THE ‘MANAGING out’ of pupils in order to ‘game’ government league tables is rife among academies, Education DataLab revealed on Wednesday.
‘The NUT has long heard anecdotal evidence that some academy chains are “managing out” pupils to boost their position in league tables,’ National Union of Teachers (NUT) General Secretary Kevin Courtney said in response to the startling revelation.
‘But this research from Education DataLab demonstrates categorically that these practices are rife in some schools and in some sponsored academies in particular,’ he continued. The government has created an unaccountable and fragmented school system in England through its academy and free school programme, in which thousands of schools now manage their own admissions and there is precious little oversight of what goes on.
‘In addition, huge cuts to local authority budgets – some 40% since 2010 – mean that local authorities have little or no resources to follow up school exclusions as they once did when the Education Welfare Service was properly funded.
‘Coupled with a draconian accountability regime in which a school’s league table position is rapidly becoming the be all and end all of educational “success”, the government has created the perfect storm of conditions for “gaming” the system in which our most vulnerable children are the losers.
‘The government must take these research findings seriously. Ofsted inspectors should consider this matter in reports of schools. Government needs to end the practice of schools acting as their own admission authorities and it needs to reduce the league table pressures that encourage some schools to engage in practices that are not in the interests of children and young people.’
Education DataLab said: ‘Today we are publishing the findings of a major piece of work we have carried out looking at pupil moves and the impact on secondary school results. Our investigation into the issue and the children affected is in response to persistent claims that a minority of secondary schools in England use pupil moves to boost their league table results.
‘Our main findings are that:
• outcomes for all groups of pupils who leave the roll of a mainstream school are poor;
• there exists a previously unidentified group of nearly 20,000 children who leave the rolls of mainstream secondary schools to a range of other destinations for whom outcomes are also very poor, with only 6% recorded as achieving five good GCSEs;
• there is wide variation in leaver numbers observed from mainstream schools – in some schools, the number of pupils who have been on-roll but leave at some point between Year 7 and Year 11 is more than 50% of the number of pupils who complete their secondary education at the school;
• pupils leaving can have a very flattering impact on the league table results of a school – with GCSE pass rates up to 17 percentage points lower in some cases if league tables are reweighted to include all pupils who received some of their education there, in proportion to how much time they spent there;
• sponsored academies tend to lose more pupils after becoming an academy.
‘Our research leads us to conclude that, in some cases, pupils are being “managed out” of mainstream schools before this point with the effect of boosting the league table performance of the school which the pupil leaves. The 2015 education white paper proposed that schools should be accountable for the results of pupils who they send to alternative provision or exclude.
‘But there were only 4,790 formal permanent exclusions in the 2014/15 academic year, when there are around 32,000 cases a year of pupils leaving from the rolls of England’s mainstream state secondaries. We are therefore calling for the DfE to consider whether league tables should be reweighted, so that they are accountable for all pupils who have spent time with them, in proportion to the amount of time spent there.
‘Several sponsored academies are among the schools that would see the biggest impact under our reweighting approach. And, looked at as a group, sponsored academies would see the biggest impact if league tables were reweighted.’
• Hundreds of local residents protested outside Baverstock Academy in Birmingham on Monday night demanding: ‘Save our school’ as West Midlands Schools Commissioner Christine Quinn met with staff about closure plans.
Birmingham Selly Oak MP Steve McCabe said: ‘This government has completely betrayed my constituents over Baverstock Academy. I have repeatedly been told by the Department for Education that every effort was being made to secure a sponsor to take over the Baverstock but now it seems they were just biding their time to close the school regardless.’
McCabe declared: ‘I’m not surprised the Education Department have failed to offer any new information about what they claim to have done to rescue Baverstock Academy.
‘Their bland response makes it sound as if those involved in running the school volunteered for closure.
‘The truth is that they had a gun held to their head, telling them there would be no more money and closure was the only option. It looks as if government plans for Selly Oak constituency are to close an 800-place school despite rising demand which means more children getting up at 5.30am to catch buses to schools all over the city and an average cut of £600 per pupil funding for every school in the constituency.
‘No wonder nobody here has any faith in this government’s education policies.
‘They have presided over a situation where a once successful school was allowed to convert into a Single Trust Academy without proper support and since the first signs of trouble the only answer seems to have been to run it down and close it down.
‘I find it astonishing that I haven’t even received a response yet from the Secretary of State to my request for an urgent meeting and even more shameful that she’s rumoured to be planning a visit to Birmingham for a photo op with the great and the good but avoiding Baverstock children and parents like the plague.’
The GMB has demanded ministers ‘come clean’ about the impact on staff and children over the closure. Baverstock Academy, in Birmingham, was a well-regarded school before being taken over by the Leap Academy Trust in 2013, now it has been placed in special measures due to ‘financial difficulty’.
Despite a huge campaign from teachers, pupils and parents it is set to close, forcing hundreds of children to move school and leaving dozens of staff starting 2017 by losing their jobs. Ahead of Monday’s demonstration, Gil Ogilvie, GMB Organiser, said: ‘A really good school was given academy status and standards have then plummeted so dramatically it is now being forced to close.
‘This is a shocking indictment of the Tories’ failed experiment into academies – and this protest will show how strongly people feel. The government must explain why it has no suitable timeline or guarantees for possible future sponsor – none has even had a chance.
‘How much taxpayers’ money will it allow to be written off? What will be the impact on support staff and workers who are set to lose their jobs? And what about the devastating impact on the kids who attend the school who will need to travel on two to three buses to get to a different one?
‘This whole mess raises massive questions about the Tories’ failed education policy – why is the local authority not allowed to take back control of the school?’
