The DfE quietly set up last month what could be seen as a “middle tier” of officials and consultants, who are now monitoring the performance of both academies and non-academy maintained schools in nine regions across England.

This seems most odd in the context of the new framework for the inspection of Local Authorities designed to hold them to account for their performance in school improvement matters. Perhaps if they are to be held to account it should be made quite clear precisely what it is they are accountable for in the era of Academies.

The whole area of school improvement has now reached an almost farcical level of incoherence.

Regular readers of Local Schools Network will know Janet’s work well. She is renowned for digging out obscure facts and wading through long reports to discover useful nuggets. Indeed she has a dedication to use of evidence that would be rather useful in a Secretary for State for Education. This post is a tribute to some of my favourites from Janet’s posts:

Recent Critiques of Gove and DfE from Janet

Gove: “survey after survey” display “disturbing historical ignorance” among teenagers. No they don’t. Janet reveals that the UKGold survey quoted was based on all adults and not just teenagers. Further surveys are dissected here. Best of all is her FOI debate with DfE.

Gove: In Far Eastern countries “School days are longer, school holidays are shorter,” Not according to OECD data, found Janet.

DfE claims Free schools are over-subscribed. Or are they, asks Janet – finding that many “oversubscribed” schools have spare places

Are 20% of school leavers functionally illiterate? No, argues Janet based on ONS definitions..

Other Recent Posts from Janet

21st April: Trouble at two academy chains: AET banned from expanding and E-Act gets a warning

8th April: £3.5 million extension for secondary free school with only 90 pupils in area with 700 surplus places

1st April: Parents critical of Government’s education policies, YouGov poll reveals

17th March: A third of free schools inspected by Ofsted “require improvement”

12th March: What do high-performing school systems have in common? OECD guru summarises PISA findings

And that is just a sample. Browse through the Views page on Local Schools Network to get a sense of the range of posts.

Other Research

Janet is also responsible for almost all the very thoroughly-researched FAQs on this web site. Find the answers to these questions, and others, here – always based on the data and the evidence:

• What did the Public Accounts Committee say about the Academies Programme in 2013?
• Is it true that schools with more autonomy tend to achieve better results?
• What did the National Audit Office (NAO) really say about academies in 2010?
• Do market forces in education increase achievement and efficiency?
• What do schools systems which score highly in PISA have in common?
• What are the examination and assessment systems in OECD countries?
• What are the examination systems in other countries?
• What are the key factors of a school accountability system? The OECD lists ten.
• Would Performance-Related Pay improve educational outcomes?
• Has there been grade inflation in GCSEs and A levels?
• Are 20% of school leavers illiterate?
• What about maths? How many school children leave school innumerate?

True blue Lincolnshire took a knock in the local elections with UKIP winning a large number of seats. But in Louth North UKIP was pushed into third place. Sarah gained the seat from the Tories with a 32.5% swing to Labour.

The full story is here.

One particular story caught my eye. It was in the Telegraph and concerned the academy brokers. These are representatives of the DFE who move in on schools that are allegedly failing and forcibly convert them to academy status. I say representatives because it turns out that  they don’t actually work for the DFE. They are consultants and paid through personal service companies which pay corporation tax rather than income tax.This is in spite of the fact that Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has said that this practice should be outlawed by government departments.

Recently the Conservative leader of Lancashire County Council complained to the Secretary of State about the activities of these people. So who are they? One name that comes up frequently is that of Jacky Griffin. She featured heavily in the forced conversion of Downhills Primary School and several other governing bodies who are being bullied by the DFE into converting to academy status have mentioned her name to me. She was also involved in the last Labour government’s moves to encourage academies and trust schools as part of the BSF building programme.

Here is a little bit more information about Ms Griffin, in which she is listed as a consultant at the DFE and a Director of Griffin Taylor Consultancy Ltd. And here is some information about her company’s financial position. As it is an exempt small company, with only two directors, facts are limited but one thing seems clear,the DFE consultancy business is a very comfortable one.

Last year the government did provide some information about the tax arrangements of off payroll consultants and employment agencies. Here is a link . It would appear that the daily rate paid to personal service companies is slightly less than that paid to employment agencies,  but in return the  identities and addresses of the consultants are not provided. Does anyone else know who they might be?

(A later article by Chris gives the example of Ashfield School receiving an extra £943,000, 10% of this budget, and this time suggests overall £174m extra will go to academies due to DfE blunders. However this data is for 2012/13 and is not included in the NAO £1 billion. It is additional to it.)

Despite the evidence Chris Wormald, Permanent Secretary at the DfE, insisted that no extra money at all went to academies overall. If some got more than they did before (as was clearly the case) than others must have got less.

£1 Billion Overspend Yet None of It Went to Schools!?

It is hard to believe this is true, that effectively some schools converted and got less funding than before. Certainly none appear to have complained about it. However, if true, this is surely even more damning. The DfE claimed at the Public Accounts Committee that of the £1 billion extra that was spent, none of it ended up in schools.

That was the extraordinary message that the head of the Department for Education brought to MPs: They had spent an extra £1 billion and yet none of it had ended up in teaching and learning, or in bringing any educational benefit to the nation’s children.

The NAO report makes clear (p23) some of this wastage. £43 million was spent on “pre-opening funding to converter academies” (presumably legal costs and the like), as well as the £279m to pre-opening and startup funding for sponsored academies. Another £43 million went on central DfE administration costs. Then there was £92 million spent on insurance costs.

The insurance funding was needed because academies were no longer covered by local authority insurance. One would have hoped that somebody would have spotted that insuring individual schools would be far more expensive than insurance for all schools in a borough, but this seems to have come as a surprise and have led to tens of millions of extra costs.

A Catalogue of Failure

This wasted £1 billion deserves extra coverage. The National Audit Office produced a carefully worded but clearly critical report. The Public Accounts Committee produced a damning report about the waste of public funds, agreed by a committee on which the majority are Conservative MPs.

Chris Wormald justified the spend on the basis that the academies programme was the government’s main improvement programme. In response the Public Accounts Committee stated that whether this was value for money would depend on the “impact on educational performance”. As I’ve written before, the evidence to date is clear. The bulk of the £1 billion was spent on converting already Good and Outstanding schools. On average the GCSE results for these schools had risen in the year before conversion but fell in the year after they became academies – suggesting the money was indeed wasted. (Figures at the bottom of this post.)

There’s money on offer for sponsors. So-called “Fast-track projects”, will receive up to £40,000 for each “underperforming” primary school or up to £65,000 for secondary schools. This grant is in addition to the £25,000 towards the cost of academy conversion which is available to all converting schools.

The extra grant is supposed to be used on school improvement and sponsors will be expected to put forward an Action Plan. It’s unclear why an Action Plan devised by a body with no knowledge of a school would be better than one put together by a local authority (LA) that knows the school well.

“Full sponsorship” deals could receive more cash when a fully-sponsored academy is opened. But what exactly is a new fully-sponsored academy? Is it an existing school which converts with the help of a sponsor? The DfE talks about transferring leadership of the school from the LA to the sponsor – this could only happen if schools were already running. In which case, the extra money feels like an inducement which is contingent on an existing school becoming an academy. Cash-strapped schools may feel this is the only route to getting more finance. That was certainly the perception when schools began to convert and this was confirmed by a survey last year which showed the most popular reason for becoming an academy was the belief that conversion would bring extra money.

How do potential sponsors or existing sponsors who want to take over schools get involved? This is a summary of the process:

1 DfE touts around to attract sponsors.

2 DfE gets sponsors to talk to brokers.

3 They throw around some ideas without any particular school in mind.

4 Search round for schools “ripe for conversion” which will match sponsors’ preconceived ideas.

The most likely “suitable schools” will be schools in special measures but showing signs of improvement (eg Downhills) or schools that were previously Good but have been judged Inadequate because of a blip (eg Roke Primary). This is because such schools are more likely to improve results in the future. Such an improvement would “prove” the effectiveness of academy sponsorship.

If a sweep doesn’t reveal schools in these categories then the DfE could perhaps fall back on other methods. The BBC claimed last year that the DfE used intimidation to enforce academy conversion and some MPs have accused brokers of using heavy-handed methods.

The National Audit Office found that £1billion had been overspent on the academies programme. But there seems to be no stopping the flow of money paying for academy conversion.

And there are signs that the party is starting to develop some interesting ideas about the economy, business, housing and welfare. But the Observer is particularly scathing in its assessment of the Labour education policy, saying:

“What Labour really thinks about Michael Gove’s education reforms is a mystery. Stephen Twigg, the shadow education secretary, has said that he won’t close successful free schools and academies, but he will face pressure before the election to say if he would open new ones. Twigg’s position will be that Gove’s free school project is irrelevant and dangerous at a time when there is a serious shortfall in primary school places. But Labour still lacks conviction on school policies.”

I am not sure why the points raised in this quote are so difficult for the party to address. There seems to be a widespread recognition that the rapid fragmentation of the school system under Michael Gove could impede further school improvement, lead to unfairness in admissions and funding  and fail to provide school places in the areas where they are needed. Moreover addressing these points may be easier than the challenge of reforming the coalition’s proposed curriculum and qualifications changes, which are also causing widespread concern. Further changes to what is taught and how it is assessed would need to be done carefully without loading further turmoil on an already weary and demoralised profession, as I wrote here for the Fabian Society earlier this year.

So here are a couple of suggestions.

1. The party makes clear that it will undertake widespread consultation with professionals about the curriculum and qualifications, building on the work of groups like the Headteachers’ Roundtable , and the coalition being brought together by teacher Debra Kidd with her petition “Calling all Teachers”. It will not rush into any further changes without seeking consensus.
2. Then it explains it will not be closing down any schools. Instead it would gradually move to a position where ALL schools, whether maintained, academy, community , trust, foundation or voluntary aided are bound by the same regulatory framework when it comes to funding, curriculum,  admissions, SEN, exclusions and pay.
3. No more academies or free schools would be opened. Instead a community or co-operative trust school model would be favoured – semi autonomous but maintained , funded through the local authority and part of the local family of schools, rather like the current foundation or voluntary aided school model. AGAIN the structure should be largely irrelevant as all schools will have the same freedoms and obligations.
4. Responsibility for planning places and holding schools to account would return to the local authority, unless there is a very good reason why they are not competent to do it. Today’s PAC report about the shambolic, poorly regulated funding of academies by the DFE only serves to illustrate again that central government is not suitable or equipped to manage thousands of schools. If local authorities are not good enough, make them better and encourage more federations and collaboration between schools in the local area to strengthen improvement and high quality teaching.

Both Ofsted reporting and analysis of the DFE data increasingly show that there is no discernible “academy” ( or indeed “free school”) effect. It is embarrassing for Labour to have started this unnecessary experiment but equally it would be justifiable to say that the Tory/Lib Dem coalition has developed the concept, which in its day had a very different core purpose, in a reckless and irresponsible manner.  Labour has no alternative  but to restore some order and rigour to both funding and quality and curtail what could be a Trojan horse for the rapid introduction of for profit schools after the next election.

Time is getting tight and schools, parents and governors rightly want some idea of the general tenor of Labour’s proposals. None of this will frighten the horses too much as it is a logical response to the muddle Gove will bequeath.

I will be posting this article on the Labour Party Membersnet website as well to try and stimulate debate within the party.

The Public Accounts Committee today reports that a £1 billion overspend at the Department of Education “has been caused by the excessively complex and inefficient academy funding system”. Despite having a majority of Conservative MPs, the Committee has delivered a report that is highly critical of the government’s flagship academy programme and suggests widespread waste of public funds.

The report notes “£350 million extra paid to Academies which was not recovered from local authorities”, that the Department does not really know whether academies received more money than they should have and that other costs, such as academy insurance, have not been brought under control

Note: The full PAC report is available here and the Press release here

Was this £1 billion overspend worthwhile?

“The value for money of the Academies Programme will ultimately depend on its impact on educational performance relative to the investment from the taxpayer, comments the report”. So far the evidence suggests we have not got value for money for that £1 billion overspend.

The MPs pointed out that £400 million had been taken “from funds for intervention in underperforming schools” and put instead into academy conversion. Chris Wormald (Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education) replied: “The Government took a very conscious decision that its major school improvement programme was the academies programme.” (p32)

“The government spent the best part of £1 billion not on underperforming schools but on converting schools that were already Good or Outstanding”, explains Henry Stewart, co-founder of the Local Schools Network, who gave evidence to the Committee. “Those schools saw their GCSE results rise in 2011 but in 2012, after conversion and the £1 billion spend, the results actually fell.”

Lack of Accountability

The MPs on the committee were shocked to discover a lack of financial accountability among academies. Academies that are part of chains, for instance, are not required to make public their expenditure at an individual school level. Conservative MP Richard Bacon described this lack of accountability as “mind-blowing” and commented that “they could hide something by taking a little bit from several pots, and the parents would never know at the individual academy level.”

(see p41 of the report for Richard’s frustration with the evidence being provided)

The report makes clear that this must change: “the Department must insist that every Academy Trust provides it with data showing school level expenditure, including per-pupil costs, and with a level of detail comparable to that available for maintained schools. The Department must then publish this data so that proper judgements and comparisons can be made by Parliament and the public.”

The Public Accounts Committee highlights a range of dangers. It finds governance, compliance and oversight arrangements for academies are inadequate and “remain vulnerable to failure”. It is worried that forthcoming staff cuts at the Department for Education “may threaten effective oversight”. And it finds there is confusion about the “roles, responsibilities and accountabilities of different organisations across the changing schools system”. It worries that interventions in failing academies may be delayed because it is unclear what is the role of local government, central government – and the academy or academy trust itself.

“The report highlights the dangers of the new educational landscape”, explains Henry Stewart of Local Schools Network. “Under local authorities the system is transparent and generally robust. The report makes clear that there is nowhere near the same clarity over academies, with many dangers of lack of a lack of accountability and oversight.”

A call for evidence not ideology

“It is time that the government turned to evidence rather than ideology to determine how to improve our schools”, continues Henry. “If it were to look at the evidence of what leads to educational success, such as the remarkable transformation in London, it would find (as Ofsted did) that it has little to do with school structures. Instead it is about effective leadership, collaboration between schools and teacher development. If the government took a fraction of the time and money it has devoted to academies and free schools and spent it on programmes like London Challenge, then we could see a similar improvement across the country.”

Henry Stewart’s evidence to the committee is contained within the PAC report.

Notes

Converter academies: % achieving 5 GCSE A-C grades including English and Maths

2010: 68.2%
2011: 69.8% (before conversion for 655 of 680 schools)
2012: 69.5% (after conversion)

(A small fall but a £1 billion spend should perhaps have led to a rise)

Ofsted report on London Challenge: http://bit.ly/VLBSTd

The Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, today said:

“Academy schools lie outside local authority control and are directly accountable to central government. It is therefore the responsibility of central government – and, in particular, the Department for Education – to make sure that the public money being spent on the academies programme constitutes value for money.

“This will ultimately depend on the impact of the programme on educational performance relative to the money the taxpayer is putting in. It is too early to say but what concerns us is the lack of clarity over how, or when, the Department intends to assess progress and the failure to ensure transparent school-by-school data to allow us and the public to judge value for money.

“The number of academies has rapidly increased, resulting in a considerable growth in costs.  Inefficient funding systems and poor cost control have driven up the cost of the programme.

“Of the £8.3 billion spent on academies from April 2010 to March 2012, some £1 billion was an additional cost which had to be met by diverting money from other departmental budgets. Some of this money had previously been earmarked to support schools struggling with difficult challenges and circumstances. £350 million of the extra £1 billion represented extra expenditure was never recovered from local authorities.

“The funding system for academies has not operated effectively alongside the local authority system and has made it hard for the Department to prove that academies are not receiving more money than they should.

“The Department must publish detailed data showing school-level expenditure, including costs per pupil, so that proper comparisons can be made with the data for maintained schools.

“Effective oversight of the programme is crucial as it continues to expand. We have already seen some instances where public money has not been used appropriately. We have also commented before on the failure of too many academies to produce audited accounts on time. These signs make proper monitoring of the programme vital. We are sceptical that the Department is up to the job as cuts are made to its staff and those of its agencies.”

Margaret Hodge was speaking as the Committee published its 41st Report of this Session which, on the basis of evidence from the New Schools Network and the Local Schools Network, and from the Department for Education and the Education Funding Agency, examined the expansion of the Academies Programme.

Academies are publicly funded independent state schools. They are funded directly by central government, directly accountable to the Department for Education (the Department), and outside local authority control. They have greater financial freedoms than maintained schools, for example to set staff pay and conditions. In May 2010, the Government announced its intention to allow all schools to seek academy status. By September 2012 the number of open academies had increased tenfold, from 203 to 2,309.

Academies are the Department’s chosen vehicle for school reform, but increasing schools’ autonomy and removing them from local authority control gives the Department responsibility for ensuring value for money. The Department has a direct responsibility to ensure that taxpayers’ funds are used wisely at academies. The Department has incurred significant costs from the complex and inefficient system it has used for funding the Academies Programme and its oversight of academies has had to play catch-up with the rapid growth in academy numbers. The Department and its funding agency need to increase their grip on the risks to public money as more and more schools become Academies.

In the two years from April 2010 to March 2012, the Department spent £8.3 billion on Academies; £1 billion of this was an additional cost to the Department not originally budgeted for this purpose. Some of this expenditure led to unnecessary extra money being used by the Department which was not recovered from local authorities. To give Parliament and the public confidence that the Programme is being properly run in the interests of taxpayers, the Department must improve the efficiency of its funding mechanisms and stop the growth in other costs. Although the Department has decided to radically reduce its own running costs, it still needs to demonstrate that its oversight regime can keep pace with increasing academy numbers. It needs to ensure that accountabilities, roles and responsibilities are clear, and that it has robust mechanisms for identifying and tackling academic or financial failure in academies. Furthermore, the Department has yet to establish effective school-level financial accountability for academies operating within chains.

What will determine whether the Department ultimately achieves value for money is academies’ impact on educational performance relative to the investment from the taxpayer. If the Department is to be held properly to account for its spending on academies, it must insist that every Academy Trust provides it with data showing school-level expenditure, including per-pupil costs, and with a level of detail comparable to that available for maintained schools. The Department must then publish this data so that proper judgments and comparisons can be made by parliament and the public.

Note

This report can be accessed via the internet from around 11.00 am on the day of publication.

But in January 2013 the Academies Commission said that some academy chains were expanding too rapidly and some of these chains had no coherent approach to school improvement.

One of these rapidly expanding chains is the Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) which now runs 65 schools. Most of these have opened since January 2012 when AET had about 20 schools. The DfE has belatedly become alarmed at this rapid growth and forbidden AET from taking on any more schools for the time being.

AET was the chain which took over Noel Park Primary School, Wood Green, when it was forced to become an academy. Ofsted visited Noel Park and said there had been a delay in setting up the governing body because AET was interviewing governors. It was not until January 2013 that the governing body met. In the meantime there had been no statutory checks and duties were not undertaken in the autumn term. Ofsted said AET directors had “provided much-needed challenge” to school leaders and had provided support for the personnel and financial changes needed for academy conversion. “However, there have not been enough practical support, guidance and resources to improve the quality of teaching and learning at the academy.”

It appears, then, that AET were good at “providing challenge” but poor at providing help to improve teaching which is what they were brought in to do.

Another academy chain, E-Act, has been issued with a “financial notice to improve” by the Education Funding Agency (EFA) which discovered “weaknesses” in the reporting of its schools’ accounts.

Becky Francis, one of the directors of the Academies Commission which reported in January, told TES that warnings such as the one issued to E-Act would become more commonplace. And Mary Bousted, Association of Teachers and Lecturers, hit out at the Government’s policy of allowing academy chains to grow quickly. She said:

“And why isn’t this information out in the public domain? The money given to academies does not come from the fairy godmother – it is taxpayers’ money so it should be totally transparent when there are issues about a chain’s finances.”

Two years ago, Michael Gove encouraged chains to expand as fast as was sustainably possible. That encouragement was irresponsibly foolish.