Conclusions and recommendations
1. Existing academies have made progress,
for example in raising pupils' attainment at GCSE, but it is too
early to tell whether rising attainment is sustainable.
Academies' achievements so far reflect the energy and commitment
of academy pupils and staff, but also the high levels of expenditure
on academy buildings and the extra start-up grants. The Department
should develop measures of the robustness and sustainability of
the expanding programme, such as tracking of costs and overruns,
pupil attainment and ratings by Ofsted, and the availability of
good quality sponsors, academy principals and project managers.
2. Literacy and numeracy of academy pupils
has been rising but are still low, at less than half the level
of attainment in all secondary schools.
In 2006, 22% of pupils in academies achieved five or more A*-C
grades including English and maths compared with 45% in all schools.
The Department should ask those academies that have made the most
progress in English and maths to help identify and disseminate
good practices such as building literacy and numeracy into other
subjects in the curriculum, and demonstrating the importance of
literacy and numeracy for future employment prospects.
3. Many academy sixth forms are small, which
restricts the range of subjects they can offer, and they have
inherited a poor legacy of standards of education received by
some of the students entering the sixth form.
With low aspirations and challenging behaviour among some pupils
in the younger age groups, academies have placed less emphasis
on their sixth forms in the early years. To give their students
the fullest possible range of options and to improve educational
standards, academies should collaborate with neighbouring schools,
colleges, other training providers and employers, to broaden the
curriculum they offer and give young people beyond the age of
16 a wide range of educational options.
4. A small number of academies have had high
levels of exclusions, possibly as part of a short-term strategy
to improve pupil behaviour. Academies
have to follow the statutory School Admissions Code of Practice,[3]
and they admit, on average, higher proportions of pupils eligible
for free school meals, with special educational needs, and with
lower attainment at age 11 than are present in their immediate
vicinity. Parents and local communities need continuous evidence
that academies are acting fairly in relation to admissions and
exclusions, and academies should report on both annually. The
Department should scrutinise trends in individual academies' exclusions
to assess whether exclusions rates reduce to be more in line with
similar schools.
5. Of the first 26 academy buildings, 17 incurred
cost overruns averaging £3.2 million, or well over 10%.
Some of these overruns occurred because cost control was not sufficiently
robust. The Department should disseminate lessons learnt in project
management from the early academy projects, such as cost benchmarks
for large items like information technology systems and furniture
and fittings, to the people running projects to build new academies,
whether under the previous arrangements or within the Building
Schools for the Future programme.
6. Risks to academies' financial sustainability
include the withdrawal of start-up funding and uncertainty about
the costs of running their new buildings.
The Department does not yet know the costs of running academies
in the longer term. It should examine the running costs of the
new academy buildings so that funding levels and budgets are set
at a realistic level and academies can plan for future replacement
of larger capital items such as information technology systems.
7. A small number of academies have paid sponsors
to provide services, for example for payroll management.
Such services should be routinely put out to competitive tender,
so that they meet existing procurement regulations and demonstrably
avoid conflicts of interest.
8. There are fewer planned or open academies
than might be expected in the north of England.
The Department has a target that 60 of the first 200 academies
should be in London. It should examine deprivation data when deciding
the location of a new academy to make sure that its programme
for academies reflects the Government's overriding objective to
raise attainment in deprived areas, and that academies are built
in areas with the greatest need.
9. Academies are a relatively costly means
of tackling low attainment. As the programme
expands further, there is an increasing risk that individual academy
projects may be proposed where the value for money case for an
academy is not made. The Department should reject proposals that
put at risk the viability of local schools and colleges providing
a good quality education, including proposals relating to education
from age 16. It should not approve academy projects in locations
where a less costly solution, for example requiring less capital
expenditure and lower or no start-up funds, would provide better
value for money.
10. Prior to changes announced in the Budget
of March 2007, academies risked incurring large VAT liabilities
for community's use of their buildings.
Following the change, all academies should make their facilities
available for use by their communities. The Department should
consider whether there will be a future need to address this issue
in relation to voluntary-aided schools being rebuilt as part of
the Building Schools for the Future programme.
11. Sharing of lessons learnt from the first
academy projects has tended to be informal and not systematic.
The Department and the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust
should develop a systematic method, such as dissemination through
a good practice website, so that lessons can be made easily available
to other academies, particularly those in the development phase.
3 Academies are "admissions authorities"
and must comply with the School Admissions Code of Practice. Under
the Education Act 2002, they are to provide education for pupils
of different abilities who are wholly or mainly from the area
in which they are located. Back
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