Mossbourne Community Academy, the successor to Hackney Downs School. (October 2005)

Since 2000, academy in England can mean a type of secondary school which is independent but publicly funded and publicly run. As such, academies are outside the control of the Local Authorities in which they are situated. This type of school was known as a city academy for the first few years, but the term was changed to "academy" by an amendment in the Education Act 2002.^[1]

City academies were legally created by the Learning and Skills Act 2000,^[2] which amended the section of the Education Act 1996 relating to City Technology Colleges.^[3] They were first announced in a speech by David Blunkett, then Secretary of State for Education and Skills, in 2000.^[4] One of the chief architects of the policy was Andrew Adonis (now Lord Adonis, a junior Minister at the Department for Transport) in his capacity as education advisor to the Prime Minister in the late 1990s.

Academies are intended to address the problem of historic and entrenched failure within English schools with low academic achievement, or schools situated in communities with little or no academic aspirations. Often these schools have been placed in "special measures", a term denoting a school that is "failing or likely to fail to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education".^[5]

Whilst still in the fairly early stage of development (although there are over a hundred^[6] academies, only a handful have been open for more than four years), the emerging evidence so far is positive, with substantial rises in attainment results at Key Stage 3 and GCSE occurring each year.

Academies are currently subject to an independent five-year evaluation by the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers who have to date published three annual reports consisting of both "hard" and "soft" data concerning the open academies.

In the Department for Education and Skills' Five Year Strategy (published in 2004), the Government committed to there being 200 academies open or in development by 2010.^[7]

Features of an academy

Academies are established in a way that is intended to be "creative" and "innovative" in order to give them the freedoms considered necessary to deal with the long-term issues they are intended to solve. Each academy has a private sponsor who can be an individual (such as Sir David Garrard, who sponsors Business Academy Bexley) or an organisation (such as the United Learning Trust or Amey plc). These sponsors are intended to bring "qualities of success" to academies, again to help them change the long-term trend of failure in the schools they replace (known as predecessor schools).

Compared to their predecessors, academies have largely been considered a success.^[8] In an article in The Observer that regarded many of the Government's claims for academies with skepticism, journalist Geraldine Bedell conceded that:

They seem, so far, to be working - not all as spectacularly as Mossbourne, but much better than most of the struggling inner-city schools they replaced.^[6]

The article singles out the cited academy, Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney, as "apparently the most popular [school] in Britain - at least with politicians" and "the top school in the country for value-added results".^[6]

In return for an investment of 10% of the academy's capital costs (or £2m, whichever is lower), the sponsor is able to influence the process of establishing the school, including its curriculum, ethos, specialism and building (if a new one is being built). The sponsor also has the power to appoint governors to the academy's governing body. Academies typically replace one or more existing schools, although some are newly established. The remainder of the capital and running costs are met by the state in the usual way for UK state schools - through grants funded by the local authority.

Academies are expected to follow a broad and balanced curriculum, but with a particular focus on one or more areas. Current specialisms include: science; arts; business and enterprise; computing; engineering; maths and computing; modern foreign languages; performing arts; sport; and technology.^[9] Academies can select up to 10% of pupils by aptitude for the school's specialism in a way similar to specialist schools. Although academies are required to follow the national curriculum in the core subjects of maths, English and science,^[6] they are otherwise free to innovate, although they still participate in the same Key Stage 3 and GCSE exams as other English schools (which effectively means they teach a curriculum very similar to maintained schools, with small variations).

In terms of their governance, academies are established as companies limited by guarantee with a governing body that acts as a Trust. The governors also act as the Trust's Board of Directors (they are legally, but not financially, accountable for the operation of the academy). The Trust serves as the legal entity which the school is part of, and the governing body oversees the running of the school (although the day to day management of the school is, as in most schools, conducted by the principal and their senior management team, who are appointed by the sponsor).

Opposition/criticism

Academies are considered to be controversial,^{[10][11][12][6][13]} and their existence has frequently been opposed and challenged by politicians,^[13] commentators,^[14] teachers and teachers' unions,^[15][13] and parents.^[5] Even after several years of operation and with a number of academies open and reporting successes,^[15][6] the programme continues to come under attack for creating schools that are, inter alia, a waste of money,^[16] selective,^[17][18] damaging to the schools and communities around them,^[6] forced on parents who do not want them,^[5] and a move towards privatisation of education "by the back door".^[17]

The House of Commons Education & Skills Select Committee reported in March 2005 that it would have been wiser to limit the programme to 30 or 50 academies in order to evaluate the results before expanding the programme, and that "the rapid expansion of the Academy policy comes at the expense of rigorous evaluation".^[19] The Select Committee was concerned that the promising results achieved by some academies may be due to increased exclusions of harder-to-teach pupils. They noted that two Middlesbrough academies had expelled 61 pupils, compared to just 15 from all other secondary schools in the borough.^[10]

The programme of creating academies has also been heavily criticised by some for handing schools to private sector entrepreneurs who in many cases have no experience of the education sector - most famously, the Evangelical Christian car dealer, Sir Peter Vardy, who has been accused of promoting the teaching of creationism alongside macroevolution in his Emmanuel Schools Foundation academies.^[5][6] This is also linked to the wider debate in the education sector as to the benefits or otherwise of the growing role of religion in the school system being promoted by the New Labour government in general, and Tony Blair in particular, with many^[20][21] academies (one estimate puts it at "more than half"^[22]) being sponsored either by religious groups or organisations/individuals with a religious affiliation.^[23]

The past failings of the Unity Academy in Middlesbrough and the West London Academy in Ealing have been highlighted as indications that the programme is not wholly successful.^[24][14][25]

The programme has further been attacked for its expense: typically it costs on average £25m^[26] to build an academy, much of which is taken up by the costs of new buildings. Critics contend that this is significantly more than it costs to build a new local authority school.^[27]

Party policies

The Conservative Party has supported the academy proposal from its inception, only adding the caveat that the scheme should go further.^[28] This accord was reflected in a remark made by Conservative spokesman David Willetts in 2006:

I am more authentically Andrew Adonis than Andrew Adonis is.^[29]

In 2004, the Liberal Democrats were reported as being "split"^[30] on the issue, ruling that academies should not be mentioned in the party's manifesto. The position of Phil Willis, the education spokesman at the time, was summarized as:

... there [are] no plans to abolish either city academies or specialist schools if the Lib Dems came to power, though "they would be brought under local authority control".

In 2005, Willis' successor, Ed Davey, argued that academies were creating a "two-tier education system"^[31] and called for the academy programme to be halted until "a proper analysis can be done".^[32]

As of 2008, academies are supported by all three main political parties,^[33] with a further cross-party initiative to extend the programme into primary schools currently being considered.^[34]

Comparisons

The city academy programme was originally based on the programme of City Technology Colleges (CTCs) created by the Conservative government in the 1980s, which were also business-sponsored. One of the proposed city academies is Dixons CTC, once sponsored by the retailer Dixons. Currently, the Government is encouraging CTCs to convert to academies; several have already done so (for example, Djanogly CTC is now Djanogly City Academy). Academies differ from CTCs in several ways; most notably, academies cannot select more than 10% of pupils by ability, whereas CTCs can.

Academies have been compared to US charter schools.^[35]

See also

• Specialist Schools and Academies Trust
• Comprehensive System
• Education in England

References

External links

• The DfES Academies Website
• Specialist Schools official website
• Anti Academies Alliance
• National Audit Office report on the Acadmies Programme, February 23, 2007.
• So Whats The Point? by a former pupil of The King's Academy, Middlesbrough.
• In Defence of Academies by a pupil at Greig City Academy, October 12, 2006.