A New Wave of Academy Schools

Academies will widen their view to include primary and special schools. Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

LONDON—The wholesale promotion of academies and free schools is a flagship policy of the new coalition government.

Michael Gove at the Department for Education (DfE) intends that the Academies Bill be made law before Parliament’s summer recess so that a possible 2,000 more schools can morph into academies by September 2010.
It is obvious he believes this new model will benefit the English school system, but it is not yet obvious to many what exactly this new status will bring to pupils.

There have been academies in England through the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major and the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. (Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have separate systems with only Scotland so far having academies.) At present there are 203 in England.

Until now, academies have been secondary schools which needed independence from the State regiment in order to improve their performance. They were considered to be failing and in need of a fresh start.

The new proposal is upending this view, with those schools measured as “outstanding” by Ofsted being fast-tracked to the starting line. These two thousand or so could take on their new independence at the beginning of the new school year in September.

The scheme is also widening the scope of academies by allowing primary and special schools to take on the new free status.

In his letter to outstanding schools, Mr Gove encouraged heads and governing bodies to consider acquiring academy freedoms, which he says include freedom from local authority control; the ability to set your own pay and conditions for staff; freedom from following the national curriculum; the ability to change the length of terms and school days; greater control over school budgets; and the freedom to wrest the purse strings firmly from the local authority.
The Queen’s Speech, the DfE website, and the above letter do not give much detail. However, it is known that each academy would be able to make different changes.

For those with children near the end of secondary school, things will be less straightforward as academies will be able to opt out of exam subjects as well as types of exam. GCSEs, which are marked by ongoing assessment as well as written tests, may be replaced with IGCSEs – International General Certificates of General Education – which are assessed entirely by written tests.

IGCSEs are used in 150 countries. Over 300 independent schools in the UK offer IGCSEs and in 2008 there were over 40,000 UK entries for IGCSE exams. All state-funded schools will be able to use IGCSEs from September, according to the Times Educational Supplement (TES).

In January this year the previous government did not register any IGCSEs in its league tables. This meant that many independent schools which offered the qualification went down in the rankings even if their results were outstanding.

Although this will be rectified by Mr Gove, who is keen on continuing league tables and comparing schools so they keep their competitive edge, he is allowing academies to be released from Ofsted inspections.

In an interview in the TES on May 28th, he said this will require “one or two legislative” tweaks to make way for “traffic light” indicators which will “flash danger” when triggered. He is also reported as saying parents can request an Ofsted inspection if they are unhappy with the school.

The Pupil Premium – a Lib Dem flagship policy – will apply to children in academies. The criteria for the payment is not yet known. If it is the same as for free school meals, it will be applied to children from low income households (measured at less than £16,000/year in 2009). The money could be used to increase wages and so attract high-calibre teachers or be spent on better facilities.

The DfE Academies Bill Impact Assessment suggests an overall one-off cost of £63 million over the next four years at today’s prices and guessing that 200 academies are created each year. This will only be the case if the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) agree to drop the local authority costs. Otherwise the cost could be as high as £493 million.

It has been stated that each academy could mentor or support a less able school. Again, how this will work in practice, geographically, economically, or academically is unknown.