Schools revolution

Pupils at Downhills Primary School speak more than 40 languages. Children at Key Stage 2 are expected to read for 10 minutes a day and maths homework is given out once a week. The school, in Tottenham, north London, was given notice to improve in January last year. When Ofsted inspectors visited nine months later, they were satisfied with the pace of change.

Parents described Downhills as a "very caring school" with "happy and secure" pupils. So when the government earmarked the primary to convert to an academy, parents and staff resisted. Following a spat played out in the media, Education Secretary Michael Gove asked Ofsted to reinspect the school, which was duly placed in special measures.

Downhills is one of 200 of the "worst performing" primary schools that Gove believes should become an academy. The Academies Act gives him the power to make an "academy order" in relation to any school that Ofsted says is failing.

Academies are independent state schools, funded by central government instead of councils. They are free to set their own pay and conditions and their own curriculum. Started under Labour, the academies programme is now 10 years old. But the battle over Downhills symbolises how the coalition’s desire to increase the number of academies has taken on a more forceful edge.

Under the last government, a total of 203 academies were opened between September 2002 and January 2010. According to the latest Department for Education (DfE) figures there are now 1,583 academies.

In time, the government wants all schools to become academies. It is a transformation with profound implications for standards, funding and the role of the state.

ATTAINMENT

The government’s justification for the speedy expansion of academies is based on a belief that they improve much faster than other schools. A spokesman says: "Academies succeed because they have the autonomy, power and opportunity to set their own direction. Their GCSE results are improving at almost twice the national average rate."

As evidence, he cites reports last year from the Public Accounts Committee, showing academies achieved rapid academic improvements, and from the London School of Economics, showing they also helped lift standards at neighbouring schools.

But critics say the evidence is selective and, at best, very patchy. They say the findings relate to when Labour was in power, when the academies programme concentrated on failing secondaries with bigger room for improvement, and so cannot be applied to the hoards of academies converting now, or to primary schools.  

Sonia Sharp, director on the board of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, says there is too little evidence to show whether the coalition’s new academies are raising attainment or not. She believes that greater accountability for performance at school level should be welcomed, but says: "The model of governance is not the most important thing. Strong school leadership is much more crucial to schools where there are concerns about performance."

Sharp predicts that many academies will raise standards, but warns there is a risk of creating a divided schools system, in which the best academies in an area become oversubscribed, and neighbouring institutions suffer falling rolls and under-investment. "We’ll end up with some extra­ordinarily successful schools," she says. "But I fear that we will be left with a number of schools that are still unable to improve."

John Fowler, policy manager at the Local Government Information Unit, is unconvinced that school autonomy necessarily leads to improvement. He argues that academies do not, in fact, have much more freedom than other schools, particularly those run by the larger providers. "For schools in the big academy chains, they are likely to have less autonomy than they did as maintained schools," he says. "Some schools might feel they are freeing themselves from the shackles of the local authority, but that’s just being replaced by the Secretary of State or a big academy sponsor."

ROLE OF THE LOCAL AUTHORITY

Gove has made much of his desire to "break the monopoly of state education". But there has been little clarity about what exactly he wants the councils’ role in education to be. The government is in the process of drawing up proposals for this role with a ministerial advisory group made up of representatives from schools and local government.

Sharp argues that councils are now starting to define their roles in education, in relation to local need. In Sheffield, where she is director of children’s services, she describes the council as a "champion and advocate" for all children and young people. "We will always be concerned about whether there are good schools in the area and whether children can get into those schools," she says.

David Simmonds, chair of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, suggests councils should see themselves as "the one organisation that will never give up on a child".

"Councils are in a strong position to hold schools to account," he says. "School autonomy means recognising you have a responsibility to children beyond the school gates."

FUNDING

Aside from the promise of autonomy, many schools openly admit to converting to an academy to secure funding in these tough economic times. While funding per pupil for academies and maintained schools is the same, new academies receive £25,000 up front to get started, plus cash from the government to compensate for the fact that they are no longer entitled to certain local authority services, such as support for pupils with behavioural problems.

For 2011/12, the government cut its formula grant to local authorities by £148m so that it could redistribute the cash to academies to pay for such support services. But the move led to an outcry from local authorities, which argued the savings they made from having academies in their area were dwarfed by the sum being deducted.

Simmonds, who is also lead member for children and young people in the London Borough of Hillingdon, says: "More than half the secondary schools in Hillingdon are now academies and we haven’t seen significant savings as a consequence of that. I think we will eventually, but in the meantime we need to make sure there’s a balance between supporting non-academy schools and making sure the academies programme gets the funding it needs.

Making savings is difficult when councils still have the responsibility to provide things like educational psychology, education welfare services and home-to-school transport." The LGA is working with DfE officials to address this and come to a "more realistic" agreement about the savings made by councils as schools convert to academies, he says.

In the long term, Fowler argues that academies are unlikely to be better off, since the government is consulting on developing a national funding formula for all schools. The aim is to make the system simpler and fairer.

"Some of the early converters have taken on academy status because their head teachers have been around long enough to know that the chance to get extra funding is time-limited," he says, adding that the initial rush to convert could now be waning: "Academy conversion applications by secondary schools were down for January. If the statistics show they were down again in February, I think the momentum for secondary school conversions will have been lost."

FREE SCHOOLS

It remains to be seen whether the pace of conversion to academies will be maintained and whether all schools will eventually convert. But success or otherwise of the academies programme relies on government and schools addressing a range of public concerns.

Teaching unions are cynical about the involvement of private companies in education, such as Barclays Bank, which has pledged to provide free banking services and teaching resources to academies.

There are also fears about academies shunning the most vulnerable pupils, with a government report, A Profile of School Exclusions in England, last month showing higher rates of exclusions at academies.

The advent of free schools – academies that are set up in response to parental demand – is seen by many as the next step in the evolution of the programme. The first 24 opened in 2011 and a further 72 will open in September 2012 and beyond. According to a DfE press release issued in January, free schools are "already raising standards", a bold claim given their relatively recent existence.

A DfE spokesman says: "There is clear evidence from America that charter schools have a proven track record in some of the poorest inner cities. Like charter schools, free schools here will give all parents – not just the rich – access to great schools with high standards and tough discipline."

Opponents argue that the spread of new free schools will lead to a duplication of school places and ultimately the closure of other local schools. Time will tell which schools endure and which fall by the wayside. Those that best drive up attainment will attract parents and pupils. In a diverse school system – made up of academies including free schools and studio schools, as well as university technical colleges and maintained schools among others – survival of the fittest will prevail.

ACADEMIES: KEY FACTS

• Academies are independent state schools, funded by central government instead of local authorities. They have the freedom to set their own staff pay and conditions, and to change the lengths of school days and terms. They are not required to follow the national curriculum.
• The academies programme was launched in 2002 by the last Labour government to replace and transform failing schools. Sponsors including successful schools, businesses, universities, charities and faith bodies were required to contribute £2m to set up new schools, often in state-of-the-art buildings, a requirement dropped in 2009 in a bid to ramp up the number of academies. 
• Under the coalition, Education Secretary Michael Gove made clear his intention to accelerate the number of academies. The Academies Act was rushed through parliament using powers usually reserved for emergency legislation. It removed the requirement for academies to have a sponsor, so that schools could simply convert to academy status – although sponsors continue to be courted to support underperforming schools.
• There are now 1,583 academies. In 29 local authorities, the majority of secondary schools are academies. Free schools are a type of academy, set up in response to parental demand. The first 24 free schools opened in 2011 and a further 72 are in the pipeline.
• Academies receive the same level of funding per pupil as local authority-maintained schools, but receive an extra grant to cover the cost of services no longer provided to them by the authority, such as education welfare and behaviour support. This grant is referred to as the Local Authority Central Spend Equivalent Grant. 
• Controversially, the Department for Education (DfE) is financing this grant by cutting the money it gives to local authorities, since councils are no longer required to provide a full range of school support services to academies. Gove has pledged to give refunds to authorities that end up worse off financially. The DfE is currently consulting on a new national funding formula for schools, to come into effect from 2013.

A LOCAL AUTHORITY DIRECTOR'S VIEW

Edwina Grant, director of children’s services, Central Bedfordshire Council

Politically, academies are seen as the way forward to raise attainment in our local authority. As a director of children’s services, it’s my role to implement that vision. The idea is to have one clear system and vision for local education, and that all schools are part of the local family of schools, whether academies or not. We expect by June 2012 that we will have 40 academies in total, and 53 per cent of our pupils will be educated within them.

We have a number of different academy sponsors and a number of schools working together in academy chains. We’ve had teachers from the stronger schools going in to teach in the schools that need a bit more support. That experience actually helps both schools to improve. We are doing a lot of work in terms of collaboration to drive improvement and support staff in academies through our designated teaching school.

The biggest challenge for the local authority has been around reconfiguring the way that we work, moving from the direct delivery of education to being a commissioning organisation. For example, we’ve had to do a lot of work on land release for new academies, which has put a lot of pressure on our capital team.

We’ve also had to look at all of the central support services we provide to schools and academies carefully. For statutory duties such as safeguarding training, we’re still providing the same support to all schools for free. But where services are non-statutory, we’ve had to be clear with academies that they entail an additional charge.

We had to plan for the fact that the cut to the Department for Education grant for central support services could have affected our ability to provide support services to all local schools, but so far we have managed to keep on top of the budget.

We’ve managed to maintain our education psychology service, but we’ve seen a slight reduction in our education welfare provision. Funding for transport is always challenging in a rural authority like ours, but children in academies and non-academies are receiving the same level of service. We have a good record on partnership working with our local academies. We emphasise the point that all schools are a part of the local family of schools. One of the most refreshing things is how interested the larger academy sponsors have been in working with us.

I couldn’t predict whether all the schools in our area will end up being academies. Longer term, the political vision of our lead member is that he would like to see Michael Gove’s vision for the academies programme fulfilled. But I can imagine there are some schools that may not want to go down that route.

Looking ahead, Central Bedfordshire is looking at proposals for a free school pupil referral unit to run alternative provision in the area, which could potentially open as early as September. We think that could bring a lot of benefits for the council, in terms of reducing exclusions.

A HEAD TEACHER'S VIEW

Mike Welsh, head teacher, Goddard Park Community Primary School, Swindon

I’ve been the head teacher here for 20 years. We’re based in the 11th poorest community in the South West so face many different challenges. But I have a superb group of staff and, in 2010, Goddard Park became an "outstanding" school.

It was the first school in Swindon to become an academy, so at the time it was a great leap in the dark. We had to do things we’d never done before, such as take out our own copyright.

The school decided to go for academy status because of the protections it would provide us with. We felt we had a good curriculum for our children and didn’t want that to be subject to constant change. We also wanted to protect our land and buildings for use by the community.

No one here is interested in being part of an academy chain or being sponsored. We want to have community and parent governors at the heart of our school. Local authorities can be very distant bodies that don’t understand the needs of individual schools. We have a good, grown-up relationship with our local authority, but are democratically accountable to our community.

We felt that academy status would also help us protect our staff. The school has a "no-detriment policy", so we would never dream of reducing the pay and conditions of staff, but there was a feeling that this could have happened if we hadn’t become an academy.

The crucial thing is that academy status allows us to invest in practice. We feel we have greater independence at local level and see it as the ultimate conclusion of local management of schools, which has been going on for 20 years anyway.

The recent local government finance settlements have changed radically what local authorities are able to provide in terms of local services. The money we have received from the Department for Education in lieu of services that would have previously been paid for by the local authority has meant that we’ve been able to build new classrooms, which just wouldn’t have happened through the local authority. It is money that has come from a central pot of funding, not from other schools.

Academy status has been very positive for us, but all academies are very different. There are potential risks with free schools around duplication of school places. We are very concerned about that. We are still part of our local family of schools and that is important to us. We run daycare for 150 children at the school, we’re linked to a children’s centre and work very closely with local health and family support services. This school has also just taken on its first apprentice.

I would estimate that eventually about 80 per cent of all secondary schools and 50 per cent of primaries will become academies. The big challenge now is for all schools to get much better at sharing good practice between themselves.