HE; Academies; State Boarding Schools & New Schools

The DCSF are on a mission to have every university in the country supporting a local academy school. Currently more than half of the 88 universities are committed and a further 20 are developing towards supporting an academy.

For more and a full list of which academies and universities are involved click here.

The hope is that with the raising of the educational age to 17 by 2013 and 18 by 2015, that links to universities will encourage young people who had never considered a university education to stay on post 18.

The academic year 2008 witnessed the opening of over 180 new schools, including 51 new Academies (taking the total number of academies to 134). Many opened as part of the "Building Schools for the Future" programme, including a purpose-built multi-faith centre which will be used by all members of the community at Allerton High in Leeds.

These new schools includes 5 new "all through" academies, schools which provide a seamless primary and secondary education, taking the total of such schools to 14, with a further 5 in development.

Additionally, the DCSF have announced two new academies will eventually take boarding students, with a focus on those students from the armed services in Lincoln and Salisbury Plain.
This comes on top of additional funds aimed to expand the places at state boarding schools aimed at vulnerable children, such as those looked after by the local authorities.

Parental views of schools

A representative sample of parents with children in English schools were consulted on their views of their child's education in January 2008 for this DCSF report.

Key points:
- Most parents were satisfied with the their child's school, with 73% being very or extremely satisfied:

- Parents who said they were dissatisfied were asked why they had said this. The main issues highlighted by these parents were poor quality teaching (mentioned by 37% of dissatisfied parents), problems with discipline, bullying or other forms of antisocial behaviour (34%), and poor academic standards or exam results (28%). Poor quality special needs provision was also an issue for a substantial minority of dissatisfied parents (21%).
- Parents were also asked how good they thought their child’s school was at dealing with parents’ concerns effectively. About three fifths (58%) of parents described the school as very good at this, with a further 29% saying it was fairly good.
- When asked for the most important factors when choosing a new school the majority of parents (59%) stated the location of the school or ease of getting to the school had been among the most important factors in choosing a school. A quarter of parents mentioned academic success or success in exams (25%) and a similar proportion mentioned the overall reputation of the school or whether the school had been recommended to them (23%).
- Seven out of ten parents (71%) said they felt they had had a choice of good state-funded schools within their own local authority area; a quarter said this had not been the case, with 10% of parents saying there was only one good state-funded school within their local authority area.
- The majority of parents supported a range of school types in their local area:

- The vast majority of parents seemed to endorse the idea of state schools forming partnerships with Further Education colleges (89% said this was a good thing), parent groups (88%) and universities and Higher Education colleges (87%), with only one or two per cent of parents indicating that they thought such partnerships would be a bad thing. Approval of the idea of partnership with other state schools and community groups was also strong, with 82% and 80% of parents respectively saying these were a good thing and again small proportions indicating disapproval. Three quarters (76%) of parents said they thought partnership with charities was a good thing and two thirds (65%) said the same about partnership with businesses. Parents as a whole were less sure about partnerships with independent schools.
- 37% of parents were mainly favourable or very favourable towards academies.

Leadership of Academy schools

This NCSL Research Associate study examines and analyses the nature of successful leadership of academies and investigates the leadership styles, qualities, skills and contextual dimensions which enable previously seriously under-performing schools to transform themselves whilst their leadership operates under the microscope of close public scrutiny.

Key points:
- Amongst the twelve Academy Principals interviewed there was a general consensus that they had all received, mostly unwelcome, media attention during their first three years in post.
- Leaders of academies identified a need for political and entrepreneurial leadership skills to cope with the demands of this context. Distributed leadership was also found to be an important and effective strategy.
- Academy leaders need to be aware of political developments at both the macro and micro level. While important in any school, the need for such leadership skills in academies is particularly marked.
- The Principal respondents reported the maturation of bodies such as the Academies Division at the Department for Children Schools and Families, have helped to address broader concerns reported in the media.
- Changes in both local and national political climates during the period of research were felt to have impacted positively on the way in which Academies were viewed by the media and local communities.
- The international interest which the Academies programme seems to have generated has added a different dimension to the way in which Academies are seeing themselves and their work.
- The incorporation and formal recognition of Academies into the Specials Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) has had a significant impact on their national profile amongst secondary schools.
- As a very publicly high profile programme the government has made use of several of the new Academies as centres from which to launch the announcement of major new
national initiatives. This has brought with it extensive national media coverage including television. Respondents talked of the very positive impact such media exposure
has had for their Academy.
- Respondents talked of the importance of involving the local community in the work of the Academy. They also commented on the impact of engaging the community in improving attitudes to learning and generating a culture of aspiration through winning their confidence.

School funding in England

This report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies examined school funding by answering four questions:

• How have overall levels of public spending on education and schools in the UK evolved in recent years?
• How does the English school funding system allocate money to individual schools?
• How redistributive is the school funding system, and to what degree do funding variations reflect educational needs and parental background?
• What incentives do state schools face to attract new pupils and to improve school quality?

Key points:
- Education spending in the UK has seen increases averaging 4.3% a year in real terms over the past ten years. However, this rate of increase will slow to 3.4% a year over the years 2008–09 to 2010–11.
- Schools spending in England has enjoyed larger increases than education spending as a whole over the past ten years (averaging 6.0% per year in real terms), with particularly large increases in schools capital spending.
- School spending per pupil has increased by 6.4% a year in real terms under Labour to date, compared with increases averaging 4.7% in the private sector. State spending per pupil has risen from 50% of the private sector level in 1997–98 to 58% in 2006–07.
- While the provision of schools may be the responsibility of local authorities, the vast
majority of schools’ funding comes from the central government’s education budget.
- Changes to the system over recent years have gradually reduced the discretion local authorities have in distributing these funds. This is the result of increased ‘ring fencing’ (whereby local authorities are forced to spend grants on specific purposes) and increased use of direct payments and grants that must be passed on to schools in full.
- Other changes have also reduced the discretion local authorities have over school
funding in their area, including the Minimum Funding Guarantee, which guarantees minimum increases in funding per pupil for nearly all schools.
- However, powers over funding decisions have not simply been transferred up from local authorities to central government; schools themselves now have an increasing influence on funding decisions via Schools Forums.
- Funding is skewed towards schools with relatively large numbers of pupils from deprived backgrounds. On average, pupils who are eligible for free school meals attract over 70% more funding to their school than those who are not eligible. This holds true for both primary and secondary schools, and the funding ‘premium’ that follows FSM pupils has grown over time.
- Local authorities only allocate around 40–50% of the extra funding they receive for pupils who are eligible for free school meals towards the schools these pupils attend. In other words, local authorities seem to spread the funding targeted at low-income pupils more widely. If local authorities did not flatten extra income in this way, the additional money following a low-income pupil would be roughly 50% higher in secondary schools and more than doubled in primary schools.
- Under the current system, the amount of funding that schools receive does not respond quickly to changes in their numbers of pupils from deprived backgrounds or with additional educational needs.
- Most money ‘follows the pupil’ in the English school funding system, with the majority of funding directly determined by pupil numbers (weighted by age and background).
- The current system does not live up to the ‘school choice’ programme enthusiastically
described in the 2005 White Paper, in which successful schools expand, new entrants compete with existing providers, and weaker schools either improve their performance or else contract and close.
- Rigidities elsewhere in the school system blunt the incentives created by parental choice. Of the three criteria often used to determine whether genuine ‘school choice’ exists (pupil-led funding, supply flexibility and management freedom), the English system probably ‘fails’ on the last two.
- The supply side appears to be largely inflexible, with little threat of entry from new
providers. New school entry is decided by local authorities, which have little incentive to encourage new entry.
- School management is constrained by binding collective agreements covering many aspects of school operations, including pay and conditions. Where schools (such as Academies) have been given freedom from these agreements, they appear to have responded with innovation and experimentation. However, Academies supply only a tiny fraction of school places in England, and the success of these experiments is as yet unproven.

Read BBC news article

Person or place education policies?

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have analysed government policies since 1997 to evaluate whether policies focused on the person or the place are the most effective at tackling social disadvantage (with a focus on education, employment and income, in this blog entry I focus on those relating to education). Full report

Key points:
- Policies have been equally split between place (e.g. academy schools in deprived localities) and people (e.g. early years education, curriculum change, widening participation in HE) initiatives.

- There was some evidence to suggest that sure start was improving outcomes for children and families but this was reduced for the most socially disadvantaged families.

- The New Deal for Communities and Academies programme demonstrated a link to higher level 2 attainment (other initiatives such as the EMA, Excellence in Cities showed no discernable impact on level 2 attainment).

- AimHigher, Gifted & Talented and Excellence Challenge showed a positive link to the point score of the eight best GCSEs for children.

- The EMA and AimHigher: Opportunity Bursary showed a positive impact on FE & HE participation and retention.

- There are few policies which are targeted at people and place simultanesouly and many policies have multiple objectives.

- For Academies, success was seen to be associated with strong, consistent leadership within schools and the availability of additional resources for buildings, ICT and equipment necessary to create more positive learning environments. For of Excellence in Cities, partnerships and co-operation between – ideally – small groups of schools were identifi ed as key to achieving positive results.

Lauch of National Challenge

In March I posted on the initial ideas behind the National Challenge: an attempt to ensure that no secondary school is below 30% of it's pupils achieving 5 good GCSEs (including English and Maths) by 2011. It takes the London Challenge national (across England).

Now the full details are out, which I summarise below, before offering links to online sources.

Key points:
- The aim is to ensure that all secondary schools have at least 30% of their pupils achieving at least 5 good GCSEs by 2011 (including English & maths). This figure is part of a wider move to have 90% of 19 year old's achieving this standard by 2020 as part of the Leitch skills agenda

- Each local authority will have to draft plans of how they will deal with schools who are within the national challenge or at risk of falling to below the 30% target. Plans to be presented to DSCF by end of July

- Yorkshire and Humber has the highest percentage of schools which fall into this category than any other region (27%). Click for a full list of schools in England. Below is a diagramme from the DCSF for Yorkshire and Humber.

- Whilst many of these schools have a high incidence of free school meals (a proxy for family poverty) and a low attainment at primary level English & Maths, many schools with similar characteristics do well and can be well above the 30% target

- The City of York is held as a beacon local authority due to the way it has approached similar issues in their schools (they also have no schools in the category)
- There is £400m given to this challenge. £20m will be spent on national challenge advisors, who will replace existing school improvement partners and can offer increased support (up to 20 days per year); £20m on National Leaders of Education and other Leadership support; £100m on teaching and learning and other support; £260 on building academy and trust schools where the school is falling substantially below the target
- Extra support for English and Maths tuition
- Sir Mike Tomlinson will chair an expert group to assist national challenge schools

BBC News website

Read DCSF News release

Complete list of number of schools per local authority

Click on image to see Schools Minister, Jim Knight, explain the policy

Conservative Policies

Michael Gove, the Conservative Party's speaker for Children, Schools and Families, spoke on the Andrew Marr Show (BBC 1, 1st June 2008) about their school policies.

Key policies the Conservative Party propose:
- More private and voluntary sector management of schools, but without the drive to make profits.
- More freedom around the national curriculum.
- More parental choice over where their children go to.
- No selection over pupil admission (at least not more than 10% of the total pupil intake, similar to the freedoms that academies currently have).
- More teaching by ability within schools.
- The comprehensive ideal of mixed social intake would stay.

Read the Conservative Policy Green Paper

Budget 2008 & Yorkshire and Humber's children's services

The Budget 2008 announced several spending plans of interest to children's services in Yorkshire and Humberside.

- A strategy for providing "seamless enterprise education from primary schools to higher education" which will benefit 324 secondary schools in Yorkshire & Humber (see video below).
- Increases to child benefit and child tax credits which will benefit 620,000 families and 338,000 families respectively.
- Money to support the National Challenge (83 schools regionally) and money to support the 14 academies to be opened by 2011.

School Choice

The Policy Exchanged published a paper looking at school choice and the Academies programme which it states as being the major supply side educational reform of the labour government.

Key points:
- Many parents do not have choice as good schools are over subscribed and failing schools under subscribed
- The Brown government seems less keen on implementing the "choice agenda" started under Blair, although the legislation exists on the statue books
- Local authorities should be publically accountable for ensuring parent choice by releasing school data on unfilled places
- Better competition between local authorities and academies are needed and there should be protection to ensure competition prevails