Change at the chalkface

I've written this feature on the Gove legacy for the October edition of Public Finance.

David Cameron's replacement of Michael Gove with Nicky Morgan as education secretary caused consternation among reformers whilst exciting enthusiasm in many staffrooms. Reformers fear his changes will be watered down by his successor; many teachers hope the relentless pressure of change will ease.

But Gove’s legacy may lie less in academies and free schools than in the changes to the curriculum, teaching and accountability. And a focus on classroom teaching by Morgan, with her more conciliatory tone to teachers, could reap real dividends.

Academies are funded directly by the government rather than local authorities, and have had greater freedoms over the curriculum, teachers’ pay and admissions, subject to regulation and funding agreements. By May 2010, the growing programme was targeted on underachieving secondary schools, with 203 such ‘sponsored academies’ already open and 60 more due that autumn.

Gove allowed successful schools to become academies and brought primaries into the programme. Many signed up for extra cash – typically £250,000 per secondary school – as they gained control of their local authority budgets. At a time of austerity, it was a no-brainer. In return, these ‘converter academies’ would work with weaker schools. Most say they do, though the extent to which they do so varies, and academy take-up has been much slower in primary schools.

Meanwhile, Gove also introduced ‘free schools’, essentially new academies set up in response to parental demand or innovative ideas from teachers, educational and faith-based charities. The government barred local authorities from establishing any traditional community schools.

Since 2010, the number of academies has grown rapidly. There are now over 4,000 academies, including nearly two-thirds of secondary and about one in eight primary schools, as well as dozens of technical academies – 30 university technical colleges and 37 studio schools with practical curriculums and close industry links for 14- to 19-year-olds.

Sponsored academies – of which there are now 1,100 – were intended to improve standards, particularly for the poorest students, which is why Gove required many failing primaries to change status, sometimes in the teeth of strong local opposition. Downhills primary school in Tottenham, north London – now the Harris Primary Academy Philip Lane – was a particular flashpoint and the scene of strong protests. The proportion of its pupils getting the expected level 4 in reading, writing and maths rose from 69% to 77% this summer – twice the national average improvement.

And, sponsored academies generally have improved faster than other schools, albeit from a lower base. Many belong to chains – groups led by an educational charity, a university or a successful school. Sutton Trust analysis in July found that disadvantaged pupils in nine of 31 chains studied had better results than the average for all schools, while improvements in 18 chains were faster than average. Some well-known chains, like Harris and Ark, each with 27 academies, do particularly well. But the study confirmed Department for Education concerns that other chains that had grown very rapidly since 2010 were underperforming.

The DfE capped 14 academy chains in March, including the 77-school Academies Enterprise Trust. They must focus on improving their existing schools before being allowed further expansion. Ministers also forced another academy chain, E-Act, to transfer 10 of its 34 schools to other sponsors. Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw has inspected weaker academies in co-ordinated swoops across chains, including AET, where half the 12 academies inspected were deemed inadequate. He has yet to be given the power by ministers to inspect chains as separate entities.

This mixed picture also extends to the 250 free schools now open, though few have been open long enough for a full judgment. Seventy-nine free schools opened this term and 76 more have been approved, but the programme still feels incoherent. It may be the default mechanism for new schools with rising demand for new places, but relatively few free schools result from parental action.

Instead, there is an eclectic mix of genuine teacher innovation and rebranding of existing options, including faith schools, former independent schools or new academies established by chains.
One celebrated success has been the London Academy of Excellence, a free school for sixth formers in Stratford, east London, supported by Eton and the independent Brighton College, which sent four of its 160 students to Oxbridge and 68 to Russell Group universities this year. However, the local college says it does well too: of the 75 students it admitted with the 5A* or A grades at GCSE required by LAE, 60 went to Russell Group universities and two to Oxbridge.

Other free schools have faced real difficulties. The Montessori Discovery free school in Crawley, Sussex, had to close in January after a damning Ofsted report. Anal ysis by independent factchecking organisation Full Fact of Ofsted data suggests a similar proportion of free schools were rated outstanding as other schools, but a higher proportion rated inadequate or failing, based on 40 free school inspections.

For all the arguments about academies and free schools, their impact may be more prosaic than their supporters or critics allow. Good chains have an effective model absent in weaker chains. But their success still reflects quality of leadership and teaching, and their consistent application, which may not simply be an academy effect when many schools are forming collective trusts and federations.

This is why other reforms may matter more. There is growing interest in using research evidence to inform school improvement. Since 2011, the Education Endowment Foundation, a sister charity of the Sutton Trust established with £135m of government money to help improve results for disadvantaged pupils, has used 75 randomised trials to test approaches to school improvement. Nearly half of school leaders now consult its research evidence.

Tougher accountability is making its mark too. Ofsted has put many coasting schools into special measures and placed more emphasis on good teaching, downgrading some previously top-rated schools. Gove toughened Labour’s floor targets, requiring weaker schools to achieve ever-rising minimum standards. Failure often prompts a requirement to become an academy.

However, the biggest upheaval has been to the curriculum and exams. This term, primary pupils face tougher spelling, grammar, punctuation and mental arithmetic lessons, in addition to phonics checks introduced in 2012, while secondary schools are introducing computer science, harder maths and more historical chronology. GCSE coursework, modularity and resits have been dropped, leading to a dip in English performance this year. Many vocational qualifications have been devalued or removed from the league tables.

From 2016, secondary schools will be judged on their best eight GCSE subjects, using average points, rather than the five best graded C or above as now. This builds on the English Baccalaureate, a league table measure of English, maths, science, languages and humanities results. The combined impact is intended to make exams harder and ensure that schools don’t game the league tables to conceal underlying weaknesses. However, they also make it much harder to make a fair judgment on the success of Gove’s reforms, and could force down results at once struggling schools and academies that were starting to improve.

Yet behind the flurry of change, there remains an underlying truth. The two things that make the most difference to a school’s success, particularly for poorer pupils, are the quality of its teaching and the calibre of its leaders.

Gove has introduced teaching schools, with a remit to improve teaching quality among groups of local schools, and expanded school-based teacher training. But for all the emphasis on new teachers – 35,000 are recruited each year, and their quality has been improving alongside that of school leaders – there is far too little done to improve the skills of the 450,000 serving teachers in England’s classrooms. In fact, there is much more variation in the quality of teaching within schools than there is between schools.

Improved professional development and teacher appraisal may not set reformers’ pulses racing, but they could make most difference at the chalkface. Sutton Trust research has shown that raising the quality of the weakest tenth of teachers to the average would lift England from a middling position in the OECD international league tables to the top five, and the trust is now working with the Gates Foundation to capture international best practice. That could deliver the revolution in standards that politicians want to see – in academies and community schools alike.

Freedom to teach well?

In my latest Sutton Trust blog, I note that arguments over free schools miss the importance of reducing in-school differences in the quality of teaching.

The damning Ofsted report on the Al-Madinah free school in Derby has invigorated a lively debate on a flagship policy of the coalition. It should also prompt some soul-searching about the balance between structures and standards in school improvement policy.

Free schools were introduced in 2010 as part of a ramping up of the academy model introduced by Labour. Academies share a number of characteristics: they are funded centrally rather than through local government, which means they receive more of the funds that are otherwise pooled locally; they have freedoms to vary non-core subjects in the national curriculum. They can set their own pay scales; and like foundation and voluntary-aided schools, they have freedom over their land and buildings, though these remain in trust. Under the original model, all academies had to have sponsors: academy chains or trusts, universities, philanthropists or successful schools. An initial expectation that sponsors made a financial contribution was dropped.

Labour’s academies were largely targeted at failing secondary schools in disadvantaged areas. There were some exceptions: a small number of independent schools entered the state sector as academies and a couple of outstanding schools were allowed to convert in return for sponsoring weaker schools in new chains. The academy chain model developed at this time, with organisations like Ark, Harris and United Learning growing significantly.

The coalition extended this sponsor model to primary schools, though its initial focus was on allowing successful schools to convert: half the 3200 secondaries in England are now academies, though fewer than 10 per cent of primaries are. They also created a model for new academies which they called free schools. Legally, they are little different from academies, though opponents have seized on the fact that all their teachers do not have to have qualified teacher status. If they have a faith character, they are also expected to keep 50% of places for those of other or no faiths, though the nature of some faith schools is such that this stricture is unlikely to be invoked.

Sponsored academies have had positive research results, Stephen Machin and James Vernoit at the London School of Economics, in a 2011 report, which looked at the academies that started between 2001 and 2008, concluded:

Our results suggest that moving to a more autonomous school structure through academy conversion generates a significant improvement in the quality of their pupil intake and a significant improvement in pupil performance. We also find significant external effects on the pupil intake and the pupil performance of neighbouring schools. All of these results are strongest for the schools that have been academies for longer and for those who experienced the largest increase in their school autonomy. In essence, the results paint a (relatively) positive picture of the academy schools that were introduced by the Labour government of 1997‐2010. The caveat is that such benefits have, at least for the schools we consider, taken a while to materialise.

However, this research was focused on sponsored academies. The selling point – or problem, depending on your perspective - with free schools is that there is no single model. So just as the experience of the Derby Muslim school cannot be translated to the Bristol Cathedral School’s primary that was celebrated on the Today programme this morning, the success stories of some free schools won’t necessarily translate into successes for others run on very different lines. And that is as true of academy chains, where some models appear more successful than others.

It may be that critics are right to demand greater regulation, and certainly financial controls will be hugely important, but it is surely as likely that the biggest determinants of success and failure will lie in the quality of leadership (including in the sponsors) and the quality of teaching. The successful academy chains have very clear approaches to leadership and teaching. Moreover, international evidence is that variation in teaching standards is greater within schools than between schools.  OECD research highlighted by the National College has shown that as much as 80 per cent of the variation in achievement among UK students lay within schools, four times more than that between schools.

In a separate report for the Sutton Trust, Eric Hanushek from Stanford, with Stephen Machin and Richard Murphy at the LSE, have shown that English schools could improve their low position in international league tables in Reading and Mathematics and become one of the top five education performers in the world within 10 years if the performance of the country’s least effective teachers was brought up to the national average. Richard Murphy’s March report for the Trust highlighted how schools can use appraisal to improve performance, and it is an area where the Sutton Trust will do more research in the coming year.

The truth is, whatever the arguments over school structures, it is in improving the quality of our 430,000-strong teaching workforce that the greatest gains in standards can be made. Those free schools and academies that successfully narrow that gap are the ones that will succeed.

Do Gove's changes add up?

I've written this column for the September edition of Public Finance magazine:

There’s little that Michael Gove and his advisers like more than crunching numbers. The education secretary is very proud of the mountains of data, previously shared only with schools, that are now publicly available.

So, the figures for academies and free schools appear encouraging. By July, 1,590 English schools – mostly successful secondaries – had chosen greater independence as academies. Another 540 will convert this term, making more than half of England’s 3,200 secondary schools academies, although just 6% of primaries.

Another 367 schools are sponsored academies, with external support, often from a school chain such as Ark or Harris, used to improve standards. Some 280 are close to approval, including 187 poorly performing primaries.

In terms of free schools – new academies sponsored by parents, teachers, charities or faith groups – 68 are opening this term, adding to the two dozen already open; 102 more are planned, some focusing on special educational needs or ‘alternative’ provision for disaffected youngsters.

But these numbers alone won’t produce better results. And this new school year will test the effectiveness of the coalition’s laissez-faire approach.

It is easier to persuade a school to convert to academy status than to transform a failing school. And while some converter academies chose independence to change their curriculum or timetable, three-quarters did so to improve their financial position and avoid budget cuts.

Nationally funded academies receive extra money for services previously provided by local authorities, often greatly exceeding their value. For secondary schools, this could add several hundred thousand pounds to their annual budget. Significantly, Gove now plans to reduce these differentials, making converting less attractive.

But he must also persuade converters to support weaker schools. Gove resisted making this a condition of their funding, so relatively few have done so. This is particularly a problem for primary schools. Some attempts to force change have attracted local opposition. A bigger obstacle is the absence of sponsors.

The big chains have focused on secondary schools. While they will sponsor a few primaries, they won’t support hundreds. Gove needs successful schools to step in, but his refusal to link such change to the extra cash has made his task harder.

His other primary problem is whether there will be enough places. The focus on free schools – some in areas with little demand for new schools – has led to a potential shortage of places for primary-age children, particularly in cities. The Department for Education gave £500m to help resolve this in April, but now estimates that 736,000 more places will be needed by 2020. Meeting this demand would cost at least £3bn extra a year.

Some schools are considering double shifts to cope. If significant numbers of children don’t have a place, the emphasis on free schools could become a political headache.

Shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg has already shifted Labour’s position from opposition to free schools to focusing new schools on meeting parental demand.

The government says its main goal is narrowing the educational gap between rich and poor pupils – poorer children perform significantly worse at GCSE and in tests at age 11 than others.

Yet without the right levers, it might fail to do so. Already, there is evidence that the pupil premium, which gives schools extra cash for pupils entitled to free school meals, is not being used where it might have most impact. A Sutton Trust study showed that 28% of teachers did not know how the cash was being used, and others were using it in ways that had little proven impact.

The government has no way to ensure that the pupil premium – which is set to absorb £2.5bn of the education budget by 2015 – is well spent or to link it to outcomes. Indeed, critics believe the premium could stand as a metaphor for the coalition’s education reforms: strong on inputs but weak on outcomes. This school year, Gove must show that his reforms can deliver results – and not just with the low-hanging fruit.

How novel are the Free Schools?

This month's opening of 24 free schools has had the media in a permanent state of excitement. And, on the face of it, the DFE has pulled off an impressive feat in seeing so many of the Conservatives' flagships opening so soon after the general election. After all, earlier this year, it seemed like just eight would be ready. However, a closer analysis of the new schools suggests all is not quite what it seems.

17 of the 24 are small primary schools, so comparisons with the early (secondary) academies that replaced failing schools are unworthy and facile, not least as the groundwork for the free schools had already been laid, as we shall see.

In many cases, new primaries would have been needed to respond to demographic changes. And it is good that these will be academies, but they would have been needed anyway.

Of those 24, there are ten that could be described as faith-based. David Blunkett opened the door to new faith schools when - in the face of Tory opposition when they were last in power - he approved the first Muslim schools in 1998, eight months after the general election. Plenty of new faith schools followed. Some became voluntary-aided schools, others foundation schools or academies (which is all in governance terms that 'free schools' are) and it is quite likely that the faith-based schools opening this week could have followed this route.

Then, there are four independent school conversions. Here, there is a direct read across to a policy started by Labour, where schools like Belvedere in Liverpool and Colston Girls in Bristol - more significant independent secondary schools than those opening this week - joined the state sector as academies.

Add to that another group of five schools sponsored by academies, mainly new primaries. Some even use the name 'academy'. To be fair to Gove, he has opened the academies programme to primary schools where Labour had confined primary age academies to the 'all through' route. But this group is simply an extension  of existing brands like Ark and E-Act, as well as an imaginative response to demand by the Cuckoo Hall academy in Edmonton, the first of Gove's primary academies. These are simply additional sponsor-led academies.

Perhaps five - including Toby Young's West London Free School - so far are what might be called parent or teacher-promoted free schools (one is preventing a council closure plan). Here, again, Gove has stripped back the bureaucracy that made it difficult for parent promoters in the past, though several did open under Labour and the rules were changed in their favour from 2006.

These schools are all new academies, as their legislative basis makes clear. What they are not is free schools on the Swedish model, where profit-making companies respond to parental demand, and where there was no tradition of the sort of diversity offered by academies, foundation ands voluntary-aided schools.

But it is in the expansion of sponsor-led academies, both primary and secondary, that the potential for a genuine improvement in standards most lies. DFE says that 45 more opened this week, in disadvantaged areas or replacing failing schools, and a further 49 will open in the New Year. The results from the big academy sponsors this year for academies opened under Labour were remarkable, but have not been properly publicised - many had improvements in excess of ten percentage points this year. This is where the gritty school reforms will continue.

Free schools certainly have a place in the fabric of our education system. They can provide parents with greater options, and it would be wrong simply to confine them to poorer areas. But they should also be linked to improvement in disadvantaged areas. It is right to have ways to enable new faith schools to respond to demand and good independent schools to drop fees and selection. However, the Government should be judged on how it lifts standards across the board, including in once failing schools that have become academies, rather than the number of schools it opens under a new brand name.

Clegg's real threat to coalition school plans

The Deputy Prime Minister's spinners were out on manouevres this weekend, briefing a lot of nonsense about how our hero had defeated the nasty Tory profit-monger Michael Gove over his plans to allow greedy capitalists to make a few bob out of free schools. Since no such plan is on the agenda in Government (much to the annoyance of some providers and think tanks) and was even ruled out in the Tory manifesto, this particular Aunt Sally seemed to have been introduced merely to impress the more gullible types at the forthcoming Liberal Democrat conference, as well as the Sunday lobby with its particular fondness for the genre.

Unsurprisingly, there is little in Nick Clegg's actual speech today to justify any of that hype. But there is a lot that is potentially rather more alarming for free schools and academies, and is a real threat to their independent development. This threat comes from a clear desire by the DPM to restore the role of local authorities in several crucial respects. Here is what he says:

I think some confusion has been allowed to grow around our long term vision for schools: There’s an increasing belief that we are trying to sideline local authorities altogether because Academies so far have only had a direct relationship with the Secretary of State and the department in Whitehall. So let me straighten this out once and for all. This government wants all schools, over time, to have the opportunity to be autonomous with Academy freedoms. Both Liberal Democrats and Conservatives promised that in our manifestos. But we do not want that to lead to mass centralisation of the schools system. Far from it: as Academies become more commonplace, and eventually the norm, we will make sure people do not lose their voice over what local schools provide. So we will need to develop a new role and relationship between schools, central and local government.

Councils have an essential job. We will ensure they have a stronger role in making sure there are school places in the area for every child, not just those who know how to play the system. We have strengthened their role in admissions. They will oversee our new, fairer, admissions code. A code which makes it easier for the poorest to get the best places and easier for any citizen to complain if the rules are broken. We will strengthen their role supporting children with special needs. Sarah Teather is bringing forward a radical set of reforms which will ensure local councils can help knock heads together to get a better deal for disabled and disadvantaged children. And we will give them a critical role ensuring there is fairer funding Local authorities will help ensure the schools forums which currently divide up the cake locally are more transparent and they will help guarantee that academies, and other schools, are funded on exactly the same basis.

But we can – and we will – go further. Where there are no schools the local authority "owns" any more - there should be no barrier to the local authority working in a new relationship with academies, in partnership with central government.
The local authority could have a key role in deciding who new providers are and holding existing providers more sharply to account. Local authorities, closer by their very nature to their community than the Secretary of State, could be more determined than distant Whitehall to drive up attainment in their own patch – for example by setting higher standards for all schools in their area. That is why I am inviting those local authorities which wish to move to the new phase to grasp this opportunity and be involved in piloting this new role, starting from next year.

For most of the schools converting to academy status, a desire to have greater independence from the local authority is a big selling point. So too for some of those involved with free schools: read what Patricia Sowter, who is sponsoring Woodpecker Hall Academy, told me in my article in this month's Public Finance.

Already, that independence is being eroded, the result one suspects as much of pressure from a resurgent Conservative-led Local Government Association as of the DPM's arm-twisting at the cabinet table. The Government has retreated on plans to move to a national funding formula, as the DPM notes approvingly in his speech, and is giving the job to local authorities to decide (with a few extra restrictions) on the funding of academies and free schools in their area, even if the money is paid by a national agency. It remains to be seen, too, whether large authorities like Birmingham and Kent, where their Conservative politicians oppose coalition academy policies, not to mention the councillors across the country of all parties who are hostile, will see this new phase in quite the same spirit that the DPM envisages.

Yesterday, I thought that Clegg's spin about profit-makers was all about currying favour with his activists. Today I wonder whether it was as much about deflecting the media from his rather more worrying pledge to revitalise the role of local authorities in education. That is a battle that he and his Tory councillor allies appear already to have won.

Where next for academies and free schools policy

I have written a feature analysis piece for the September edition of Public Finance on the development of academies and free schools in the future. You can read the article here.

Gove's schools 'revolution' needs to be more than a rhetorical numbers game

Last week the Government unveiled its new Admissions Code with further fanfare about its supposedly revolutionary potential. There are a few useful changes, and the odd perverse one. It makes sense to combine a permissive attitude to the expansion of good schools with the opportunity for academies and free schools to prioritise pupils on free school meals (though why voluntary-aided church schools are excluded is not explained). The Schools Adjudicator may not be able to investigate concerns off his own bat, but will now cover Academies and must respond to complaints from anybody, not just other admissions authorities. Oddly, area-wide lotteries are banned, though banding stays and schools may run their own independently-supervised lotteries; again, a change lacking logic but seemingly based on one study of the Brighton experience, which was in reality as much about addressing middle class grievances as reducing social segregation. Parents have a bit longer to appeal against admissions offers and teaching staff can be prioritised in school admissions policies even where there are no shortages.

What is remarkable about the code, besides the admirable sub-editing job performed on its overlong predecessors, is how much it retains of that which Labour introduced. In reality, most school admissions will continue to place priority on distance and siblings, while new selection is still outlawed, and the coalition must hope that enough free schools are established and that the improvements of the last decade continue apace so that dissatisfaction in urban areas with admissions is reduced. But of more importance to their stated priorities is the extent to which the new Code linked with the pupil premium, school structural reforms and changes to accountability combine to improve social mobility.

And, on that, the jury is still out. The rhetoric has certainly been bracing, and the Government's media cheerleaders have become over-excited at the pace of academy conversions. But there are a number of important issues that need to be addressed if the rhetoric is to affect reality on the ground.

First, the pupil premium is too low this year at £430 per pupil to make much difference, especially as schools are coming to terms with other budget cuts. The premium should reach £1600 by 2014-15 and may then have a bigger impact, but a lot will depend on how schools are held accountable for its results. The league tables may include measures of achievement and progress for poorer pupils, but it will be the value attached to such measures in the Ofsted inspection framework that matter most: the new league table measures will not greatly affect parental choices in themselves.

Second, the structural reforms are certainly a victory for advocates of greater independence and diversity - I would certainly count myself as one. But with a few admirable exceptions, most of the 40 planned free schools will do little for the poorest students, however much they satisfy middle class or religious parental aspirations. And most converter academies are converting so for financial reasons. There is little sign that the DFE is using Michael Gove's initial commitment to ensuring strong system leadership from the new academies, within funding agreements for example. Meanwhile, the Government has diverted time and effort to the legal process of academy conversion from the far tougher job of turning around failing schools, even though the £25,000 grant available to converters should cover their legal costs. It insults the intelligence to pretend that the hard grind needed to turn around or replace failing schools is comparable to the fairly simple, financially persuasive and legal process required for successful schools, and without the same drive that Andrew Adonis brought to sponsor-led reform, there will not be the gains that were made by Tony Blair's Academies. Liz Sidwell is making a good start as Schools Commissioner, but the DFE effort as a whole needs to focus on the hard rather than the easy wins. Inputs are not the same as outcomes.

And finally, the changes to the Admissions Code are, understandably, permissive. But the pupil premium offers a chance to use some leverage. Prioritising poorer pupils in successful schools could be one of a menu of possibilities linked to a higher premium in the future. As could becoming a National Leader of Education, or successful curriculum innovation. But without some conditionality, the pupil premium is in danger of being a damp squib. Unless it does so, the Treasury will start to question the value for money in continuing to raise the level of the premium at a time of austerity.

The coalition has made a lot of noise about social mobility. It has ostensibly put some money where its mouth is, with the pupil premium. But it has not - as yet - joined the dots of its various policies to ensure that it makes the impact it says it wants to see in the results achieved by the poorest pupils. It must start to do so.

Slow progress on free schools

Michael Gove put a brave face on it over the weekend as he sought to talk up interest in free schools. Yet for all the rhetorical enthusiasm, the fact is that just eight primary free schools are likely to be ready to open in the next two years, with perhaps another 27 in some sense advanced. We should not scorn these projects: each represents the vision of their promoters and can offer extra diversity in their communities. But one can question the importance of their development to wider school reform. The TES in an editorial last Friday argued that free schools are an irrelevant sideshow, arguing that the system is only likely to take off if for-profit providers are allowed, something politically untenable at least before the next election.

And a closer inspection of the eight free schools announced on Friday suggests little that could not have been established under existing programmes.

* There is a Suffolk school becoming 'free' to avert local authority closure by becoming a secondary school
* Jewish, Hindu and Anglican religious schools of the sort that expanded significantly under Labour
* A Montessori school that will surely eschew ministerial phonics edicts
* Two schools that actually call themselves academies, one established by Ark, one of the strongest academy chains and the other by a next door primary academy in Enfield.
* There is only one school that suggests a genuine desire by parents and teachers to introduce something wholly new: The Free School, Norwich

Essentially they are eight new academies - albeit mainly in the primary sector where Labour unwisely declined to expand academies. They differ little from existing academies or religious schools, and the pattern seems little different with most of the other 27 (aside, perhaps, from the planned Mahirishi school in Lancashire.

All of which makes one wonder why Andy Burnham, Labour's education spokesman, has set himself so against free schools. His opposition is as ridiculous as the elaborate claims being made by their enthusiasts on the other side. Free schools may offer a useful addition to the educational landscape, they may provide a little extra competition (and a few planning headaches for some councils). And they may give their pupils and parents a sense that state education can meet their needs.

But they seem pretty unlikely to transform the system in the way that the original secondary academies (and, legally, free schools are simply academies) - particularly those established in disadvantaged areas with strong sponsors - already have. That is because, unlike Sweden or America, where free and charter schools have thrived, Britain already has a strong tradition of diversity and independence in the state sector. That said, no Labour government is going to reverse what has already been set up: so our spokespeople should stop pretending otherwise. Instead, let's welcome those free schools that see the light of day, but focus our energies on ensuring that academies - whatever they are called - continue to advance the lifechances of children in the poorest areas of the country.

A delayed revolution?

Michael Gove has been at pains to stress the radicalism of his school reforms, as critics charge that it all amounts to a bit of a damp squib. While his critics are wrong to argue against the expansion of academies and the growth of free schools, Gove is guilty of taking his eye off the ball - and misunderstanding the nature of academy improvement under Labour.

By focusing on the 32 'new academies', Gove largely ignored the 64 academies that had been planned by Labour. Yet it is the latter group that can do most to raise standards - building on a further 7% point rise this year in open academies - and by expending so much political capital on encouraging outstanding schools to take on academy powers, the Education Secretary is in danger of sidelining their crucial role in reform.

During the passage of the Academies Bill, Gove said that the new academies would be expected to work with other weaker schools to help them to improve. Yet this aspect of their role has been all but forgotten. Without even having a sponsor, they are closer to foundation schools than existing academies. Their moral purpose needs to be restated clearly.

But the success of the existing academies has not just been about sponsorship, strong leadership and a new ethos. Ministers underestimate the importance of new buildings and facilities at their peril. If the academies drive in disadvantaged areas is not to falter, there must be a clear sense of the capital that is available in schools that require more than basic refurbishment.

Finally, today's free schools list must be a big disappointment to ministers. Five of the new schools are religious schools - Labour significantly expanded their number, embracing other faiths too. Few of the other eleven could not have opened under existing legislation, at least with a sympathetic minister in charge. With money limited, it will be particularly hard to develop the free school model but it will need considerably more innovation than this group suggests for the policy to live up to its radical billing.

Interestingly, Gove floated a promising idea for a GCSE-Bac yesterday, where students would gain credits for gaining a broad mix of GCSEs. This would be a positive alternative to simply denying any credit for vocational qualifications, as ministers had previously proposed. And with the right support, it could also give a boost to the International Baccalaureate in state schools. It will be interesting to see the details as they emerge.

Blair's education revolution bears fruit

Not having read Tony Blair's book yet, I shall leave it to others to litter their blogs with extracts and index-referencing. But it is notable that his memoirs appear on a day when the government has published remarkable data confirming the success of academies.

This is not about Michael Gove's decision to focus his attention on persuading outstanding schools to join the movement, or the development of free schools, on which initial overambition has been replaced by cautious realism. Rather it is about the relatively unsung success of Blair's academies which were embraced (albeit with some pointless interference with their independence) by his successor despite earlier misgivings.

Today sees a lot of attention on the limited number of 'new' academies - there are 32 outstanding schools that heroically managed to convert in time for a new term, with 110 more on the way - but it is also the start of term for 64 academies that had been initiated by the Labour government. They are largely in disadvantaged areas, replacing failing schools and offering new hope and leadership for thousands of youngsters.

Early indications suggest that academies taking GCSEs in both 2009 and 2010 have seen their GCSE results rise by a fifth - from 35% to 42% of pupils gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths - in a single year. This is three times the national average improvement rate (after several years of similar such improvements). Results in schools run by Harris and Ark have exceeded an 11% rise, and the remarkable Mossbourne Academy has stayed above the 80% mark despite a slight dip. When one considers that half of all secondary schools in England couldn't get 30% of their pupils to achieve the five good GCSE standard in 1997, and many inner city schools found 20% a challenge, this is a remarkable result. [Fewer than 200/3200 schools are likely to be below 30% this year]

The challenge for the coalition is three-fold. First, having devoted so much energy to encouraging outstanding schools to become academies, they must refocus their energies on failing schools and turning them around; there are fewer than before, but the challenge remains. Second, they must ensure that their pupil premium does not take money away from academies in disadvantaged areas, which it could well do if the Treasury has its way, and consider linking part of the premium to improvement. And third, they should be much more imaginative in encouraging the development of new academy trusts, particularly for primary schools but also to link outstanding academies with schools that need extra support. There has been a lot of rhetoric about social mobility: we have yet to see the real detail.

Academies are a success story for disadvantaged pupils - but they will only continue to be so if the detail of the policy focus is as relentless as it was when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

The future for free schools

The coalition's plans for free schools are given a bit more detail today. As I reported in my recent Public Finance article, there is a greater emphasis on the potential for teacher-led than parent-led schools. Otherwise, we are told that a group of 50 or so parents could club together to demand a new primary school; a larger number will be needed for a secondary (the latter are more likely to be developed by existing academy providers and secondary schools). They will be governed in a way similar to academies, and subject to Ofsted inspections, tests and tables. And the talk now is of taking over shops rather than shiny new buildings. So far, so predictable - and there was a sensible recognition this morning that some will fail, as has happened to over 600 of the 5000+ charter schools in the US .

I have no doubt that there will a number of high profile free school developments, including Toby Young's much publicised plans and those supported by some of the Teach First graduates. A more difficult group will be those parents who set up a free school simply to stymie local authority rationalisations: at a time of spending cuts, there will be some high profile battles with angry councillors. Equally, there will be plenty of difficult judgment calls when the bids from Muslim schools emerge, though it is likely that the efforts of scientologists and other cults will be stopped unless they successfully disguise their true backers.

Labour should not oppose the development of free schools, provided they are non-selective. After all, they build on an architecture developed in its education bills. The main change proposed by Michael Gove is a freeing up of planning restrictions that councils had used - with no attempt by Ed Balls to stop them doing so - to block the parental rights to demand a new school set out in the 2006 Education and Inspections Act. Instead of adopting a kneejerk defence of existing planning rules or local authorities, the next leader of the Labour party should look creatively at the model to develop imaginative new groups of free schools including in disadvantaged areas, some of which might challenge the rigid curriculum orthodoxy schizophrenically embraced by the Conservative front bench. Indeed, such imaginative thinking would be far more likely to help us win back Southern voters than talk of abolishing the charitable status of independent schools.

However, the programme's supporters are being a touch naive in their expectations about how rapidly this programme will develop. The £50 million diversity pot announced today will help some, but it will take a lot more effort than they think to develop a programme of Swedish-style or US charter school proportions. The main reason is that both systems lacked diversity before those developments. Indeed, Swedish free schools are still required to teach the national curriculum. By contrast, a huge diversity and significant autonomy has developed in our system under both Labour and Conservative governments. Not only will there be in excess of 300 academies from this autumn, there are thousands of religious schools (that don't get public funding in the US) and over 1200 foundation schools that have many of the freedoms enjoyed by academies already. Moreover, the degree of autonomy over staff and budgets enjoyed by community - local authority - school heads is far greater than in most other developed countries. Of course, there are challenges in moving our system towards the achievement levels of countries or territories with much higher degrees of ethnic homogeneity like Finland or Singapore, and Gove is right to be ambitious about improving standards, though he is wrong to underestimate how much progress has been made in recent years. But a far greater contribution to that further improvement is likely to emerge from plans for the expansion of mainstream academies, better teacher quality and strong accountability.

Back to schools

I have written the cover feature for this week's Public Finance on the Coalition's plans for schools, which includes an interview with Michael Gove:

The giant rainbow logo overshadowing Ed Balls’s Department for Children, Schools and Families came down as soon as the coalition deal was done. The DCSF was renamed the Department for Education, and Michael Gove took responsibility for the schools policy he had developed in opposition.

Gove was joined at Sanctuary Buildings by Nick Gibb, a traditionalist schools minister, and Tim Loughton as the junior children’s minister, both ­members of his shadow team.

The Liberal Democrats have Sarah Teather as minister of state for children, in pole position to put their ‘pupil premium’ policy – extra payments to schools for disadvantaged children – into practice. Jonathan Hill, Gibb’s deputy, is a new peer who ran Conservative prime minister John ­Major’s ­political office in the early 1990s.

Gove quickly identified £670m of spending cuts and launched two Bills in the Queen’s Speech. The first tweaks ­Labour’s academies legislation to allow outstanding primary and secondary schools to join a streamlined programme. It also enables funding for parents and teachers to establish ‘free schools’ with charitable foundations. Gove has said he is not ­ideologically opposed to profit-making organisations running schools, but he remains pragmatically committed to a not-for-profit programme.

A summer white paper will herald the second Bill in the autumn. It will introduce the pupil premium, allow head teachers to detain pupils more easily, refocus Ofsted inspections and remove non-academic subjects from the national curriculum. The Bill will also scrap the Qualifications & Curriculum Development Agency, responsible for curriculum development, and the General Teaching Council for England, which has regulated teachers since 2001. Its residual responsibilities will be transferred to the ­Department for Education or other agencies.

Interest in free schools is growing rapidly, according to the New Schools Network, a charity run by ex-Gove adviser Rachel Wolf, to put parents’ and other groups in touch with academy providers such as Ark and the Harris Trust. The network has had 550 expressions of interest from parents, teachers and charities in establishing new free schools. Fifteen parent-led schools could open next year, using buildings that are closing in local authority reorganisations, with new teacher-led schools from 2012. ‘Just over half those we are working with are groups of teachers who want to set up schools in deprived areas,’ Wolf says.

Some of the keenest parents face local school closures. In April, David Cameron and Gove backed a campaign at Birkenshaw Middle school in Kirklees in West Yorkshire. Local parents wanted to convert a closing 380-pupil school for 8 to 12 year-olds into a 900-pupil secondary school from 2013, at a cost of £15m. Balls rejected the proposal, accepting advice that it would damage the financial ­viability of other local schools. Kirklees council is reluctant to hand over the school site, preferring to focus on a new academy three miles away for its residents – Birkenshaw attracts many Leeds and Bradford pupils. But the parents say this would force pupils to travel further and leave too few school places locally.

Campaigner Lesley Surman, who has sons aged 8, 10 and 11, says: ‘We tried to work with the council, but they were ­totally opposed to what we were doing.

‘This is not just for our children – my eldest probably won’t go to the new school – but for generations of children to come, to keep our community together.’

The government promises capital funding for the new schools. In opposition, the Conservatives said they would use 15% of Labour’s £55bn Building Schools for the Future renewal ­programme to fund free schools.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies points out that Labour had already planned to cut capital spending on schools from £6.5bn in 2009/10 to £5.8bn in 2010/11, and probably further thereafter. They say there is not enough money to go around. Yet, more than 1,000 school rebuilds are already being planned and many councils fear their projects will be lost. MPs of all parties have been seeking reassurances about their local school renewal plans.

Local authorities will also find their planning role emasculated as new legislation will require them to lease disused buildings and land to new schools. It will also prevent them from using planning rules to block schools. While Labour gave parents the right to demand new schools, local authority opposition meant few ­parent-led schools were established. The new government’s change of focus might anger Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors, but Education Secretary Michael Gove expects many local ­authorities to back his plans. Speaking to Public Finance, he says: ‘My view is that you want a mixed economy in school ­provision. The best local authorities recognise that if some schools are academies, it acts as a spur to other schools to innovate.’

Academy numbers could increase ­rapidly from this autumn, when schools rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted will be able to become academies without consulting their local authority. Gove told the Commons on June 2 that 626 outstanding schools had expressed interest in becoming academies, including 299 secondary schools, 273 primaries and 52 special schools. Outstanding schools will also be exempted from five-yearly inspections ­unless their results slip or parents complain.

Other schools could apply to become academies later this year, although only those with strong development plans will get early approval. Gove revealed that he plans to recreate a post established by former Labour prime minister Tony Blair – and scrapped by Balls – to broker new academies and free schools.

‘We are looking at reviving the role of the schools commissioner so that we can ensure continuing growth in the takeover and transfer of failing schools,’ he says.

Academies will now include primary and special schools. A quick conversion might appeal particularly to the 1,257 existing foundation schools. Many of these are former grant-maintained schools, which already employ their staff, own their buildings and have admissions flexibility (within a code barring new selection). As academies, they could set their own pay rates and deviate from the national curriculum. They would be run by trusts and funded by Whitehall, with extra cash for services otherwise provided by the local authority. This extra funding can be worth 7%–10% of a school’s budget – £300,000–£600,000 for a secondary school each year. This is an enticing sum when money is tight, if the schools can provide the services more cheaply.

But the Tory-led Local Government Association fears a two-tier education system. LGA chair Baroness Margaret Eaton, a Bradford Conservative councillor, says: ‘A share of education money is currently invested in providing services for pupils with special educational needs, and those who are excluded from mainstream education.’ The sums involved amount to around £2bn a year across England, according to the DfE.

The governors of Oldfield girls’ ­foundation school near Bath have already voted for the school to become an academy, angering local coalition politicians. Oldfield, rated outstanding by Ofsted, feared it could be forced to close or become co-educational under the council’s reorganisation plans. Head teacher Kim Sparling believes governors have ‘secured the future’ of the school by opting for academy status. She told the Times Educational Supplement: ‘As an academy we will have freedom with the curriculum and the exams we want to use. We will be able to innovate as we see fit.’

But Conservative councillor Chris Watt, Bath & North East Somerset Cabinet member for children’s services, told the Bath Chronicle: ‘What would be frustrating is if the unintended consequence of the legislation is that we end up stuck with a provision that is not what local parents want.’ And Liberal Democrat Bath MP Don Foster has asked ministers to develop a ‘local needs test’ when ­academies are established.

But council planning worries are not the only concern. The government has said that it wants the new academies to be engines of social mobility. Most of the 203 existing ones were established to combat disadvantage and low achievement in inner-city areas (a few are former independent schools or city technology colleges). A further 100 such academies are due this year. When Balls gave academy status to outstanding maintained schools, it was as part of trusts working with poorer performing schools, as in Wakefield and Essex.

Given that the new academies’ often socially selective admissions policies are unlikely to change, they will need to work with other schools if they are to do more to improve social mobility. But while a focus on converting failing schools linked with sponsors will remain, the new outstanding academies will not be required to have sponsors or to work with weaker schools. This could simply recreate grant-maintained schools without the hassle of parental ballots, a switch of emphasis criticised by teachers’ leaders.

‘Without the help of top schools, ­under-performing schools will be cut off and tied to a local authority with less funding,’ fears Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.

Existing academy leaders welcome the new schools but are concerned about the change in emphasis. ‘Academies have used their powers to lever up standards for our most disadvantaged young ­people,’ says David Wootton, vice-chair of the Independent Academies Association. ‘We hope that the new academies will continue this tradition and that they recognise how sponsors can play a big role in widening their horizons.’

However, Gove defends his approach, insisting that the new academies will work with weaker schools. ‘If we absolutely insisted on a do or die regime, some schools might have shied away from becoming academies,’ he says. ‘I felt that generosity not conscription would work best, although we will have a strong expectation that the new academies will use their skills to the benefit of others.’ Academy funding agreements might require it.

Then there is the issue of money in this age of austerity. While the coalition has guaranteed real-terms funding rises for schools, 16–19 education in colleges and Sure Start this year, it has not given any details yet of future plans nor how it will fund both free schools and the pupil premium. Each free school pupil would get the same money as other academy pupils, but local authorities face bills for any resulting surplus places. Then, it is unclear how much of the £2,400-a-year premium envisaged by the LibDems for every pupil on free school meals will survive the Spending Review, given an annual £2.5bn cost. ‘The pupil premium is the flagship for the Liberal Democrats in the same way that autonomy is for us in the coalition agreement,’ says Gove. ‘Its size will be part of the Spending Review.’

But the premium was originally to have been funded from reduced bureaucracy in his department and scrapping child trust funds. Since both pots have already been raided to pay down the deficit, and the coalition agreement says the premium will be funded from outside the schools budget, there will be big cuts elsewhere.

Education ministers initially want a premium on top of existing funding in all schools before moving to a national funding formula. However, the Treasury might try to keep costs down by removing funding for other school-based initiatives or moving more quickly to a national formula. Children’s and youth services programmes and education maintenance allowances, which pay poorer children £30 a week for staying in education after 16, face an uncertain future within the education budget. Meanwhile, a national funding formula could also result in a bigger premium in the shires and suburbs rather than in the inner-city schools that gained most from Labour spending.

Yet ministers remain convinced that their changes will not only liberate schools but improve parental choice, raise standards and increase social mobility. Indeed, Gove expects that most schools will become academies and that they will ‘want to use those powers to increase standards for all children and close the gap between the richest and the poorest’. He will be judged not just on the extent to which his approach improves choice for the middle classes, but on how much it improves social mobility.

A missed opportunity to link freedom and fairness

Greater independence for schools, a pupil premium and more free schools are good ideas in principle. But the coalition has made a fundamental error in its decision not to place a requirement on the new outstanding academies to work with other schools, or support wider improvements through teacher training or subject leadership, something that it a requirement of the specialist schools programme at the moment, particularly for high performers. Michael Gove has said that he hopes that this will happen - and that it will be required in business plans for other schools becoming academies - but it will not be a condition for the very best schools.

Ministers seem to be confusing bureaucracy and leverage. There has certainly been too much of the former, but there is an optimal amount of the latter that you give away at your peril. The Conservatives were critical of Labour for lifting GPs' salaries while reducing requirements for out-of-hours cover. Yet, here the coalition is handing over one of the strongest levers they have without any expectation that the new academies work to help improve the wider system.

Many outstanding school leaders already do an excellent job through programmes like the National Leaders of Education or High Performing Specialist Schools. But there should be an expectation in their funding agreement and trust charter that any outstanding academy actively works to help improve other schools. Unless admissions policies change radically, this cannot happen simply through the pupil premium. So it requires the best to work with other schools. And given that Michael Gove has said that one of his key aims is to narrow the gap between rich and poor pupils, it is a pity that he has missed a golden opportunity to link such greater fairness explicitly to greater freedoms.

Getting the levers right

I have written this piece on the Coalition's flagship schools policies for today's TES:

Education Secretary Michael Gove plans a speedy introduction for the new Con-Lib coalition's two most radical school reforms: a pupil premium giving schools extra money for disadvantaged pupils, and the expansion of academies. At the same time, he wants to raise standards in exams, scrap targets and improve accountability.

The pupil premium and "free schools" plans are both good ideas. Indeed, Mr Gove freely admits drawing on Tony Blair's school reform plans. But unless he gets the details and the levers right, he won't achieve the improved standards and fairer funding he hopes to deliver.

Mr Gove wants outstanding schools to become academies as a right. This appeals to many former grant-maintained schools, as their funding would come from central rather than local government. Second, he wants any schools failing for more than a year to be closed and replaced by academies, echoing Labour's approach. And third, he wants parents, teachers and charities to promote new "free schools" similar to the Swedish model.

But the policy details matter as much as their radical intent. Former schools secretary Ed Balls made two excellent schools into academies - Outwood Grange College in Wakefield and Greensward School in Essex. In return, they established trusts to help weaker schools to improve. Mr Gove should use this model as a lever to gain more improvement by making the most of our best heads. That way he can link greater freedoms with higher standards.

With free schools, he faces different problems. Some parents' and teachers' groups will be attracted to working with education providers to develop free schools. But the policy could prove just as attractive to unviable small schools threatened with closure and to controversial faith groups.

A schools commissioner - a post Mr Balls scrapped - is vital to encouraging new promoters, particularly in disadvantaged areas, and to ensuring that any public money spent on building or refurbishing the new schools is not wasted. In the absence of for-profit schools - a crucial element in Sweden - it is taxpayers, not the providers, that fund the risk.

And there are some levers that Mr Gove may be tempted to ignore, but would be unwise to. I'm all for a bureaucracy bonfire: most Treasury-driven targets were counterproductive, and Mr Balls exacerbated some. But floor targets have been New Labour's unsung success, and Mr Balls rightly extended them.

These are minimum standards, such as the expectation that all schools achieve five good GCSEs for at least 30 per cent of their pupils. They have seen the number of below-target secondary schools fall from 1,600 in 1997 to 247 last year, with similar gains in primaries. Mr Gove might adapt these targets to include science or languages but he shouldn't lose them completely.

The pupil premium was presented as a Liberal Democrat victory in the coalition negotiations. In truth, it was favoured by all three parties. The big difference was that the Lib Dems had put a £2.5 billion price tag on its delivery. By contrast, the Conservatives had hoped to deliver the premium through savings elsewhere and they saw it as a lever to encourage good schools to recruit poorer pupils.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the Lib Dem version could provide schools with an extra £2,400 for each pupil in receipt of free school meals. However, the existing system also provides substantial extra resources for these pupils, amounting to far more on average. But it is concentrated in areas with the greatest disadvantage, whereas the coalition proposals would fund poorer pupils in leafier shires and suburbs as well.

So the Treasury will surely demand a rationalisation of existing funding before introducing the premium. However, this could create plenty of noisy losers as well as quietly grateful winners, as schools rely on pots like the Standards Fund to support the curriculum and staff posts.

Charles Clarke experienced this problem when he tried to reform school funding as education secretary. Schools will need to be given additional grants to compensate for increases in inflation, so their baseline budget doesn't fall in real terms. Otherwise there really will be frontline cuts.

Both flagship policies are supposed to increase social mobility. But if schools aren't open to poorer pupils, this is hard to achieve. Mr Gove supports a non-selective admissions code, but opposes measures that would genuinely open schools to all.

Unless good schools, including the new academies, open a significant number of places to all applicants, using either academic banding or random allocation, the reforms will do nothing for social mobility. Most admissions will continue to be based on siblings and the ability to afford nearby houses. The coalition may not want to force the issue, but it should encourage open admissions through its funding agreements.

Finally, Mr Gove wants to tighten exam standards. He can do so with three simple steps: a single exam board for England, to stop schools shopping around; a big cut in modularity in GCSEs and A-levels, with more marks for final exams; and a reduction in repeats. However, he should be careful to avoid adding complexity to accountability like Mr Balls' report cards.

Mr Gove should also be wary of changing the timing of primary school tests or fiddling with the league tables. By adding English and maths to the five GCSE benchmark, Labour has created a relatively robust measure. More data should be published, but the Government shouldn't obscure data that most people can understand - or that allow its record to be judged.

Get these things right, and the pupil premium and free schools can make a real difference. Get them wrong and coalition ministers will be desperately seeking new initiatives a few years down the line - and wondering why.