Academies get their moment in the spotlight, but debates rage on

The academies movement represents the “renewal of comprehensive education”, Confederation of School Trusts (CST) leader Leora Cruddas told the body’s annual conference today.

Trusts have certainly been buoyed this year, with the Labour government declaring in February it wanted all schools in such groups.

Speaking in Birmingham, Cruddas said academy trusts were built to improve schools and advance education.

But although more than half of schools are now in trusts and policy continues to back them, debates continue to rage over the academy programme’s impact.

A CST study published last month found schools sprang up national league tables following academisation, while those overseen by local authorities did not. 

But the National Education Union (NEU) – which has long opposed the rise of trusts – has attacked the research, calling it “weaker than CST claims”.

Experts have cautioned against “over-fixating on inconclusive statistical evidence” either way. 

Jon Andrews, of the Education Policy Institute (EPI), argued the “key question” is not “whether academies or local authority-maintained schools achieve higher results”, as previous studies have found “either relatively limited or no effects of academisation on attainment”. 

“What really matters now is the considerable variation between groups and even within them. We need to explore what it is that the highest–performing groups do that makes the difference. 

“As we move towards a system where all schools are in a group of some kind, that is going to be the critical question.” 

Three categories

Academies can be broken down into three categories – sponsored, converter and free school. Sponsored academies are forced into a trust following a period of underperformance, while converters change status voluntarily. 

Free schools are new primaries or secondaries that were founded as academies.  

Latest figures show 56 per cent of schools are now in a trust. At secondary, the figure stands at 85 per cent. 

Despite this, the debate is far from settled, with the CST publishing two studies in September.

The first, written by the organisation’s deputy chief executive Steve Rollett, found schools that switched to academy status “rose substantially in national attainment rankings”, while schools that remained with local authorities did not.

On average, academies moved up four percentile places in league tables. Those rated ‘inadequate’ before joining a trust climbed 16 places “against comparable schools that would later face the same judgment but had not yet been sponsored”. 

The largest improvements were recorded by schools in multi-academy trusts. 

CST believes this equates to 5,400 more children reaching the expected standard in reading, writing and maths each year, or 16,000 more pupils gaining a grade 4 or above at GCSE. 

The research was independently reviewed by a Queen’s University Belfast academic. 

But Andrews stressed some schools “have more room to improve than others… and this can affect how improvements should be interpreted”. 

The change in primaries

The other report, commissioned by CST and authored by the consultancy ImpactED, found sponsored primaries reached national average attainment levels seven years after switching. Improvement at secondary came after six years, but their progress scores remained below average. 

But it only attributed such rises to academisation for the small number of schools that were sponsored between 2002 and 2010. There was also “little measured change in attainment either way” for voluntary converters. 

Daniel Kebede, the general secretary of the NEU, said the CST had not demonstrated “at all convincingly” that moving every school into a trust would raise standards.

“Ministers should recognise that these reports do not amount to independent evidence. They are self-serving ammunition for CST members and the wider academisation lobby.”

In an internal briefing, seen by Schools Week, the union argued Rollett’s claims of more than 5,400 more children hitting expected standards or 16,000 more gaining a grade 4 or above were off. 

Using CST’s data, it said the figures “fall by roughly a third” to 3,900 and 11,500 respectively. 

It also said the study showed the “benefits of intervention” when there is a significant dip in performance, while voluntary converters – “the population most relevant to a policy of universal trust membership” – recorded smaller gains. 

Signing up after a ‘bad patch’

This “does not specifically pick out the benefits of becoming an academy” and could “reflect anything from the shrinking group of maintained schools to the characteristics of schools that chose not to convert”.

The NEU added that many sponsored schools “tend to sign up for an intervention right after an unusually bad patch, which then partly corrects itself, apart from whatever the intervention was”. 

When asked about this, CST said: “These were not schools having a bad year: ImpactEd describes sponsorship as the route for schools where standards had been persistently low, often over many years. 

“After sponsorship they rose +10.9 places, while schools that would later be sponsored continued to fall… That is not recovery that would have happened anyway.”

An ImpactEd spokesperson said the organisation worked with “partners across the education system – including trusts, maintained schools and local authorities – through research, evaluation and strategy projects”. 

Its findings were set out “clearly, alongside the methods and limitations in full”.

Government figures obtained through freedom of information by the New Schools Network (NSN), which advocates for free schools, also show disadvantaged children in free schools outperformed those in other types of school.

Almost 49 per cent of disadvantaged pupils achieved the expected standard for reading, writing and maths in mainstream primaries in 2024-25. This rose to 57 per cent in free schools. 

Smaller number of pupils

Likewise, 35 per cent of poorer GCSE students in free schools secured grades 5 or above in English and maths. This fell to 27 per cent in state-funded mainstream secondaries. 

But there’s a caveat – the number of pupils in free schools is considerably smaller. In secondary, there were 8,700 disadvantaged children in free schools, compared with 167,000 in other mainstream schools. 

Policy expert Loic Menzies said the performance of free schools was “not always entirely comparable” with other schools, as they can attract “distinctively aspirational and more-advantaged families, particularly as part of their ‘pioneer’ cohorts”. 

Meg Powell-Chandler, director of the NSN, said free schools had changed what people thought was possible in state education, with thousands of pupils getting a better education as a result. 

“School autonomy and freedom to innovate has been used to raise standards, especially for the most disadvantaged pupils.  

“These results should spark policymakers’ curiosity. Instead, they have been ignored, with two thirds of the free school pipeline cancelled and the schools bill stripping away school freedoms.”

Labour pinned its colours to the academy mast earlier this year, when it revealed in its white paper its vision for all schools to join or form trusts. 

But it did not provide a timeline or financial incentives.  

‘Don’t over-fixate’

Menzies noted there were compelling arguments to move to a fully trust-based system, but warned against “over-fixating on inconclusive statistical evidence”. 

He pointed to ImpactEd’s finding that “robust causal evidence is only available for the – very different – sponsored academy programme that existed under the last Labour government”. 

“That trajectory lends itself to subsequent improvement. 

“That said, the NEU’s suggestion that converter academies provide a better comparator is disingenuous to a debate about school improvement.”

Andrews said it was difficult to come up with a single assessment of the impact of academisation as a whole because the programme had tried to achieve different things over time and in different settings. 

Previous EPI research, conducted alongside the London School of Economics, found “a positive impact of the early sponsored academies”, but they had “significant resources and political focus”. 

The impact was less clear for later sponsored academies and converters, which “were typically higher–performing”. 

Menzies added: “A coherent trust-based system, that combined enhanced trust capacity, with trust-level inspection, and robust arrangements for brokering and rebrokering would help recalibrate England’s school improvement and accountability system. 

“That would provide a much-needed opportunity to reduce the burden on individual school leaders, and to improve the balance between support and challenge. It’s now time to focus on building that system.”