Academies work, now let them expand
Fraser Nelson 6:19pm
ARK Schools, one of the leading City Academy providers, has just released another
amazing set of results with GCSE passes 11 percentage points higher last year than were achieved in 2010. This is staggering progress, given that these schools are serving the same neighbourhoods
with the same demographics as the council-run schools which they replaced. It is also a reminder that the City Academy programme, started by Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis and expanded by Michael
Gove, can claim to be the most rapidly-vindicated social experiments in recent history. The results of ARK’s schools speak best for themselves:
ARK’s formula clearly works, and I’d like to see it applied to many more schools rapidly. But ARK does not believe in the profit motive, and hence has no direct incentive to expand
quickly: it prefers to pay attention to the small number of schools it has. All the better for the kids in those schools, you might say. But the experience of Sweden clearly shows that a
not-for-profit school chain will expand at a slower rate.
The irony of English secondary education is that we actually do have the best teachers in the world: our state system languishes way down the league tables, but our private schools are at the top. The problem Michael Gove faces is not how to incubate excellence in education, but how to spread it.
That's why it's great news that Breckland School, run by profit-seeking International English Schools, has been given the go-ahead by the Department. Matthew Hancock, the local MP, will be delighted. I hope this is just the beginning of IES's expansion: chains like ARK have shown the transformative difference a properly-run school can make.
P.S. The number of quasi-autonomous City Academy schools is growing like Topsy, but there’s a big difference between the decision of a school to seek independent status (which can mean a major pay rise for its management team) and the takeover of a failing school by one of the new breed of providers. We have seen the transformative effect of takeovers (through Harris Academies and others), but this effect has not yet been demonstrated by schools who simply sought the Academy status.
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Edward McLaughlin
January 25th, 2012 6:56pm Report this comment"But ARK does not believe in the profit motive, and hence has no direct incentive to expand quickly"
That linking 'hence' reveals so much about the Nelson mindset.
Why would it not follow that the same benevolent motive which propelled ARK so effectively to do what it has done thus far, cannot be extended by replication of that same urge?
daniel maris
January 25th, 2012 7:18pm Report this commentSo UK state schools get a better result than those in Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway and France? Not bad - means UK state schools are hardly the basket case being described here. . Icelanders I think, reads more books per head than any other population.
Then again, the USA which doesn't even appear in the state school top 20 list out-performs the UK economically by a wide margin.
The UK's private school position is the biggest in Europe I believe. This probably explains the difference. Otherwise, why are the figures for Netherlands so close together.
*ttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020951/UK-parents-biggest-spenders-private-schooling-Europe.html
Philtunes
January 25th, 2012 8:28pm Report this commentThis is encouraging news but I do wonder what is now happening to the LEAs. If the number of Academies is increasing , and they will continue to do so, this is all outside LEA control and budget. There must be ,therefore a payoff for local council tax payers. The more Academies ,the less council tax payers have to pay. Where is all this 'spare ' cash going?
guest
January 25th, 2012 8:30pm Report this commentSome of these are on the list (for 2010) of 200 schools
whose benchmark scores drop most when equivalents are removed. eg St Albans dropped from 50% to 8%.
Fatbloke on tour
January 25th, 2012 9:17pm Report this commentTrevor
And to think I thought you were bad at economics.
Maybe it is just numbers, a complete inability to be open and honest when it comes to working numbers into your little hobby horse diatribes.
You talk about money going into schools in your little Torygraph propaganda piece, you talk about the money going into schools increasing to three times the amount in 97, you use this illusion of ihugely increased resources to belittle the efforts made to move things forward.
But you forget one thing - inflation.
Imagine after all your cheap shots aimed at MK.
Imagine after all those column inches you forget about inflation.
Three times more money?
Were the teachers in 2010 being paid the 1997 rate?
Consequently tripe, politically motivated tripe.
Love thevprofit motive angle.
Any thoughts on Southern Cross moving into education?
Have you learned nothing about the profit motive?
You do wonder how does Casino Capitalism start?
Financial engineering is all that is needed.
Seriously!
Away an' throw shite at yersel ya muppet.
Kingstonian
January 25th, 2012 9:23pm Report this commentguest
January 25th, 2012 8:30pm
Eh? Do you want to expand on that / explain your point more clearly?
Widmerpool
January 25th, 2012 9:45pm Report this commentHow refreshing to read, on a day of such bad news, Fraser’s piece on Schools.
IMHO the battles of the next 50 years to keep UK plc afloat in a sea of Global and Euro challenges could be won in the class rooms of such schools!
Parallels with French aggrandisement being defeated at Waterloo based on skills obtained on the playing fields of Eton.?
URAllPigs
January 25th, 2012 10:48pm Report this commentPlease can we have a more honest discussion about academies based on all of the available evidence? Isn't it true that it is mainly the Labour-created academies (new buildings, new leadership team, new teaching staff) that have achieved the large improvements described above? The more recent academies - schools opting out of LEA control, retaining their leadership and remaining in old buildings - Gove-academies, if you like, have made barely any difference to results? Isn't it also true that academies are more likely to prevent underachieving children from taking exams? Isn't it also true that academies are more likely to take those "easy" exams (media studies, RE, etc) that are usually disparaged by posters in this place? Aren't children from academies less likely to achieve the English Baccalaureate because they are less likely to have studied 5 of the core academic subjects deemed by some a better measure of performance?
James
January 25th, 2012 11:35pm Report this commentFraser,
Could you post comparisons for the results of schools in the same LEA for future articles about the performance of academies?
Maria
January 26th, 2012 10:06am Report this commentThis piece has very little content. Although I am in favour of academy schools I do realise there is more to education than GCSE results. Surely independent schools have known this for generations. Additionally I really do not know why Fraser Nelson is so taken with the idea of schools being run by profit-makers. He never stops going on about it.
PayDirt
January 26th, 2012 12:27pm Report this commenthttp://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/5646
A number are against Gove.
Fatbloke on tour
January 26th, 2012 1:29pm Report this commentMaria @ 10.06
Trevor aka "Fraser" - the fastest spinner in the Nelson family even though my brother is a DJ - goes on about profit making schools because he is nicking about with a Swedish burd.
Consequently in a vain attempt to get into the good books he is suddenly get all au fait with Swedish political constructs and educational ideas.
It is a case of put up with Master Nelson's diatribes or his tanks don't get emptied. I fear he is taking out his revenge on the whole of British womanhood who obviously didn't fancy a bad length from an effete dog boiler.
Consequently Maria you should have done your duty.
Lie back and think of neo classical inflation theory.
Maria
January 26th, 2012 4:58pm Report this commentI gather he is married to the Swedish "burd". I used to know something about the Chinese educational system but that didn't mean I thought it should be imported here.
I heard a Chinese schoolgirl talking on the radio who said that it didn't matter how many hours of study a week they did there was always some-one who would do more. That was to get into a top university; imagine doing x+ hours a week for some guy to get his bonus.
outsider
January 27th, 2012 12:23am Report this commentMy old school, not far from the fine old Burlington Girls and St Clement Danes boys grammar schools that were destroyed by political policy in 1975, had a motto "little by little and therefore surely".
Perhaps that is ARK's motto too.
Experience has shown that plc status is rarely the best in the long run for professional people businesses.
I am also reminded that John Lewis could not expand as fast as others because it had no access to outside risk capital but, as its rivals were subjected to takeovers, demergers, restructuring and financial engineering, has gradually emerged as the UK's premier department store group.
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