Reform in haste and education pays the price

The English language enables many linguistic snobberies. “Academy”, for instance, means “school”. Its use got refined to seem grander, as Latinate words do: “an organisation intended to protect and develop an art, science or language”, as in Royal Academy. So the previous government bagged it to name schools removed from local authorities and run by “sponsors”.

The academy idea was to break patterns of low expectation and encourage innovative teaching (although, of course, without relaxing central government control of the curriculum). The coalition expanded the programme and encouraged more sponsors. Boasts about its achievement are routine — and quite often justified. But ripening fruit can play host to worms. A Sutton Trust report has pointed out that while average attainment soon rose, that often corresponded exactly with a change in intake, the proportion of pupils on free meals — the poor ones — declining as results improved. Exclusions in academies were higher than in neighbouring schools. Chuck burdensome passengers to the wolves and any sleigh goes faster.

But “sponsorship” also mutated with the coalition’s rush to expansion; and not just with worries about the narrowing of cultural and religious focus — fundamental Islamism, or Christian-sponsored schools teaching creationism. Management itself needs watching too. Big chains took on flocks of schools, and some ran into trouble. Sometimes a sponsor withdraws, having bitten off more than it can chew (cases in Gloucestershire and Middlesbrough). Sometimes a plan stalls late in development (one currently in West Sussex).

Sometimes a chain is banned from taking on more schools because its standards and financial management are suspect (14 cases so far). This year one huge chain — E-Act — was forced to hand a third of its 34 schools back after terrible Ofsted reports and other concerns. A string of problems — unqualified or fleeing heads, mis-spending, etc — suggest that expansion has been too rapid, too excitable and too focused on using the word “academy” as a magic bullet. Some local-authority run schools have actually improved at the same rate as sponsored ones. At the Times Cheltenham Literature Festival debate, the splendid Educating Essex head Mr Drew mildly observed that actually he has no different freedoms or advantages since becoming an academy……

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