Academies haven’t raised pupil achievement – there’s no need for them to have privileges that other schools do not

The UK education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is planning to cut some of the freedoms academy schools currently enjoy in England to refocus on improving outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. Critics say academies are hugely successful but my research has shown there are better ways to make education fairer.

The academies programme was introduced in England in 2002 by the then Labour government as a way to improve failing schools. These schools were given additional initial funding, as well as recurrent, per-pupil funding. They had freedom from local council control and from the national curriculum, and more flexibility in terms of pupil places, teacher pay and contracts.

From an initial three schools, the academy programme has grown rapidly and adapted in the process. Academisation was a central pillar of Conservative education policy, and over 40% of all schools are now academies, and more than 50% of pupils in England attend one.

The current Labour government plans to cut back on some of the exceptions afforded to academy schools – such as their freedom from the national curriculum and power to set their own teacher pay. The education secretary wants to refocus academies on their original purpose: improving opportunities and outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.

However, the Conservative opposition wants academies to retain their freedoms. It considers the academy programme to be hugely successful and a driver of improved attainment standards in education – and any attempt to dismantle the programme as “educational vandalism”.

But my research has found that academy schools are no better at raising attainment than the schools they replaced. The pupil premium policy – which gives schools funding according to their intake – appears considerably more effective when it comes to improving education for disadvantaged children.

Rectifying a flawed policy

Academies were devised in order to address what should have been an obvious flaw in the Labour government’s specialist schools programme. In 1997, well-performing schools were encouraged to apply to be “specialist” in terms of an area of the curriculum, such as sports, business and languages. Specialist schools were allowed some of the freedoms later given to academies, as well as substantial investment and recurrent funding.

This meant the specialist schools policy gave considerable extra funding to schools that were doing OK, and denied it to many schools in disadvantaged areas. The latter were the ones most in need of help – described at the time as being in “spirals of decline”.

To rectify this, academies were introduced. They were replacements for schools that were deemed failing, and were intended to be in the most deprived areas of England. They had no specialism, but extra money, usually exciting new buildings, new management, and the freedoms mentioned above. They were claimed by the then schools minister, Andrew Adonis, to be an almost immediate success.

Are academies better than other schools?

To halt spirals of decline, academies had two linked objectives. They had to try and stop declining rolls – fewer children attending the school – by encouraging parents to use their revamped local school.

And they had to raise attainment outcomes. The early academies clearly achieved the first objective. They increased their pupil intakes, and reduced their very high proportions of disadvantaged pupils. This led to less clustering of pupils by poverty.

However, Adonis was incorrect about them raising standards. In the first few years academy results were not clearly higher than those of predecessor schools. This is despite general grade inflation and the fact that the new schools had fewer disadvantaged pupils, which usually is associated with higher attainment scores.

Even as late as 2009, there was no clear evidence that academies as a whole were doing better than their council-controlled community peer schools. And by 2014, the policy had changed – for the worse.

As well as the original kind of academies picked for their levels of disadvantage (now called sponsor-led academies), schools of any kind were now allowed to join the scheme to get the linked advantages (and many have been forced to).

These “converter academies” include previously fee-paying schools, and some of the most successful community schools. Overall, there is still no evidence that academies produce better results than school with equivalent intakes.

But it is clear that sponsor-led academies still take a disproportionate number of disdvantaged pupils, and often struggle with results. The partly cherry-picked converter academies take far fewer disadvantaged pupils.

This means, of course, that academies in general are no longer helping to reduce the clustering of poorer pupils in specific sink schools – one of their original purposes – or to increase social justice in education. In fact, they are making it worse.

The way forward

It is time to halt the absurd practice of introducing new kinds of school that are claimed to be better than existing ones, but are only available for a minority of children. The variety of schools in England includes foundation schools, academies, free schools, grammar and faith schools.

None of these is necessarily better (or worse) than local community schools. Once differences in intakes are controlled for, the type of school attended in England is not linked at all to differential attainment results.

I argue, therefore, we may as well have only one type of school. This will help reduce the clustering of pupils by poverty, and so lower the poverty attainment gap. It will allow all schools to offer all pupils their entitlement to a truly national curriculum.

As a way to raise attainment, the pupil premium policy is superior and more flexible than the academies programme. It gives funding according to the number of children at the school on free school meals and who have been in care, not according to the school management type.

My research with colleagues has found that this policy is linked to a decline in clustering of pupils by poverty, and to an uneven decline in the poverty attainment gap, in a way that academisation is not.

I have spent more than 25 years researching equality in education. And for all of that time I have been wishing for an education secretary who takes responsibility for a truly national school system – one where it does not matter where you live or the type of school you attend.

With selection, faith and other issues still confusing the education system, and high levels of poverty segregation remaining in some areas, there is still a long way to go to an equal national system. But, just perhaps, the proposed changes for academies could be the first step.

Stephen Gorard works for Durham University, UK. He receives funding from The Economic and Research Council for a different project.