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ofchallenging questions about the provision, management, governance,
impact and accountability of school systems. Internationally, the impact
of charter, friskolor or academy schools has been debated extensively.
Academic debate has focused on four main issues:
• first, the performance of charter schools compared with more
conventional public schools
• second, the impact of charter schools on the composition of
school populations and thus on the social distribution of pupils
• third, the impact on particular groups of pupils and especially
on those with special educational needs
• finally, the impact of these schools on innovation and flexibility.
The literature is extensive and the issues are methodologically
exceptionally complex. Much of the evidence and conclusions continue
to be disputed. There are, in all jurisdictions, powerful examples of
charter, friskolor and similar schools which have succeeded. There are
also examples of such schools which have failed, and have been closed.
The evidence of such reforms on overall levels of attainment is difficult
to establish: those countries which have experimented most extensively
with school independence have not seen their PISA scores improve
substantially, although they do record improvements on some national
measures of performance. Cases where gains are reported for attainment
are often simultaneously characterised by reports of a negative impact on
social mixing (e.g. Allen, 2010; Baker 2012). Moreover, many of the points
at issue in relation to school independence go beyond measures of overall
pupil attainment and, as the most recent Swedish study reminds us,
involve longer-term as well as short-term measures. Perhaps the critical
issue which emerges from international experience is not the fact of
school autonomy – which has been a feature of the English system since
the mid-1980s – but the ways in which academy schools work together,
with non-academy schools and others, to sustain high achievement.
Experience in England: academies and diversification
Academisation is likely to mean that local school provision in England
will be increasingly diverse, with a wider range of school types and local
structures. It is worth noting, though, that by international standards
schools in England have always been diverse. In some areas, wholly
academised secondary schools already exist, as in Southwark; complex
patterns of school provision are emerging in other areas. The journalist
Greg Hurst, who is also a governor at a converter academy, explained in
detail to the Commission the ways in which local structures are adapting
to more diversified and marketised settings. For example, in his local area,
Maidenhead, the secondary sector now has faith schools, community
schools, academies and grammar schools nearby.
For each school, it is critical to understand and respond both to
parental expectations and to the behaviours, real and likely, of other
schools. This offers a profound challenge to public education. The
evidence presented to the Commission suggests that, in many areas, local
behaviours are developing more quickly – and adapting to the realities of
diversification more quickly – than policy is keeping up with. It is clear
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that, in an academised system, not only will collaboration develop but,
asthe Children’s Commissioner pointed out to the Commission, it will
doso on a ‘needs must’ basis in many areas.
This development offers opportunity as well as challenge, particularly
if schools can find ways to cooperate to pool provision in the best interests
of local pupils – for example, by sharing the costs of specialised resources
or supporting minority subject provision post-16. A senior civil servant
from the DfE stressed that the 2010 Academies Act was intended to
generate not only competition between schools but also cooperation and
collaboration. He argued strongly that this focus on school collaboration
in a diversified environment distinguishes post-2010 academies from
the grant maintained schools of the 1990s. The Commissioners note
that, despite this aspiration, the 2010 Act does not actively incentivise
collaboration or – although converters had to specify how they would
support other schools – hold converters to account for this.
The challenges of a diversified system
More complex and flexible local provision reinforces trends since the
development of specialist status after 1998. Some of those giving evidence
to the Commission saw the introduction of specialist and niche provision,
including Studio Schools, UTCs and some Free Schools, as providing local
flexibility to meet specific needs and ensuring a truly comprehensive and
inclusive system. They described the system as being more dynamic and
open. Others, especially headteachers, referred to ‘fragmentation’ and
‘confusion for parents and students’.
David Hawker drew the Commission’s attention to four ways in which
an academised system might be inefficient in terms of resources:
• unnecessary capital expenditure on schools which are in the
wrong place or building extra capacity in schools where there are
vacant places nearby, resulting in poor use of public funds and
poor provision. The Commission was presented with evidence
that some private school benefactors are opening Free Schools
in areas where standards are already high and surplus provision
exists, rather than in areas of deprivation
• inefficient provision for pupils who have special educational
needs and other vulnerable groups of pupils; this arises from
gaps in provision when individual schools do not cooperate
toresource more specialist needs
• a lack of economy of scale in managing school support services
• inflation of the costs of senior personnel in academy groups or
the multiplication of senior roles in groups.
The question is whether such inefficiencies can be minimised so that the
benefits of the new system outweigh the disadvantages.
Our argument is that potential inefficiencies can be mitigated through
effective local coordination of autonomous schools, in particular effective
local planning for school places and planning for pupils with special
needs, as suggested by the evidence from the ADCS. The issue here is not
the autonomy of schools, but the framework within which autonomy
is exercised and the ways in which school collaborations are managed.
A senior civil
servant from the
DfE stressed that
the 2010 Academies
Act was intended
to generate not
only competition
between schools
butalso cooperation
and collaboration
5. Diversification and the impact of academies on existingprovision
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Unleashing greatness – getting the best from an academised system
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Some of those presenting evidence drew attention to real dangers of the
alternative: Dr Bob Burstow from King’s College London warned of the
prospect that, without regulation, we might have ‘suburbs, estates and
towns without a school, [and] monopolisation by larger conglomerates’.
Local authorities
It is, of course, possible that many of the functions previously undertaken
by local authorities could be shared more widely. There is certainly
evidence that other bodies are beginning to discharge coordination and
review functions for schools. Evidence from the Education Funding
Agency (EFA) suggested that it has established robust mechanisms for
financial accountability in academies which, in some respects, go beyond
the mechanisms established for local authority schools by their local
authorities. Nonetheless, there remain concerns, expressed by the ASCL
among others, about the ability of the EFA to manage its functions over
several thousand schools. The Office of the Schools Commissioner,
although it is extending its remit, may also have difficulty in operating
at sufficient scale. The regional offices that Ofsted is planning have some
potential for strengthening early warnings of faltering performance.
However, they are not a basis for effectively managing the key issues
in relation to planning school places, efficiencies, and the needs of
vulnerable pupils.
The Commission is also aware that there are increasing calls for a
stronger regional approach to educational provision. For example, the
London Mayor has recently published the report of his own Education
Commission, arguing for a regional role in school improvement and quality
assurance. The Commission believes there is a need for a clearly articulated
view of the roles and responsibilities of statutory agencies to avoid
confusion and potential duplication. Without a clearer sense of the role
of the local authority in relation to these responsibilities, and consequent
decisions about funding, mass conversions in some areas are likely to erode
the capacity of local authorities to discharge their statutory responsibilities.
Local authorities still retain over 200 statutory responsibilities in
relation to pupils and schools; additional statutory responsibilities have
been added in the last two years. However, in the case of academies,
local authorities no longer have the power to compel them to comply
(for example concerning admissions, place planning, special provision
or school improvement practice). Where a large proportion of schools in
an area are academies, this potential impediment to the local authority’s
statutory responsibilities may be particularly acute. This anomaly is
highlighted by the recent decision of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector to
publish a list of local authorities in terms of the effectiveness of local
provision, in his Annual Report (Ofsted, 2012b). In fact, in the present
circumstances some local authorities have little or decreasing influence
over local school provision.
A critical issue, therefore, is for the government to articulate its view
on the long-term responsibilities of those who support schools. A variety
of possible models has been described:
• Some commentators, including, most recently, O’Shaughnessy
(2012), have argued for a strongly marketised model in which,
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in principle, failure is tolerated and the government allows the
entry of new providers to the market to secure sufficient quality
and supply. Intervention would be managed to bring in private
providers where local authorities or not-for-profit providers had
been unable to secure provision which was at least good.
Some of those who gave evidence to the Commission argued
for versions of this model, referring to the need to make public
capital funding available to school providers directly, to be
disbursed by them on agreed programmes to develop additional
school capacity.
• Some commentators, including Wilshaw (2012) and Hill (2012),
have argued for a new ‘middle tier’ of school commissioners
who would take a strong local line in commissioning and
–critically – decommissioning school supply, working with
localauthorities.
• Some commentators, including Coles and the Local Government
Information Unit (LGiU), argue that the role of local authorities
should be refocused to meet the needs of local people better,
working with academy groups and chains to do so.
The Commissioners are not convinced by arguments for creating new
local School Commissioners unless there are significant other changes
in the system. Appointing local School Commissioners raises the risk
ofanadditional layer of bureaucracy.
It is the view of the Commission that there is little sense in inventing
anew system, and creating what the ASCL, in its evidence, called
ademocratic deficit. Instead, the government needs to articulate a new
role for local government as the guarantor of provision in a diversified and
fluid system. Recent evidence from the ASCL suggests that neither local
nor central government can act as reliable agents for consistently high-
quality provision. However, local government can and should develop
as aplanning and coordination agency, ensuring that there are sufficient
good school places and quality provision locally by championing the
needs and interests of children and young people.
The Commission’s view is that the development of academy freedoms
and the expansion of the academy system both reinforce the need for
coherent planning and development. At the moment, rapid academisation
is making such coherence more challenging. The Commission’s concern
is that while this is – and might be in the future – relatively unproblematic
in some areas, and especially in areas of relative affluence and relatively
stable populations, there are serious risks of destabilisation elsewhere.
Strong planning and coordination are necessary to eradicate inefficiencies.
Arguments relating to a ‘middle tier’ are in danger of becoming overly
ideological: the focus needs to remain firmly on what we need a middle
tier to do if we are to meet pupils’ needs better and ensure efficiency and
high standards. The Commission is attuned to, and supportive of, the
impetus towards ‘bottom up’, professionally-led provision of services.
Nevertheless, the evidence raises both demands for better local planning,
and threats in the absence of it. There are questions about how some
statutory responsibilities in relation to school supply, local coordination
and the needs of vulnerable children will be met. At the core of the
5. Diversification and the impact of academies on existingprovision
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issue in relation to any proposed middle tier is planning: the longer,
term planning of school places, the commissioning of provision for low
incidence but high-intensity special needs, the planning of responses to
rapid changes in pupil numbers. In a devolved and autonomous school
system, it is logical that schools themselves should take an increasing
responsibility for responding to these needs. Such responsibility involves
collaboration, and such collaboration, of necessity, will be local in scope.
While non-geographically contiguous groups of academies may stimulate
effective teacher development and continuing professional development,
ultimately children live in communities. Therefore, attention needs to
be given to the local, geographic coordination of schools’ responses
totheirneeds.
In practice, our view is that the organisation of local provision
may be less important than the effectiveness of collaboration between
schools and others to secure successful education for all children and
young people. The Commission has some evidence of autonomous
school providers looking to extend local differentiation of provision, for
example by establishing Pupil Referral Units (PRUs). Although there are
arguments for and against such local differentiation, as the Children’s
Commissioner has pointed out, given that PRU places cost three times
as much as mainstream places, and given that a place in a special school
is substantially – up to four times – more expensive than a mainstream
school place, local differentiation of provision is an economically
ineffective substitute for good local collaboration. Indeed, in a largely
autonomous school system, local coordination remains a key role. One
of the lessons from the development of US charter schools and friskolor
in Sweden is that local coordination remains a significant task for school
boards and municipal authorities.
A more open, dynamic and fluid education system might bring
advantages to pupils and communities. It seems to the Commission
that in Sweden, the USA and Chile there is some evidence that such
improvements seem to be characteristic of urban schools. But it is also
our view that effective improvement in schools needs to be set within a
coherent local framework to assure the sufficiency and quality already
mentioned. Local authorities need to embrace a new working relationship
with a wide range of schools and school providers to secure supply and
quality – and the best possible outcomes for children and young people.
The government needs to pursue the logic of the academised system it has
set in train: it needs to clarify the relationship between local authorities
and schools across a diversified system, articulating a clear role for
authorities in their relationship with increasingly autonomous schools.
Planning school places in a diversified system
The Commission shares the widespread and serious concerns about
planning for school places. We agree with the government that popular
and successful schools should be allowed to expand. We note that the
current barriers to expansion are often matters of capital spending rather
than revenue, and we are concerned that, in some areas, the inability of
local authorities to direct academies to expand will create significant
problems of supply, since there are few incentives for schools to expand.
A local planning function is needed, not only to ensure sufficient places
There must be
sufficient local
schools, sufficient
local support
services for
pupils in need of
additional support
and sufficient local
challenge to secure
high standards
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inthe right places – and certainly to protect provision for vulnerable
groups of pupils – but also to serve the needs of local people. No serious
evidence has been presented that operating a local market in terms of
school places will provide places where they are needed at the times they
are needed. DrRebecca Allen of the Institute of Education noted in oral
evidence that the market, as presently structured, has no incentives for
providers tomove into particularly challenging areas.
Local authorities retain responsibility for ensuring a supply of
sufficient school places. The LGiU’s report (Thraves et al. 2012) expresses
some scepticism that the government could secure sufficient school
places in every locality without a local partner with local knowledge,
connections and influence; its report also questions whether market forces
– the entry of new school providers – could create, on their own, sufficient
school places. The direction of policy since 2005 has been to liberalise
school supply by bringing in a range of new providers. Proponents of free
market processes argue that where there is a substantial surplus ofplaces,
liberalising supply in these areas could empower parents and act as a
mechanism for more responsive schooling. However, where there are
shortages – as is increasingly the case in parts of the south east in primary
provision – there are no strong incentives in the system encouraging new
supply in those areas where it is most needed. The experiences of early
Free School applications confirm this: such applications have not always
been closely linked to areas where there is a shortage of school places, and
in some places have been located in areas of surplus. Providing incentives
for schools to expand is challenging, as Rebecca Allen and Simon Burgess
(2012) have pointed out.
Some local authorities are using diversification to find imaginative
solutions to providing sufficient school places, but there are challenges.
No academy can be required to expand its intake. However, there are
clear signs that some academies will seek to maintain their current size
and so additional school places will need to be met from the smaller
number of community schools. The government has recognised some of
the perverse incentives in the system and is considering ways of providing
incentives for academies to continue to expand; it also draws attention to
examples – which are striking but few – in which excellent schools (such
as Cuckoo Hall in Enfield) have used the academy programme to open
new provision. The Commission is not persuaded, however, that the local
market, on its own, provides a satisfactory basis for securing a sufficient
supply ofquality school places in the medium term.
There must be sufficient local schools, sufficient local support services
for pupils in need of additional support and sufficient local challenge to
secure high standards. The danger is that an increasingly diverse school
system is unable to guarantee this local coverage. This is not an argument
about school improvement and school support, which we believe can
and should be school-led; it is about how the education system works
locally: first, in relation to the needs of all pupils and their entitlement to
a good-quality school place; second, and very importantly, in terms of the
needs of those who require additional services or who are vulnerable. The
commissioners have heard evidence from a wide range of groups with a
particular interest in the provision of support for children with additional
or special needs, and agree with those witnesses that the diversification
5. Diversification and the impact of academies on existingprovision
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ofthe school system holds significant material risks for providing support
for special needs. This has been discussed in chapter 4.
Two challenges exist in relation to a commissioning role for local
authorities in the supply of school places. The first is the authorities’
relative lack of access to capital funding; the second is their decreasing
ability to direct schools to admit particular pupils. Local authorities’
capacity to direct schools to admit particular pupils is the more profound
challenge. For many academies, this matter goes to the heart of autonomy
and the ‘independence’ of schools. But all children need a school place.
Although local authorities do not have the power to direct academies
to admit a given pupil, the Commission does not believe it is in schools’
or children’s interests for such cases to be resolved in the courts. We
therefore argue that, in order to discharge their responsibilities to all local
children, local authorities should have the power to issue a formal request
to admit to any school in relation to a pupil or group of pupils and that,
should a school decline to admit,the Office of the Schools Adjudicator
should make the final decision. These are very difficult issues. Our view
is that they relate to the profound difficulty facing both schools and local
authorities observed above: local authorities retain extensive statutory
responsibilities but their power to fulfil those responsibilities differs in
relation to different schools. This is unsustainable. Aclarification of role
would enable local authorities to strengthen a diversified system by:
• scrutinising the quality of local provision in relation to
individual children and young people as well as local and
national needs
• securing the supply of school places in areas where they are
mostneeded.
Local authorities could assume a much stronger role as the commissioners
and (in partnership with the Office of the Schools Commissioner)
decommissioners of school supply in their locality, acting, as ‘champions
for children’. This would reinforce the role of local authorities. They
would become genuine guardians of local children’s interests, scrutinising
the quality of local provision and reporting on this to the DfE (to inform
decisions concerning renewal or otherwise of funding agreements), as
well as ensuring children with additional and complex needs have their
needs met.
Safeguarding this latter provision is crucial. Very complex needs are
very expensive to provide for, and commissioning for them clearly needs
to be area-based. As champions for children in the local area, it is right
that the local authority continues to commission provision for those with
special educational needs from local schools (and has the power to do so),
and continues to be resourced to commission any additional provision
necessary. Academies must collaborate with the local authority to ensure
provision; otherwise we risk a danger of a lack of inclusion and/or poor-
quality provision. The Commission believes there should be a duty for
academies to collaborate with the local authority to this end.
Some local authorities may need to agree joint arrangements with
others to undertake planning and the commissioning role efficiently
and, in some cases, the government might need to reserve powers to
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intervene where local authorities are not adequately fulfilling their role.
Importantly, as Professor John Howson pointed out in his evidence,
not all parents are able to exercise choice on behalf of their children or
lack access to information to do so; for this reason, there needs to be a
corporate parent acting for young people. Greater clarity, therefore, about
the role of a local authority would allow it to discharge responsibilities in
relation toall pupils’ education.
The Commissioners heard a strong, although not universal,
commitment from headteachers and academy sponsors that academies
should be an integral part of local children’s services delivery and
community planning, and that academies therefore need to work closely
and productively with local partners. The majority of the headteachers
the Commissioners spoke to accepted that strong academies and robust
local authorities are not at odds with one another, although a minority
disagreed. We encountered evidence that some academy groups are seen
to be undermining community links and partnerships through what are
seen as either assertive approaches to existing arrangements or through
links with academies outside the area but within the group. As academy
groups develop their identity, some tensions are inevitable, but such
evidence reinforces the need for clarity about the role of local authorities
and the responsibilities of schools and school providers in dealing with
localgovernment.
Many academy headteachers and many of those who gave evidence to
the Commission make assumptions about the continuing role of the local
authority for certain functions – essentially, they see the local authority
continuing to be a backstop in terms of some administrative functions.
Academy headteachers in general assumed that the local authority would
continue to plan school places, oversee the assessment of pupils with special
needs and, indeed, some thought they would continue to provide additional
services for minority needs. Some local authority chief officers to whom
we spoke talked of a situation in which local authorities no longer have the
resources to discharge their statutory functions or in which the discharge of
these is frustrated by individual schools that are unwilling to cooperate – for
example, in admitting particular pupils.
Diversification and quality
Diversification of the school system poses new challenges for securing
levels of quality. Academy funding agreements are agreements between
the academy trust or sponsor and the Secretary of State. It is clearly
impossible for the government to monitor the performance of every
school, and exceptionally difficult for the government to intervene
in schools when there are subtle early signs that all is not well. The
Commission has been influenced by the suggestions made by Coles (2012)
for greater local monitoring and responsiveness in a fully academised
system. We have adapted his suggestions to propose a new framework
that focuses very much on performance:
• Academies should continue to have funding agreements
with central government, although these should be for five
years not seven (thus providing a tighter timeline for tackling
poorprovision).
5. Diversification and the impact of academies on existingprovision
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Unleashing greatness – getting the best from an academised system
98
• Medium-term performance targets over five years would be
set out in the agreement. There would have been some local
engagement in what these targets should be.
• At the end of the five-year period, if performance targets had
been achieved, a further five-year set would be agreed. If the
targets had not been met, the DfE would consider allowing
ashort period for the academy trust to improve or face being
replaced by a different provider that would be more likely
tosucceed. As Coles (2012) suggests, ‘replacement might be
through open competition between a range of providers, run and
decided locally butleading to a national funding agreement’.
• Each local authority should produce an annual report on
the quality of education provided in the area and will refer
specifically to the performance of each school in the area,
making use of alocal data ‘dashboard’. Such an annual report,
combined with ‘soft’ intelligence and evidence from reports by
Ofsted should provide early warning of slippage.
• The annual report would be brief, underpinned by quantitative
data and compiled by the local authority on all publicly funded
schools in its areas. It should be published on the local authority
website, as well as comprising a formal reporting requirement
to central government each year. The Commission does not
envisage local authorities requiring a substantial staff in order
tocompile the report.
This proposed framework is not resource-intensive but gives the national
system of academisation far greater support and rigour. Itis rooted in a
national system but acknowledges the importance of education as a local
service, since it is parents and the local community who care most about
it locally. Light-touch local scrutiny would allow local authorities to use
their democratic base to act as champions for the interests and needs of
children and young people, particularly for those most at risk. This would
include celebrating what is good about local provision but also raising any
concerns about quality. The latter might lead to working with the DfE to
decommissionproviders.
The developing system
The Commission is aware of arguments both for and against the need
forlocal planning of education.
A lack of local oversight and planning impedes the effective operation
of the system, both in terms of meeting the needs of individual pupils
and improving system-level outcomes. This may well have an impact
on services for vulnerable children, on planning for school places,
and on admissions. There is also a need for sustained local scrutiny
of the quality of education. The American evidence is clear that the
widespreaddeployment of charters reinforces the need for strong
localplanning.
Those against the (re)development of a ‘middle tier’ to replace the
local authority see the imposition of mechanisms for local planning as
re-imposing the bureaucracy from which academies have just been freed.
Such mechanisms might constrain confidence and innovation, and reduce
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the responsiveness and dynamism of the system. The Commission heard
that many academies have felt liberated by their freedom from what
they perceived as local authority control, and it is certainly not possible
to argue that local authorities have always worked effectively to secure
high-quality provision across an area, or even to secure fairly the interests
of local pupils. However, arguments for the importance of autonomy may
be overplayed: schools are, by definition, part of their local community
and will continue to depend on a web of local services and structures for
the discharge of their missions. Being part of an academy chain often
involves a significant weakening of individual school autonomy. There is
a paradox at the heart of the growing academy system in that academy
status means more autonomy for some and less for others.
The Commission believes that local planning remains important. In
chapter 1, we made clear our view that local authorities should end their
role in provision of improvement services. It also believes there needs to
be urgent clarification as to how they may fulfil their statutory obligations
in a system of autonomous schools.
Looking forward
Governments around the world are exploring innovative approaches to
the organisation and management of publicly funded education. As yet,
the evidence that such approaches have secured systemic improvement
remains patchy and contested. Our view is that diversification alone is
unlikely to do so.
This chapter has argued, first, that the government needs to express
itsconfidence in the local authority as the commissioner of school places.
Local authorities should identify local need, plan to meet it, and work
with both the government and a range of providers to secure the necessary
provision. Second, the local authority has a role in quality. Chapter 2
argued for a diminution of the role of the local authority as the automatic
provider of school improvement services. However, this report also
argues for retaining a key local role that shapes and raises aspirations for
education and achievement. The role should include articulating concerns
about the quality of school provision. The democratic base of local
authorities gives them this leverage to act as champions for the interests
and needs of children, young people and, indeed, local communities.
Finally, the Commission believes the local authority remains well-placed
to commission services for children with additional needs (including those
not addressed by local maintained school provision); and that the money
to enable this must be carefully maintained and ring-fenced.
The Commission believes that there are policy interventions which the
government should adopt with some urgency to secure improvement and
mitigate the risks described here.
Being part of an
academy chain often
involves a significant
weakening
of individual
schoolautonomy
5. Diversification and the impact of academies on existingprovision
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