Ruth Kelly faces her toughest battle yet as Education Secretary today, as she gives a make or break statement over the sex offender debacle. Adding to calls for her resignation over sex offender clearance comes the latest blow in the full publication of GCSE results (and the lost war on persisting truancy to boot). Although the BBC cheerfully announced that the jump in GCSE attainment was ‘even bigger than thought’, a closer look at 2005 performance is an expose of the serious cracks beleaguering New Labour’s education policy. Whilst the results may show a 0.6-point rise in achievement from the provisional data published in October, they also reveal that the government’s flagship city academies fall amongst the worst performing schools in the country, and that private schools continue to out-strip state sector attainment.
27 of Blair’s ‘pet’ city academies have replaced failing schools, but only 14 of these have been open long enough to be included in the 2005 GCSE league tables. Out of these 14, 7 – half – rank in the bottom 200 schools, where fewer than 30% of pupils at these 7 academies achieve five C’s or above. Four of the academies fall into the 100 worst schools category.
The second blow in the GCSE league tables was in the value-added scores, also published today. These scores show that independent schools advance their pupils – from primary to GCSE level – at a rate significantly greater than state schools. According to the value-added scale, state schools score roughly two GCSE grades below the median, whereas independent schools score between five and six grades above the median. Despite the small number of independent schools, their attainment has been sufficiently high to raise the median score of all schools.
The amount of money invested in the city academies programme (at least £5bn), as well as projected investment to extend the scheme, is vast. Misgivings over this expenditure aside, a greater concern is that academies’ disappointing performance will be used as fuel against granting schools more freedoms. The failure of these 'independently' run schools is likely to be cited by MPs rebelling over the forthcoming Education Bill, as demonstrating that more autonomy is not key to raising standards in schools. However, the fact that these academies are absolutely not free from government diktat, still shackled enormously by DfES regulation, nullifies them as useful evidence for the anti-freedom brigade. As, moreover, does the value-added gulf between the independent and state sector.