Is attention now turning from the hapless Andrew Lansley at health to the smooth yet gaffe-prone Michael Gove at education? On Monday, Fiona Millar, writing in the Guardian on the subject of academies and free schools, declared: “We must now have an open debate about privatisation“.
On Tuesday, also in the Guardian, Seumas Milne wrote of how “schools are being bribed or bullied into becoming freestanding academies outside local democratic control”.
In today’s New Statesman, I note how “education could become as toxic for the Tories as health”.
The inconvenient truth for the coalition is that ministers and their cheerleaders in the right-wing press have exaggerated the benefits and popularity of academies. There are a great deal of myths surrounding the recent academies “revolution”. Here, for example, are five things that they don’t tell you:
1) Nearly three-quarters of schools that have converted to academy status, or intend to convert, are driven by the belief that it would benefit them financially, rather than educationally, according to a survey by the Association of School and College Leaders.
2) According to a recent YouGov poll, less than one in three voters think turning more schools into academies will raise education standards.
3) According to a recent analysis of league table data by Dr Terry Wrigley of Leeds Metropolitan University, the “excessive” use of vocational equivalents has been “inflating” the results of England’s academy schools. Academies, as even the right-wing thinktank Civitas has acknowledged, are “inadequately academic“.
4) We hear a great deal about the success stories – Mossbourne, the ARK schools, etc – but have you heard about Birkdale High School in Southport, which only converted to a centrally-funded academy school in August 2011? It has just been deemed “inadequate” and put into special measures by Ofsted due to failures that inspectors identified during a two-day visit in December. Academy status is no guarantee of success.
5) In January, the Financial Times revealed that eight academies in financial difficulty have had to be bailed out by a Department for Education quango over the past 18 months, at a cost to the taxpayer of almost £11m. “Civil servants are increasingly worried about the lack of close supervision and sustained support for the schools – the so-called “middle tier” problem,” wrote the FT’s Chris Cook.
Oh, and if you’re looking for a more detailed and informed take on academies, free schools and the privatisation of our education system, check out Melissa Benn’s excellent book School Wars. It’s reviewed by Francis Beckett in the NS here.
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