Memorandum submitted by Ron Glatter, Emeritus
Professor in Education, The Open University and Honorary Professor
of Education, University of Warwick
KEY POINTS
1. The Government's claim that its policy to
extend school diversity is enhancing quality is highly questionable
and does not seem to be supported by recent research, at least
so far as the specialist schools programme is concerned.
2. A similar point applies to the policy of giving
schools such as academies greater "independence". A
previous attempt to do this via the grant-maintained programme
was not notably successful according to recent evidence, and it
is not clear how "autonomous" schools are to be restrained
from pursuing eccentric and possibly irresponsible policies.
3. Academies are overwhelmingly funded by the
public purse and the systems of accountability and democratic
control applying to them appear rudimentary and unfit for purpose.
There is inadequate transparency and this area needs a major review
so as to bring academies much more closely into line with other
publicly-funded schools.
4. The impact of the diversity policy on parental
choice needs thorough scrutiny. There are some indications that
it may often actually be restricting rather than enhancing the
range of options available to parents and children.
5. There is a significant danger that the new
emphasis on sponsorship by universities and elite private schools
will have serious unintended consequences in widening the achievement
gap between pupils of different abilities and exacerbating differences
in performance between schools.
The context: diversity and school autonomy.
The issue of Academies should be seen not just in its own terms
but in the context of two other key issues of current school governance,
diversity and school autonomy ("independent state schools").
On diversity, the specialist schools programme has been studied
most intensively. A study by Professor Jim Taylor and Steve Bradley
of Lancaster University concluded that " . . .
a large proportion of the funding yielded no discernible effect
on exam performance. This suggests a substantial misallocation
of public funds . . . " (Bradley and Taylor,
2007, p 17). Another recent study, by Jean Mangan and Geoff Pugh
of Staffordshire University and Professor John Gray of Cambridge,
concluded that extra funding on specialist schools achieves about
the same return in terms of exam performance as extra spending
for state schools generally, ie any performance effect doesn't
depend on acquiring specialist status. Performance of schools
acquiring one of the major specialisms was not significantly different
from that of schools generally, except in the case of sport, where
specialist schools actually performed worse (Mangan et al,
2007). These findings confirm and extend the conclusion of an
earlier literature review conducted for the Research into State
Education (RISE) Trust that "There is no proven causal link
between the improved performance of these schools and their specialist
status" (Castle and Evans, 2006, p 2).
Despite this the Children's Plan has a section
on "School diversity" (paras. 4.51 to 4.53) in which
it says "we want to see every secondary school working towards
specialist, academy or trust status so that all children enjoy
the benefits this can bring" (DCSF, para 4.52, emphasis in
original). This far-reaching policy is justified in the document
simply by the statement that "Greater diversity in the school
system is enhancing the quality of education provision and in
turn improving the choice of good schools for children and parents . . ."
(para 4.51). As we have seen this is a very questionable assertion.
The other issue, of school autonomy, was brought
into sharp focus by a report about Folkestone Academy headed "Academy
teachers suspended for tying up pupil in class" (Polly Curtis,
The Guardian, 20 December 2007). This mentioned that "pupils
are required to agree to 53 pages of behaviour policies which
include "seclusion zones" for misbehaving and holidays
for high achievers. In the first three weeks of term 100 pupils
were excluded for breaking new rules". How much "autonomy"
to devise eccentric and arguably irresponsible policies should
be accorded to schools largely funded by the public purse? Why
is "independence" of such schools considered to be in
the public interest? Even if the majority of academies act responsibly
why should the framework of governance permit such practice? There
is also scope here for a continuous stream of bad publicity for
the programme, for example the reports in November that among
the incentives to be offered to teaching staff at Harris Academy
in South Norwood are discounts at the chain of carpet stores that
Lord Harris founded (Nicholas Cecil, "Harris to woo teachers
with cut-price carpets", Evening Standard, 28 November
2007).
The policy of successive governments has been
to give ever greater autonomy to schools and this seems still
to be the intention of both main parties. The model seems to be
the governance of private ("public") schools, which
are thought to be successful at least in part because of their
"independence". However there is no evidence that this
policy will bring the benefits claimed. For example a study of
the long-term impact of the grant-maintained (GM) schools policy
by Rebecca Allen of the London Institute of Education, comparing
schools which won and lost votes to go GM, concluded that " . . .
there is no reason to believe that [the] new policies on autonomy
will lead to sustained improvement in pupil exam performance since
former GM schools perform no better than vote-losing schools,
once pupil background is taken into account" (Allen, 2007,
p 35).
Key issues of governance and VFM. The
key issues surrounding Academies include accountability, democratic
control, transparency and the equitable treatment of publicly-funded
schools. On the latter, the Public Accounts Committee, in a detailed
cost-benefit review, considered that academies were "a relatively
costly way of tackling low attainment" (Public Accounts Committee,
2007, conclusion 9). On transparency, as a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) I have tried
without success to get access to the draft Funding Agreement of
the academy which the Society is sponsoring in the West Midlands,
raising the question of what "Fellowship" actually means.
The RSA's lawyers have told the management that it cannot be shown
to anyone, not even the Society's members, until it has been finalised.
The issues of accountability and democratic control are familiar—how
can private sponsors be given control over the curriculum, staffing,
premises, admissions, behaviour policy etc. of a school which
is almost entirely funded by the taxpayer? It seems entirely illogical
and indefensible.
Impact on parental choice. There are
also significant issues of parental choice. According to research
by the TES, Christian ethos schools are becoming the only
option in some areas, even ones with very low proportions of believers
or church attenders—the report mentions Norwich and West
Sussex (David Marley, "Academies preach to the unconverted",
TES, 9 November 2007). There seems a rich irony in an apparently
market-based initiative restricting rather than enhancing parental
choice, but arguably the specialist schools programme has had
a similar effect. In most areas of the country for logistical
reasons only a very small range of specialisms can be available
to parents, and when these are combined with other aspects of
diversity, such as faith or being single or mixed-sex the choice
presented is likely to seem even more restricted than previously.
University sponsorship. In an apparent
attempt to improve the programme's image the present government
has pushed the notion of university sponsorship. At first sight,
a university seems a more benign sponsor for a school largely
funded by the public purse than a fundamentalist car salesman
or a tabloid newspaper (re the latter, see Polly Curtis, "Read
all about it: the Daily Mail school", The Guardian,
24 November 2007). But is such sponsorship really in the public
interest? Even in an era of widening participation, the distinctive
expertise of universities relates to the most academically able
students in the population. We do relatively well in educating
such pupils at school. By contrast our performance is poor in
relation to pupils of lesser academic ability—the so-called
"long tail". For example the recently-published PISA
2006 study of 57 countries identified the U.K. as having a comparatively
large gap between higher and lower performing students (PISA,
2007, p 35). So university sponsorship is likely to exacerbate
rather than help to solve this long-standing problem.
Furthermore, linking the names of universities
with particular academies will give the impression that admission
provides a preferential pathway to higher education, thus pushing
up parental demand for them. This will probably lead to more dissatisfied
parents, because more children will fail to gain admission—the
parental choice question again. Also it will widen the gap between
these academies and their neighbouring schools.
Similar issues may well arise in relation to
the developing area of sponsorship by elite private schools. There
seems a real danger that this new aspect of the policy on academies
will result in damaging unintended consequences.
REFERENCES
Allen, R (2007), "Does school governance matter
for pupil achievement? The long-term impact of the grant-maintained
schools policy", paper presented to GLA conference on Social
Selection, Sorting and Education, September 2007.
Bradley, S and Taylor, J (2007), "Diversity,
choice and the quasi-market: an empirical analysis of secondary
education policy in England", Department of Economics, Lancaster
University, September 2007.
Castle, F and Evans, J (2006), Specialist Schools:
what do we know? Research into State Education Trust, 2006 www.risetrust.org.uk
DCSF (2007), The Children's Plan: building a brighter
future, London, The Stationery Office.
Mangan, J Pugh, G and Gray, J (2007), "Examination
performance and school expenditure in English secondary schools
in a dynamic setting", paper presented at September 2007
BERA conference.
PISA 2006—the Programme for International Student
Assessment (2007), Science Competencies for Tomorrow's World,
Executive Summary, Paris, OECD.
Public Accounts Committee (2007) The Academies
Programme, Session 2006-07, Fifty-second Report, October 2007
www.parliament.uk
March 2008
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