Disquieting truths behind academy ‘improvement’ revealed
Anastasia De Waal, 2 July 2010
Lack of transparency together with a flawed system of equivalence means that the key to rapid ‘improvement’ in some academies has been ‘going soft’, investigation reveals.
Following Civitas research on academies’ curricula in December, together with Tristram Hunt MP, we’ve been investigating GCSE and equivalent results by tabling PQs. Evidence gathered in the Civitas preliminary findings is being confirmed:
- Whilst academies are lauded on the basis of ‘improving at twice the rate of mainstream schools’, PQs reveal that the proportion of academies’ A*-Cs gained in non-GCSE ‘equivalents’ is also twice the rate of mainstream schools
- Academies’ A*-Cs gained in academic GCSEs constitute just 49 per cent, compared to 73 per cent in all other maintained schools
Depressingly, this new data reaffirms our initial research findings – academies are replacing academic subjects with so-called equivalents. This is concerning because equivalent qualifications at GCSE are of extremely questionable value: neither academic nor vocational. The ultimate concern is that the already deprived are being deprived of academic learning and that un-checked this is set to continue much further.
Nope actually it doesn’t.
Not having access to your entire research, obviously, but you aren’t comparing like with like ; Academies have been until now almost all failing schools. Failing Schools have been using these various scams* for years (goes back to Thomas Telford and the GNVQ ICT about 10 years ago) to get their results up statistically, because they usually can’t do anything much about their poor intake.
Schools which aren’t failing generally won’t do too many joke courses because they don’t need to.
You need to compare like for like – e.g. schools with the same intake-by-ability as the Academies. I suspect this will show a slightly higher tendency on the part of Academies because of the PR / Spin issues, but not (for example) a gap of 49% to 73%.
Al the concerns are entirely justified ; but it’s not really an issue about Academies per se.
* Warwick Mansell wrote an excellent book about how exams and assessment are fiddled a couple of years ago.