Yesterday the DfE made its
annual release of school-by-school performance data. As I
predicted earlier this week, the press release again claimed that “Sponsored academies continue to improve faster than local authority schools”, by 2.3% to 1.8%.
But, like in
2011 and
2012, any difference disappears if you compare similar schools. The chart below groups the increases for the two types of schools, grouped by their 2012 results. As is clear, those with previously low results tend to see a big increase, while those with previously strong results – on average – see a fall in results.
Change in GCSE benchmark results, 2012-2013 |
2012 band | Sp Academies | Non academies |
20% to 40% | 9.5% | 8.8% |
40% to 60% | 1.0% | 2.6% |
60% to 80% | -0.5% | -0.5% |
80% to 100% | -3.5% | -1.9% |
(Note: The category 0 to 20% is omitted as it contained only 3 schools. None were academies, and their results grew on average by a whopping 23%.)
So academies did slightly better in the 20% to 40% category. Non academies improved more in the 40% to 60% category and fell less in the 80% plus one. The figures were even in the 60% to 80% category. And this is before taking account of the fact that for academies 14.7% of the benchmark results are, on average, down to GCSE equivalents – compared to just 7.3% for non-academies.
Congratulations to all improving schools
There was one surprising element of the DfE press release. To his credit, Gove did praise the “professionalism and hard work of teachers”, whose efforts were responsible for the improvement in school performance. This is a welcome change from the message we often hear from government and one statement that I can heartily agree with.
What is clear from the data is that there is again widespread improvement in schools previously labelled as under-performing. As in previous years this had little to do with school structure, despite the huge effort and expense this government has put into the academy programme. Whether schools became academies or whether they stayed with local authorities we see a considerable capability to increase the results of their pupils. A huge congratulations, and big thank you for all the hard work and determination of the teachers.
Most improved schools in England
Six schools saw their results increase by more than 30% and these are listed below. A huge well done to all involved. Note that only two of the six are academies.
School | Town | Increase |
Dyke House | Hartlepool | 38% |
Rushden Community College | Rushden | 34% |
Sir John Talbot's ge | Whitchurch | 32% |
North Shore Academy | Stockton-on-Tees | 31% |
Ormiston Ilkeston Academy | Ilkeston | 31% |
St Thomas the Apostle College | London | 31% |
Comments
I wonder how many millions more has been spent on academies by this government to generate such underwhelming performance.
Henry - in next year's data most of the 'equivalents' won't count in the headline figures will they? Is it possible to work out what this year's figures would be using next year's criteria?
3 of them are below the 40% benchmark 5+ GCSEs A*-C (or equivalents) including Maths and English. Strip out equivalents, and 8 of the 11 E-Act academies are below the benchmark. Purston E-Act drops from 50% to 22%.
http://www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/group.pl?qtype=G...
http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/
Say you choose Bristol. Click on secondary schools. Click on "KS4 exam results" in the tabs above the list. This shows the proportion for each school achieving 5+ GCSEs A*-C including Maths and English with and without equivalents. From the list you can see that Oasis Academy Brightstowe, for example, drops from 60% to 37% when equivalents are stripped out.
http://www.education.gov.uk/cgi-bin/schools/performance/group.pl?qtype=L...
Thanks Janet, but that takes out ALL equivalents - that isn't what will happen to the figures next year is it?
However the DfE did two years ago do an analysis of this, for every school, and the results were very similar to those simply without any equivalent. (Sorry, I can't find it on the DfE web site.)
This is a very good point, Janet, and E-Act is not alone. Oasis, Ormiston and AET - even if you take only those schools which are well established - have benchmarks without equivalents between 30% and 35%. Thanks for alerting me. I will prepare a post on it.
These academies (and Gove) must be aware of this. Surely they must have a strategy to deal with it otherwise they will look absurd when next year's figures come out?
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/business-papers/commons/d...
… the GCSE equivalents, like Btecs, that the Department for Education is so dismissive of. Previous analysis has shown that Gove’s claims of greater improvement in GCSE results for sponsored academies fall …
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