Children, Schools and Families Committee -
Corrected Evidence

Here you can browse the corrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House.

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE THE

CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES COMMITTEE

DIVERSITY OF SCHOOLS: ACADEMIES

Q112 <Paul Holmes:> I am told that I should declare an interest because I am on the steering committee of "Comprehensive Future". I was intrigued by something that you said, Lesley, about there being no evidence to show any sort of change in the profile of pupils who go into Academies. Professor Stephen Gorard looked at three Academies that opened in 2002, and found that in those schools the share of pupils eligible for free school meals dropped by 11 percentage points to 15% In its fourth annual report, PricewaterhouseCoopers looked at 24 Academies and found that the percentage of pupils from deprived backgrounds in those Academies fell from 42% to 36% over a four-year period. It also found a trend towards higher attainment levels among year 7 pupils coming into the Academies as the years went by, and that permanent exclusions within those Academies were four times - 400% - higher than in comparable schools. So, there seems to be fairly convincing evidence. I taught in state schools for 22 years. If any of the schools I worked in had expelled four times as many disruptive kids, and cut the number of kids coming in who qualified for free school meals or had special educational needs, results would have gone up. All three of them were good schools, but results would have gone up anyway. It is not rocket science, is it?

Q129 <Paul Holmes:> You say that lots of local authorities are doing a very good job, but they have to have Academies. They are forced on them by the Government. They have no choice. If they want money from Building Schools for the Future, they must have Academies.

<Lucy Heller:> If they have schools that hit the hurdle rate.

<Paul Holmes:> That is one reason-

<Lucy Heller:> There are, in fact, local authorities that have not had Academies because all their schools come above the hurdle rate. The hurdle rate obviously changes from time to time, but if we are taking roughly the 30% hurdle rate that had been set, we would all agree that that is not an acceptable level for schools to operate at. That is a defensible decision.

Q130 <Paul Holmes:> I wish to pursue a point that has been made in two of the examples.

<Chairman:> You accept that as an answer.

<Paul Holmes:> Not necessarily.

<Chairman:> But there is a hurdle rate. There are local authorities that do not have anyone below the 30% in respect of A to Cs in GCSE.

<Paul Holmes:> Except that the Academy programme has now been expanded to bring in independent schools, which do not exactly serve deprived areas, for example.

<Lucy Heller:> Tower Hamlets -

<Paul Holmes:> As the previous witness said, the Academy programme is changing rapidly and moving on.

<Chairman:> I am trying to get you to ask the questions, get the answers and see if you are satisfied.

1. Inability to comprehend simple English.
   
2. Gagging Order.
3. Ignorance.
4. Sheer Bloodymindedness.
5. Wilful refusal to discuss anything to do with Academies.
6. Fear of public reaction when the truth emerges.

1. Councillor Roger Ibbs in the Full Council meeting on 2nd October 2008 let slip the fact that BSF funding in Stoke was dependent on there being at least one Academy in the proposals.
2. A telephone conversation between two people, one employed by the Council, the other not, that was "off the record" (we shall respect this, as one party specifically asked if the conversation was being recorded, which it was not).

• What is the government's expectation?
• HOW MANY ACADEMIES?

Q176 <Mrs. Hodgson:> I have a question about SEN, about which I am particularly interested. PricewaterhouseCoopers found that although the data show that Academies tend to have a higher proportion than average of children with SEN and children from disadvantaged backgrounds, there is a worrying trend towards these proportions falling and it says that this is an issue.

The comparison of the 2007 performance data statistics for Walsall and the Southwark Academies is interesting. For instance, the Walsall SEN statistics show a move towards the worrying trend of reducing the number of SEN pupils, with 10% fewer SEN students than average on its roll, compared with the City of London Academy, which shows the more usual trend of having an above-average number of children with SEN: 26% of its pupils have SEN, which is more than 6% above the 19.5% average
 

Can you comment on these statistics and say whether you agree with PricewaterhouseCoopers' evaluation? I should particularly like you, Jean, to comment on whether having 10% fewer than average SEN students shows a comprehensive intake.

<Chairman:> Let's go for it, then. However, all answers must be sharp and quick at this time of night, I am afraid.

<Martyn Coles:> I completely agree with your figures. It is representative of the area, which is the key issue. We talked earlier about us becoming a comprehensive school. Indeed, when I talk to colleagues-head teachers do talk about taking what we might call our fair share of pupils with special needs-I find that those pupils are distributed well across the borough and we take a full part in that. If I were to say that 48 families had nominated the Academy for next year, 48 out of 180 would be a disproportionate amount. However, the local authority is extremely good at distributing, in co-operation with parents and it has worked well. Certainly, in the early years we had even higher numbers-quite a significant number-but it has steadied out now and I am happy with the way that it works. It is about 10% of the intake each year.

<Jean Hickman:> Ours is representative of Walsall schools. You need to look at Walsall schools, not at Academies. Look at the other 16 comprehensive schools in Walsall and you will find that we take the same proportion of children into the Academy as they do.

Q177 <Mrs. Hodgson:> So Walsall does not meet the national average.

<Jean Hickman:> It does not, because Walsall does not believe in statementing.

Q178 <Mrs. Hodgson:> Right. But your figures also take in school action and school action plus, which is not about statemented children. The 19.5% figure that I was quoting includes school action and school action plus as well as statemented children. So Walsall does not believe in statementing and does not even believe in identifying children who have special educational needs.

<Jean Hickman:> Correct.

<Lucy Heller:> Ours would be much like Martyn's. Our figures tend to be consistent with local averages. We would want to play our part in working with the local authority and seeing that we have the right sort of number and that we do a good job for all children.

<Graham Badman:> When you have a strong partnership between schools, authorities should not be afraid to use their powers of direction. We can direct admissions where there are special educational needs or looked-after children, and I do. That applies to Academies as well.

Q179 <Paul Holmes:> Surely you cannot direct admissions to Academies. You can ask them to take the children; you cannot direct them.

<Graham Badman:> Under the new code, they would find it very hard to refuse the admission of a looked-after child, for example.

Q180 <Paul Holmes:> None the less, even under the new code, you cannot direct Academies. You can ask but not direct, whereas you can direct mainstream schools.

<Graham Badman:> Well, please do not tell them in that case.

Q181 <Mrs. Hodgson:> With your permission, Chairman, I have a similar question with regard to exclusions. I do not have any statistics to hand to compare figures on exclusions other than what PricewaterhouseCoopers has found and what I know from my own experience and my own borough, which is that a greater proportion of children are excluded from Academies. The evidence is here; that is a matter of fact. Also, when a child is excluded from a school, another school in the local authority area will often take them, but that may not be the case with Academies. Often that is because Academies are full. I am finding in my borough that the one Academy often totally refuses to play ball and will not take children excluded from another school, although when the Academy excludes children, other schools are expected to take them in, so there is now starting to be a worrying disparity among the schools.

<Chairman:> We are pressed for time and I know colleagues are getting a little restless, but I must keep a quorum here if we are to finish the last couple of questions, so can you respond briefly to Sharon's question?

<Martyn Coles:> I have taken pupils permanently excluded from other schools.

<Jean Hickman:> We are part of the Walsall managed move/transfer policy and we do likewise.

<Lucy Heller:> The same would be true for our schools.

<Graham Badman:> We do not have that problem. Unless there is a managed move process, the Academies will not do the job they are meant to do within a locality, so we encourage them all and we have not had any difficulty in getting our Academies to respond to a notion of managed moves where there are exclusions.

<Chairman:> Last tail gunner, I think we used to call them - Annette Brooke.

Q182 <Annette Brooke:> I have been reflecting on the relative importance of people in the system and the structures of the system. Let me give just one example. The fact that local authorities manage the admissions policies of schools gives me a lot of confidence, but that is not necessarily common to all Academies, so I would like to leave this meeting convinced that we could have a structure that meant that Academies were genuinely serving the public good. I am assuming that all of yours are, so can you tell me which changes we should have, apart from in the area of admissions policy, to get rid of all the niggly questions round the edges - the Saturday morning test and so on? That worries me. I visited an Academy that did that for the banding. What else is there that would ensure that these dynamic people were serving the public good?

<Chairman:> Let us start with Graham this time, rather than others leading all the time.

<Graham Badman:> I will go back to the issue of governance. The heads have made great play of the fact that they have strategic, directive, on-the-ball governors. That is great. It is not necessarily universal. I think we have too many governors and they are too parochial. Within a structure where you are getting school collaboration, you would take out a lot of the parochialism and niggles between schools by having a governance model that enabled schools to have their own governors but also a wider set of governance arrangements, for a town or a neighbourhood, where there was shared ownership of the problems of all the schools within that. Every head, I think, has to take responsibility for all the children, not just those within the purview of their school.

<Lucy Heller:> I would just refer to time. The Academies movement, perhaps like education in general, has suffered from an overload of initiatives and changes. We have already seen, in the relatively limited time that Academies have had to show their stuff, that things seem to be moving in the right direction. Generally, given time, people in local communities who have been, in some cases, violently opposed to them have come to change their mind once they have seen them in operation. I would say let it be. I would not make changes to anything. I do not see any instant -

Q183 <Annette Brooke:> You would not clip the wings of the freedom at all?

<Lucy Heller:> No, I would not. The freedoms are important, but I do not think that they are overwhelming. I do not see any signs that people are misusing them in any way. The change in the curriculum requirement said that Academies must follow the national curriculum in maths, science, ICT and English. I thought that was unnecessary simply because I am not aware of any Academy that has used the freedoms in a way that was at all damaging. It was a response to a question that had not really been asked. I am in favour of leaving things as they are and letting them go. Have a look at the next PricewaterhouseCoopers report when it comes.
 

Q184 <Annette Brooke:> There are obviously issues in relation to the admissions policies of some Academies, although not those here I am sure.

<Jean Hickman:> At the time, yes. It is five years since we began and there are certainly great differences now from the provision on the same site for the same community in north Walsall. There also has to be an increased clarity on what we are all about, which is probably why we are here today. The clarity needs to be by definition. There are an awful lot of words attached to every initiative; Academies have endless words attached to them. Those words need to be clearly defined so we all know what we mean when we talk about an independent state-maintained school or a transitional budget. What do those words definitely mean? At the moment, the clarity seems to be that by me defining a specific word, I have a different understanding of it than someone else. The definitions are not clear and clarity in time is what we need.
 

<Martyn Coles:> Indeed. I am almost turning full circle in saying that Academies on the whole have most definitely brought better standards to areas or institutions that have not previously had them - I do not care to comment on the whole country because I do not have experience of that. I agree with you: full and clearly transparent admissions policies should be the case for all state schools.
 

<Annette Brooke:> Thank you. Is that a good note to end on?