Converter academies 'refusing' support to struggling schools, MPs find

The House of Commons Education Committee’s report on school partnerships details “overwhelming evidence” to show that converter academies are refusing to support local schools.

Converter academy status was brought in by the coalition government in 2010 and is only handed to high-performing local authority schools that promise to support weaker schools.

Committee members are calling for the government to intervene and “urgently review” the way it monitors this requirement placed on converter academies.

MPs are particularly concerned as the government in its 2010 Schools White Paper called for all schools receiving outstanding or good grades from Ofsted to adopt the status.

The report says: “Converter academies are not living up to this expectation and pulling their weight when it comes to supporting other schools. One submission suggested that many only ‘paid lip-service to this requirement’ and another argued that converter academies are ‘working in isolation’.”

MPs were also told that convertor academies even had to name weaker schools on their application.

Their report adds that even supporters of academies suggested that more could be done to force academies to help other schools.

Evidence submitted by Kent County Council called for the Department for Education to do more to strengthen “the requirement by convertor academies to contribute to school-to-school support”.

The National Association of School Partnerships told MPs that a factor behind this lack of support from converter academies was that they “tend to be confident, independent, competitive schools with little or no interest in the wider system. Their commitment to form and develop real collaboration is often negligible”.

The National Association of Head Teaches added that there was a lack of clarity from central government as to what the minimum requirement of support should be.

Committee chairman Graham Stuart said: “We support moves to give schools more freedom to innovate. But we argue that the creation of a self-improving system needs a degree of co-ordination and strong incentives to encourage schools to look beyond their own school gate.

“Otherwise, there is a danger that many schools will operate in isolation rather than in co-operation.”

Other recommendations to improve school collaboration were for Ofsted to be given powers to inspect academy chains and for the government to compile further research into the key attributes of successful school partnerships.

MPs want to see greater clarity in the role councils play in improving schools in their local area. They also want greater incentives offered to high performing head teachers to take over poorly performing schools.

Latest government figures show that as of June 2013, there were 2,263 converter academies and a further 781 schools had applied for conversion. Most are secondary schools - 40 per cent of all secondary schools in England have now converted.