The Guardian view on academy schools: cracks in the system
The cracks in the English and Welsh school system are growing. So is the evidence that children are falling through them. Our report this week that four academy chains including the high-performing Harris Federation are losing between 5% and 7% of pupils in the run-up to GCSEs raises questions to which the schools, Ofsted and the government must now provide answers.
While the number of children leaving schools when they are aged 15 or 16 is rising nationally (from less than 0.1% seven years ago to 2% this year), and some large local authorities have seen rises of 4-5%, academies are losing more pupils than other types of schools. Guardian research this summer showed that the majority of schools that issued more than 20% of pupils with a fixed-term exclusion in 2016-17 were also academies.
Three of the four academy chains that have lost most GCSE-year pupils (although not Harris) responded to our data. Delta Academies Trust said the referral of teenagers to alternative provision was a “stringent process” involving parents and always undertaken “in the best interests of the child”. There is no reason to doubt schools’ good intentions. There are sometimes sound reasons for a child to move, even midway through a GCSE course. Individual children’s interests must in any case be balanced against those of other children and staff.
But the pattern of falling rolls, and the high rate of departures from some academies, point to issues around incentives. Are schools maximising their GCSE results at the expense of other considerations such as inclusion and pastoral care for pupils who are struggling? The data also points to the possibility that school policies and practices have been altered by shrinking resources – the impact of which are expected to feature in the BBC’s new series School. They also suggest continuing problems with behaviour.
Above all, there is the question of why it has been left to journalists and independent researchers to uncover the fact that schools are shedding pupils at such a rate. Earlier this year a study by FFT Education Datalab suggested that up to 7,700 pupils who should have been sitting GCSEs in 2017 were unaccounted for. In other words, while they had left mainstream schooling there was no evidence they had received an education elsewhere.
Alternative providers such as pupil referral units exist for a reason. But since outcomes for excluded pupils are poor, the threshold for exclusions is high and numbers closely monitored. The Guardian first highlighted the phenomenon of shrinking rolls by means other than exclusions in 2014. Since then, the practice known as “offrolling” has gained wider attention. Former Conservative children’s minster Edward Timpson is conducting a review for the government that will look at some of these issues. Ministers and Ofsted chief Amanda Spielman have voiced concerns about off-rolling, and Ofsted has developed a tool for use by inspectors.
The academies programme was designed to break up the monopolistic control of state-run schools by councils. While many well-run academy trusts deliver excellent education, the pat-
chwork arrangement has failed to deliver the promised improvements, and worrying gaps have appeared. These include failures in accounting and governance such as those at Bright Tribe, and the “zombie schools” left stranded when a chain has folded. They also include the thousands of pupils we now know are vanishing from school rolls each year. It is time for Ofsted to call schools to account for these children. In the longer term, we need a system with fewer, smaller cracks.