Henry Stewart published this useful background article on the Education and Adoption Bill yesterday before the House of Commons meeting on the Bill organised by the Anti academies Alliance. First published by Local schools Network.
Today
is the second reading of Nicky Morgan’s Education and Adoption Bill. The main
purpose is to speed up the conversion to academy status of “inadequate” and “coasting”
schools, It will force local authorities and governing bodies to implement an
academy order, whether or not they feel it is in the best interest of the
children.
And
the evidence increasingly suggests it is not in the best interest of those
children. The education select committee, chaired by Graham Stuart of the
Conservatives, carried out a thorough review of academies and free schools
and found no such evidence. “Academisation is not always successful nor is it
the only proven alternative for a struggling school,”
Announcing
the bill, the Secretary of State claimed to have “education experts who know
exactly what they have to do to make a failing school outstanding.” I have
submitted a Freedom of Information request to ask how many schools rated “Inadequate”
by Ofsted have been converted and how many of these have since become
Outstanding. I await the response with interest.
A
study of the current Ofsted listing of the most recent inspections
for all secondary schools suggests she is unlikely to find many. For
secondaries the number of schools going from Inadequate last time to
Outstanding this time is precisely zero. For primaries there are eight schools
listed as making that remarkable transition but none are academies. All are
local authority or voluntary aided schools (“maintained schools”).
The
Ofsted list, which shows the current and previous inspection, shows that a
secondary school is far more likely to improve its Ofsted rating if it is not a
sponsored academy. With academies that have had two Ofsted inspections since
conversion (as the report does not list a school’s rating pre-conversion) we
find:
Sponsored
academies twice as likely to stay Inadequate
For
secondary schools previously rated as inadequate, sponsored academies are twice
as likely (18% v 9%) to stay inadequate as maintained schools.
Non-academies are over three times more likely (27% v 6%) to move from
Inadequate to Good or Outstanding than sponsored academies.
Sponsored
academies twice as likely to fall from RI to Inadequate
For
those previously rated “Requires Improvement” they are more than twice as
likely (20% v 8%) to fall to Inadequate if they are a Sponsored academy
Non-academies
three times as likely to move from Good to Outstanding
For
secondary schools previously rated Good, they are almost four times as likely
(19% v 5%) to fall to Inadequate if they are Sponsored academies. At the same
time they are more than three times as likely to become Outstanding
from Good (16% v 5%) if they are a maintained school as opposed to
a Sponsored academy
These
dramatic differences are only true of sponsored academies, generally schools
that were “underperforming” and sponsored as an academy by another school or by
an academy chain. “Converter academies”, where a school is generally Good or
Outstanding and chooses to convert, perform as well as maintained schools.
This
analysis appears to show that conversion of a school that is rated Inadequate
is likely to slow its improvement. Indeed, rather than helping it, becoming a
sponsored academy is more likely to lead to a school falling back to being
Inadequate and less likely to become Good or Outstanding.
There
is no data to back up the Secretary of State’s claims. The Bill is very clearly
based on ideology not evidence. As the Education Select committee also stated,
“the government should stop exaggerating the success of academies”. It is
advice that Nicky Morgan would do well to take.
Note:
This analysis only includes secondary schools. The reason is that, to qualify,
a sponsored academy must have had two Ofsted inspections since conversion.
While this is true of 211 sponsored academy secondary schools, it is only true
of 2 sponsored academy primary schools.
