Academy chains struggle to close attainment gap for poor pupils

There are now more than 4,000 schools that have been taken out of local authority control and turned into academies.

Of these, about 1,100 are sponsored by a trust that can shape the curriculum, ethos and leadership of the school.

Started in 2000, academies were seen initially as a means to improve the performance of pupils in failing schools, most of which were sited in the poorest communities in the country.

There are nearly 200 academy chains that sponsor three or more academy schools, with most serving large numbers of children on free school meals and in receipt of the pupil premium.

As such, they are a key instrument in government efforts to improve attainment of disadvantaged pupils.

But research published last month by The Sutton Trust showed that too many of these groups are not making the progress that policy makers hoped in reducing the gap in attainment between disadvantaged children and their better-off peers.

Worse still, the trust’s Chain Effects report, which looked at the GCSE results of pupils between 2012 and 2014 at 156 schools sponsored by 34 academy chains, showed that poorer pupils at two-thirds of the chains performed significantly below levels achieved by their peers at mainstream schools.

In only 11 of the chains studied did disadvantaged pupils outperform those in mainstream schools at GCSE.  

The research, a follow-up to a 2012 study, found the gap between the best and worst chains has increased. While some chains with high attainment for disadvantaged pupils improved faster than the 2012 average, standards dropped quicker at the lowest performing chains.

Th