How many academies can we afford?
The claim
“The number of schools converting each year is difficult to predict. In each year the number of converters is estimated to be: 2010/11 – 200; 2011/12 – 200; 2012/13 – 200; 2013/14 – 200″
Impact Assessment, Academies Bill 2010
Cathy Newman checks it out
Michael Gove has always resisted putting a figure on the number of academies he wants in England. But buried in the technical notes which accompanied last year’s Academies Bill is a projection that 200 schools would become academies each year. In fact, that’s proved a massive under-estimate.
The Government says it’s delighted so many comprehensive schools are choosing to opt out of local authority control. But is there a cost attached to the frantic pace of reform? And can we afford it?
The analysis
The last Labour Government came up with the idea of academies. The schools are directly funded by the government rather than local authorities, with greater freedom to set staff pay, the term and day lengths and curriculum.
Originally, Labour wanted 200 academies by 2010 – a target Tony Blair doubled to 400. But while Michael Gove has fought shy of what he called a “dartboard approach” to the number of schools, he’s quietly creating far more academies than the last government did.
The impact assessment attached to the Academies Bill 2010 suggested 200 schools would become academies this year. In fact, since the Coalition formed last May, a total of 999 secondary schools have either become or will soon become academies. Of those, 840 are good or outstanding, and 159 are under-performing.
Some 504 primaries have either converted to academy status since May 2010, or are in the pipeline. And the Education Secretary today announced 200 failing primary schools would be taken over by academies next year.
So the pace of reform is pretty dizzying – and it doesn’t come cheap.
Although academies get the same per pupil funding as local authority-controlled schools, there are plenty of other financial benefits if schools convert to academy status.
Even outstanding schools get a bonus for becoming academies. Every primary or secondary which converts gets a £25,000 sweetener. And for failing schools, the financial carrot is far bigger – around £400,000 per academy created.
The Education Department is cagey about whether the money is there.
A spokesman told FactCheck: “The last confirmed figures for spending on academies for the financial year 2010-11 is just over £2bn and includes costs incurred under the previous Government’s plans. We have made considerable cost savings in the academies programme since coming to office.”
He added that there was “no specific budget” for academies – a statement which seems barely plausible. He also failed to answer repeated questions about whether there was a funding shortfall because schools are becoming academies far faster than expected.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
When you meet the dynamic headteacher of King Solomon Academy, as I did today, you know why the Education Secretary is so keen on academies. Venessa Willms came from South Africa and was shocked by the poverty she found in London’s inner-city schools. But despite 40 per cent of her primary school children receiving free school meals, and three-quarters speaking English only as a second language, the vast majority are now achieving better results than the national average.
So it’s no surprise that Michael Gove is happy to tear up his Department’s modest aims of 200 new academies a year in favour of something much more radical. But because academies do receive more money than the “bog-standard” comprehensives they replace, there are now real questions about whether the Government has budgeted for such rapid reform. Questions which tonight the department hasn’t fully answered.
There are 6 comments on this post
My understanding was that the £25,000 sweetener you mention (I’d call it a bribe) was for legal costs associated with the change of status. Some law firms are doing very nicely out of it. The schools don’t get to keep much, if any, of it at all.
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Look at Oasis Academy Mayfield in Southampton. I think that will disprove the theory that Academies are a better way of doing things…!
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The financial ‘sweeteners’ seem to be the only driver behind lots of academy bids. The real danger is what academies are then free to do – such as have a maverick curriculum, force teachers and other staff onto varying pay scales, enjoy a “light touch” from Ofsted and little accountability for parents. Just like the failed ‘grant-maintained’schools experiment in the early 1990s, it’s not been fully thought through.
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The interim detail may be interesting but the whole issue of academy schools is about a mechanism for freeing all schools from the dead-weight (and overhead costs) of local authority control.
If we can stretch our minds forward and imagine a country where all state schools are eventually independent of that ineffective local authority control, we will get a wide range of tuition methods and costs but we will be able to evaluate their success and value, thus enabling a ‘best of breed’ to be identified.
It will then be up to all the individual schools to adopt those successful characteristics to ensure their own school’s survival, otherwise smart parents will choose other schools and the head-count income of the failing ones will diminish until they cease to function.
It’s pure Darwin but, after a couple of generations of abject educational failure, it stands a better chance of delivering widespread improvement than the previous local politburo method.
Like the NHS, state education has been a sacred cow for too long, It’s not difficult, it just needs good management, clear objectives, reward for success and dismissal for failure. Sorted.
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Has the Pupil premium suddenly shot up from £430 to £2000?
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[...] Source: http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/how-many-academies-can-we-afford/6945 [...]
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