Are Academies making a (positive) difference?

Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, gave a speech on 22 January 2015 claiming that academies were central to the improvements in the education system. A report issued by an Education Select Committee today calls this into question.

What are academies?

Academies are a hybrid of maintained and independent schools. Academies receive funding directly from the Department for Education. This means that they are still required to comply with education law, but they are entirely independent from the local authority that they sit in.

There are two types of academy:

• Sponsored Academies – This was the ‘original’ form of academy. They are usually set up to replace under-performing schools with the aim of improving educational standards. The ‘Sponsor’ is responsible for setting up a Governing Body, placing a head teacher and setting up a Trust to fund the academy.
• Converter Academies – These are successful schools that have decided to convert to academy status. Before a school can be a ‘converter academy’ it must obtain a good or outstanding Ofsted rating. These are the newer form of academy introduced from 2010.

The report looks at both of types of academy in turn but focuses on sponsored academies because insufficient data has been obtained about converter academies. This is because converter academies have not existed long enough for reliable information to be obtained.

Throughout this piece, and the report, the phrase “improvements” means an improvement in the qualifications obtained by children, and assessed quality of education at the school.

Sponsored academies

The report accepts that sponsored academies had a very low starting point but concludes that sponsored academies are improving at a rate faster than other schools.

Sponsored academies tend to be in disadvantaged areas. Over half of sponsored academies are in such areas, whereas only 10% of the newer converter academies are in disadvantaged areas.

In terms of Ofsted rankings, sponsored academies move up in rankings quicker than their maintained school equivalents.

Converter academies

The report sets out that it will be four to five years before any reliable information is obtained about converter academies.

The performance of children in converter academies is substantially ‘better’ than at sponsored academies. This is to be expected given that these form of academies tend to be much ‘better’ schools to start with.

Converter academies cater for significantly less children from disadvantaged background than either sponsored academies or other maintained schools.

Excluding children with special educational needs

The report finds that sponsored academies have made substantial progress. One reason for this may be due to excluding children with challenging special educational needs.

During 2007 – 2014 exclusion rates, particularly permanent exclusion rates, were much higher from academies, reported here. The most recent Department for Education report found that (sponsored) academies were twice as likely to issue a permanent exclusion. In addition to this, children with special educational needs are eight times as likely to be issued with a permanent exclusion.

From personal experience, when I receive instructions about a child with special educational needs being excluded the school involved is likely to be an academy.

There is a substantial ‘cross over’ between the increased likelihood of exclusions from academies and the increased likelihood of exclusion of a child with special educational needs. This could suggest that at least some of the improvement in the academies is down to excluding children with challenging special educational needs.

Admitting children with special educational needs

Another potential reason for the improvements may be academies ability to prevent children with special educational needs being admitted.

Under the Education Act 1996, maintained schools were required to admit a child as soon as the school was named in a child’s Statement of Special Educational Needs. However, because academies have the ‘hybrid’ status, they were able to refuse admission, even if the local authority had named the academy in the child’s Statement of Special Educational Needs. This could only be overturned by the intervention of the Secretary of State for Education.

The process of seeking Secretary of State intervention could take so long that many parents, in my experience, have opted for an alternative placement simply to get their child into school.

The Children and Families Act 2014 has changed this so that if an academy is named in an Education, Health and Care Plan they must admit the child. However, this will not have complete effect until all Statements are removed which will not be until April 2018.

The fact that academies can be required to admit a child with an Education, Health and Care Plan may well have the following effects:

• Exclusions from academies may increase;
• Those exclusions are increasingly likely to feature children with an Education, Health and Care Plan; and/or
• Improvements in academies may falter.

Attendance at special schools

It is increasingly common for children with special educational needs to be placed in a special school. In 2010, 38% of pupils with special educational needs were placed in special school. In 2014 this has risen to 41%. All other types of maintained school saw a decrease in the number of children with special educational needs.

The ability of academies to manage the admission of children with a Statement, along with the high level of exclusions, may suggest that pupils formally at a sponsored academy are being moved to special schools.

Conclusions

The conclusions of the Education Select Committee are that it is far too simplistic to find that the academy model is improving education and that there is no evidence that academies are a positive force of change or “whether academies raise standards … for disadvantaged children”.

What I have said above is not to suggest that all academies are using tactics of removing challenging pupils to appear to be improving quicker than maintained schools. However, the fact that academies have removed more pupils, and are able to restrict which pupils they take in, must be at least part of the reason for the improvements seen.

Unless and until the improvement figures are moderated to take into account exclusion, and restricted admission, of children with special educational needs, no clear conclusion about the benefits of academies can be reached.