among those commissioned to draw up support plans for stuck schools in the programme.
Improvement plans
The DfE has previously said it expects the vast majority of the full list of around 400 eligible stuck schools to have improvement plans in place by March 2026.
A Tes investigation revealed that more than half of those 400 schools have either moved trusts or improved their Ofsted grade between their past two inspections.
Leaders warned that sending RISE advisers into these schools could lead to duplication if they were already receiving support from a new responsible body.
RISE advisers will work with around 400 stuck schools in total - the initial announcement was 600, but around 200 of these have had a structural intervention since their most recent inspection and so are not eligible for RISE support.
The DfE has announced a new operational stakeholder group for RISE teams, which it said it will provide more detail on soon. A three-year to evaluate the programme.
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