choice? what choice? supply and demand in english education

Choice? What Choice?

Supply and demand in English education

Eleanor Sturdy and Sam Freedman

Cho

ice? What C

hoice?

Eleano

r Sturd

y and S

am F

reedm

anP

olicy E

xchange

£10.00ISBN: 978-1-906097-11-0

Policy ExchangeClutha House

10 Storey’s GateLondon SW1P 3AY

www.policyexchange.org.uk

For nearly twenty years parents have been allowed to choosewhich schools their children attend. Or that is the theory. Inpractice, hundreds of thousands are denied their first choiceand their children remain trapped in inadequate schools. Schoolchoice has failed to deliver because there is no market ineducation within which it can operate. Restrictions on thesupply of places in good schools mean that school providerscannot respond to parental preferences as they would do in anormal consumer market.

The supply side of the education market is so constrained byadministrative and even physical barriers that few new suppliersmanage to surmount them. These barriers are the focus of ourreport – why they occur and, most importantly, how they can beremoved. On academies we show sponsors’ unease at theBrown Government’s attitude and we ask why, if freedom isgood for some schools it should not be available to all schools?

On surplus places and competitions for new schools we showhow reforms passed under Tony Blair to provide potential newsuppliers with a number of routes to enter the state system arebeing ignored by local authorities keen on retaining control ofthe school system. And on planning we show how demographicgrowth could cause crisis for authorities who have focused onremoving surplus places with little regard for competition orflexibility of demand.

CHOICE WHAT CHOICE COVER HDS:CHOICE WHAT CHOICE COVER HDS 12/12/07 16:04

Policy Exchange is an independent think tank whose mission is to develop and promote new policy ideas which willfoster a free society based on strong communities, personal freedom, limited government, national self-confidence andan enterprise culture. Registered charity no: 1096300.

Policy Exchange is committed to an evidence-based approach to policy development. We work in partnership with aca-demics and other experts and commission major studies involving thorough empirical research of alternative policy out-comes. We believe that the policy experience of other countries offers important lessons for government in the UK. Wealso believe that government has much to learn from business and the voluntary sector.

Trustees

Charles Moore (Chairman of the Board), Theodore Agnew, Richard Briance, Camilla Cavendish, Richard Ehrman, Robin Edwards, George Robinson, Tim Steel, Alice Thomson, Rachel Whetstone.

Choice? What Choice?Supply and demand in English education


CHOICE WHAT CHOICE HDS:CHOICE WHAT CHOICE HDS 11/12/07 16:40 Page 1

About the authors

Eleanor SturdyEleanor Sturdy read Chemistry atSomerville College, Oxford. After graduat-ing, Eleanor worked in investment banking,before broadening her experience to generalmanagement with McKinsey & Co. She hasbeen involved in the education sector forthe past five years, initially covering educa-tional philanthropy during the start-upphase with New Philanthropy Capital,where she co-authored Making Sense of SEN(2004). This meant developing a generalknowledge and understanding of the educa-tion system, including the interfacesbetween public, private and voluntary sec-tors. She has worked with several educationfunding bodies on their grant-making pro-grammes, and also with schools looking at

their management and leadership strategy.Eleanor was Development Director withUnited Learning Trust for two years and is aFellow of the RSA and a Trustee of the StPancras Welfare Trust.

Sam FreedmanSam is Head of the Education Unit atPolicy Exchange. He achieved a first classdegree in History from Magdalen College,Oxford. After completing a Masters degreein International History in 2004, Samjoined the Independent Schools Council asa researcher. He left three years later asHead of Research, having also completed asecond Masters degree in Public Policy andManagement at Birkbeck. Sam joinedPolicy Exchange in September 2007.

© Policy Exchange 2007

Published byPolicy Exchange, Clutha House, 10 Storey’s Gate, London SW1P 3AYwww.policyexchange.org.uk

ISBN: 978-1-906097-11-0

Printed by Heron, Dawson and SawyerDesigned by SoapBox, www.soapboxcommunications.co.uk

2


www.policyexchange.org.uk • 3

Contents

Acknowledgements 4Foreword by David Willets MP 5Executive Summary 6Introduction 8

1. The Academies Programme 132. Demand and Supply in English Education 233. A Fair Competition? 314. Planning for the Future 36

Conclusion 43


Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank JamesO’Shaughnessy for managing this projectfor most of its life; Charlotte Leslie for herinitial research and David Willetts for hisadvice and encouragement. We would alsolike to thank Simon Horner and BenUllman for their valuable contributions.Finally, we would like to thank PhilippaIngram for her expert proof reading.

We are also grateful to the followingpeople for agreeing to be interviewed forthis project, and to several others whowished to remain anonymous.

Devon Allison, Secondary Schools Campaignin Lambeth and Brixton parent

Gideon Amos, Town and Country PlanningAssociation

Carol Bates, former Principal, Harris CTC

Adrian Beecroft, Apax Partners

David Betton, KPMG

Andrew Billington, Petchey Foundation

Neil Carberry, Confederation of BritishIndustry

Paul Carter, Education Excellence

Martyn Coles, City of London Academy

Chris Cook

Steve Chalke, Oasis Trust

David Clark, Building DevelopmentPartnerships

Chris Davies, Policy Exchange

Stephen Dengate, VT Education and Skills

Peter Evans, Prospects

Anthony Fine, White & Case

Cllr Mike Freer, Barnet Council

Christine Ginty, Bryanstone Square

Richard Hardie, UBS

Sir Ewan Harper, United Learning Trust

Lord Harris of Peckham, Harris Foundation

Lucy Heller, ARK Education

Gervas Huxley, Bristol University

Peter Jenkins, Ernst and Young

Deborah Knight, The Haberdashers’Company

Cheryl Lim, Policy Exchange

Mark Logan, Edison Schools

Michael Marchant, The Mercers’ Company

Neil McIntosh, CfBT

Cllr Sir Simon Milton, Westminster Council

Thomas Moran, CBI

Richard Morris, The Society of MerchantVenturers

Dr Dan Moynihan, Harris Foundation

Alistair Muriel, Institute of Fiscal Studies

John Nash, Sovereign Capital

Dr Mark Pennington, Queen Mary, Universityof London

Tom Peryer, London Diocesan Board ofSchools

Oliver Piggott, Ernst and Young

Annemarie Shillito, Experian Group Limited

Rynd Smith, Royal Town Planning Institute

Tony Smith, Cambridge Education

Amanda Spielman, ARK Education

Dr Tessa Stone, Sutton Trust

Patrick Watson, Montrose Communications

Richard Williams, New Model SchoolCompany

Alan Wood, Hackney Learning Trust

Inigo Woolf, London Diocesan Board ofSchools

Robert Whelan, Civitas

Stuart Whitfield, Bevan Brittan LLP

4


Foreword By David Willetts MP

Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills

For years, politicians of all hues havefocussed on methods of reforming thedemand side of the public services, withpolicy suggestions like tax relief for person-al payments and choice mechanisms.

But we have not given equal attention tothe challenge of making these choices real.They cannot be exercised without reformon the supply side – making it easier, forexample, for good schools to expand ornew schools to be created.

As I said in a speech earlier this year “Itis as if we were lovingly focusing on thedetails of exactly what free railway ticketswe should hand out to people withouttackling the problem that the trains peoplewant to take are full to bursting already,health and safety regulations make it veryhard to add extra carriages and planningrules obstruct the building of new track.”

Britain has fallen behind other westerncountries as they have pushed ahead withsuch an agenda which we have ignored,thereby depriving generations of school-children of important opportunities. Thework of Professor Caroline Hoxby, one ofthe leading experts on school choice, hasemphasised the need for schools to be free

to respond to competitive pressures as wellas showing how great the prize of realreform can be.

I first encouraged Eleanor Sturdy toundertake this research because of theimportance of tackling the barriers whichget in the way of the creation and expan-sion of new schools. Tackling issues suchas planning law, VAT, surplus place rulesand capital allocation are important if weare to deliver real reform in education.

For too long, the debate has been abouthow we can divide a limited number ofplaces in adequate schools. We need tothink about breaking the strictures whichprevent real dynamism in British educa-tion and the creation of more good schoolplaces.

The next great battle over British educa-tional reforms will not be about centralcontrol and direction, but how we freeschools to respond to local demands.Supply-side reform of the public serviceswill be one of the great political issues inyears to come and I am delighted thatPolicy Exchange has produced this excel-lent pamphlet as one of the first seriouscontributions to this debate.



Executive Summary

For nearly twenty years parents have beenallowed to choose which schools their chil-dren attend. Or that is the theory. In prac-tice, hundreds of thousands are deniedtheir first choice and their children remaintrapped in inadequate schools. Schoolchoice has failed to deliver because there isno market in education within which itcan operate. Restrictions on the supply ofplaces in good schools mean that schoolproviders cannot respond to parental pref-erences as they would do in a normal con-sumer market.

In a free market, if a good school is over-subscribed either the school will expand tomeet rising demand or another goodschool will open nearby; failing schoolswill lose pupils and be forced to close.Sadly, this is not what happens. Instead,the parents of children unlucky enoughnot to get a place at a good school have tosettle for second, third or fourth best. Achoice in which the only option ends upbeing the failing local comprehensive is nochoice at all. The supply side of the educa-tion market is so constrained by adminis-trative and even physical barriers that fewnew suppliers manage to surmount them.These barriers are the focus of our report –why they occur and, most importantly,how they can be removed.

Fortunately, a supply-side revolutiondoes not require radical or contentiousnew legislation. Reforms passed underTony Blair (the academies legislation of2002 and the Education and Inspections

Act 2006) provide potential new supplierswith a number of routes to enter the statesystem. However, the Government hasbeen incredibly cautious about turning thespirit of this legislation into reality. It hasnot been prepared to take on vested inter-ests in the form of local authorities andteacher unions, which, unsurprisingly, areunwilling to see their traditional powersweakened. By contrast, the alternativeschool providers whom we spoke to in thecourse of our research feel that support isoften lacking. So far the Brown adminis-tration seems hostile to the idea of choice –the word itself has disappeared from min-isterial speeches and articles. Yet the lawsremain on the books and no alternativepolicy approach has been provided.

We begin by looking at the academiesprogramme, the only concrete example ofsupply-side reform under Labour.Although still in their early days, acade-mies are proving successful in terms ofresults and are popular with parents – suc-cess that can be largely attributed to theirindependence. Unfortunately, that inde-pendence is being eroded. TheGovernment has forced the academiesback into the National Curriculum and,more worryingly, it is encouraging localauthorities to co-sponsor academies, whichentirely defeats the purpose of providinggreater diversity. The Government shouldmake it much easier for new academies tobe set up. For a start, it should abolish the£2 million sponsorship fee and allow exist-ing schools to transfer to academy status ifthey have an appropriate sponsor.

Next we examine the amount of unmetdemand for good school places, which is adirect consequence of constricted supply.The pattern that emerges is one in whichthe best schools are vastly oversubscribed,the number of parents not getting their

“ In a free market, if a good school is oversubscribedeither the school will expand to meet rising demand oranother good school will open nearby”

6


first choice is rising steadily and the num-ber of admissions appeals is unacceptablyhigh. At the other end of the scale, failingschools are naturally undersubscribed, buttheir surplus places are used as an excuse toforbid the expansion of successful schoolsand the entrance into the market of neweducation providers. This could be pre-vented if only surplus places in good oroutstanding schools were taken intoaccount. Much more transparency isrequired. Data about the level of unful-filled demand should be published, so thatlocal authorities can be held fully account-able for the lack of places in good schools.Where provision is found to be inade-quate, local authorities should be com-pelled to plan for new schools provided bynew suppliers and/or academies.

We also evaluate the process for settingup a new school. The Education andInspections Act 2006 states that a compe-tition should be held for would-beproviders with the aim of increasingdiversity of supply, but the guidance isfull of loopholes. An authority can avoida competition if it co-sponsors a newacademy, while the only competition totake place so far was heavily skewed infavour of the local authority bid. We rec-ommend that authorities should not beallowed to co-sponsor academies and thatthe competition rules should be revised.Academies should be included in the

competition process; new providersshould be able to employ someone at gov-ernment expense to prepare their bid; thelocal authority should not be in charge ofthe consultation if it is participating inthe competition; and schools adjudicatorsshould be drawn from a range of back-grounds rather than just the educationestablishment.

Finally, we turn to the physical barriersto supplying new schools. Local authori-ties are selling off land that has been setaside for public services (D1 land) for pri-vate housing development. We believethis sell-off is based on mistaken demo-graphic assumptions. Although birth ratesdeclined in the late Nineties and thenumber of school-age children has fallen,this trend has now reversed. But becausethere are surplus places at present, schoolsare being closed and their sites sold.Without some excess capacity in the sys-tem it will be very difficult to respond torising demand in the future. We recom-mend that land previously used for educa-tional purposes should be protected, asschool playing fields currently are. Tomake it easier to provide new school sites,mixed-use schemes involving the privatesector should be encouraged, and localauthorities should not deny change-of-useplanning permission to new independentschools if that would ease demand on themaintained sector.

Executive summary



Introduction

You may not realise this – but we haveschool choice in England. Since theEducation Reform Act 1988 parents havebeen able to list their preference of schools.No one is guaranteed a place at his firstchoice, but then no system could ever guar-antee this. The problem is not the absenceof choice but the absence of good schools tochoose from. The “bog-standard” compre-hensive is still all there is for far too manycommunities. Yet despite the Government’soccasional and cautious support of supply-side reform, the challenges to setting up anew school in order to provide choiceremain legion. This report makes a series ofrecommendations that if implementedwould offer parents real choice.

The argument for choice and diversitywithin education has been made convincing-ly in numerous other studies. We will brieflyrun through these arguments in this intro-ducyion but our purpose here is to providepractical recommendations to free up the sup-ply side using, in the main, existing legisla-tion. The Education Act 2002, which allowsfor the setting up of academies, and theEducation and Inspections Act 2006 (EIA)provide many of the mechanisms necessaryfor a supply-side revolution. But the spirit ofthese Acts has been largely ignored by those incharge of school planning. This is largely theresponsibility of local authorities (LAs), whoare still responsible for school organisation intheir areas. That they have not embraced thelegislative changes in favour of diverse supplyis unsurprising –it was naïve of the BlairGovernment to expect that local authoritieswould welcome alternative suppliers on totheir patch. Many of the recommendations inthis report focus on both tightening the rulesand broadening their application so that therhetoric of the EIA is borne out in practice.

Chapter one looks at the academies pro-gramme, which represents the Government’s

tentative first steps in introducing genuinediversity of provision to the system, at itsbenefits and at the growing threats to itsfuture. We then suggest how the programmecould be expanded to make the freedoms itoffers more widely available.

Chapter two examines why the currentsystem is so inflexible. We establish thelevel of demand for new good school placesand investigate why LAs seem so slow torespond to this demand. We discuss waysto trigger automatically the building of anew school if there are not enough goodschool places in a given area.

Chapter three looks at the process fordeciding who runs a new school on therare occasions when local authorities arepressed into action. We believe that it istoo easy for them to avoid their statutoryduty to increase diversity and that thelevers of competition are too weak.

Finally, Chapter four focuses on the short-age of suitable land for building newschools. We provide evidence that localauthorities are acting in a short-sightedmanner by selling off school land for hous-ing despite forecasts of population growthin ten to fifteen years. Already in some LAsthere is a serious lack of land for newschools and we believe that this will getworse without action from central govern-ment.

It is important to remember that all threemain parties claim to support schoolchoice. Although we have concerns thatthe Brown administration is retreatingfrom the Blairite reform agenda, it is leg-islation introduced by successive Labourgovernments that would enable many ofthe reforms we suggest. A genuine con-sensus in the House of Commons should

8



Introduction

lead to genuine choice for parents. It isthe barriers we identify in this report thatare preventing this from happening.Without the reforms recommended webelieve that choice will continue to existin name only.

Choice and Competition in EducationSince the publication of The Role ofGovernment in Education by MiltonFriedman in 1955, school choice hasappeared regularly on the political radar.The principle is simple: competitionbetween education suppliers for studentswill increase the overall quality and effi-ciency of the system. As an idea it has beenthrough cycles of popularity and unpopu-larity. However, in the early 1990s large-scale policy experiments in Sweden andAmerica provided a factual base for sup-porters of choice. Since then numerousanalyses have shown that choice does havea positive impact – though these are alwayshotly contested by opponents of choice,whose opposition is typically focused onthe potential for inequality of opportunity.

A recent report, Public Services at theCrossroads, published by the Institute forPublic Policy Research, claims that “as a nar-rative of reform ‘choice’ has been particular-ly unsuccessful: it has alienated the work-force without capturing the imagination ofthe public”.1 To some extent this is true. Theteacher unions have always been stronglyopposed to increased competition betweenschools because of the perceived additionalrisk for their members. Furthermore“choice” is a pretty abstract concept for par-ents to grasp. In America the abstractions ofchoice have attached themselves to the moresolid reality of the race debate: it is blackand Hispanic parents who have seen choiceas a way to level the playing field in an oth-erwise unequal system. In England, howev-er, the concept has not attached itself to anyconcrete example of unfairness in the sys-tem. Parents can support the anti-choice

position that all that is needed is one “goodlocal school” without necessarily under-standing the counter-argument that “thegood local school” is an end not a meansand choice is the best mechanism for deliv-ery.

Despite this, though, all three politicalparties have used the language of choiceover the past few years and all three havecited Sweden and the US as positive exam-ples of system change. In 2004 Tony Blairasked: “What are the key elements if we arereally to put the public at the heart of pub-lic services?…A continuous drive toincrease the scope and scale of choice avail-able to public service users. Whenever theexpansion of choice has been proposed inthe public sector there have been thedoomsayers arguing that such freedomswould be exploited by the assertive few atthe expense of everyone else. Each timethese predictions have been wrong.”2

During his campaign for the leadership ofthe Conservative Party David Cameronannounced that “the Conservative partymust be the party of real school choice forall, recognising that schools should beaccountable to the people they serve, notbureaucrats in the town hall orWhitehall.”3 At the 2007 Liberal DemocratParty conference education spokesmanDavid Laws argued: “If we believe inempowering parents and pupils, part ofthat empowerment is choice. Choice is nota dirty word: it is one of the essential free-doms in a liberal society.”4

Gordon Brown and his Secretary ofState for Children, Schools and Families,Ed Balls, have been noticeably less pre-pared to use the language of choice anddiversity – in the next chapter we look athow this negative attitude is impacting onthe academies programme. However, theyhave offered no alternative narrative forschool improvement and the rhetoric ofchoice enshrined in the EIA is still the basisupon which local authorities are supposedto act. Our concern is that a lack of will at

1. Brooks R et al, Public Services

at the Crossroads, (IPPR, 2007),

p 8

2. Blair T, Speech at the Guardian

Public Services Summit, 29

January 2004; www.guardian.

co.uk/society/2004/jan/29/comm

ent.publicservices

3. Cameron D, 9 September

2005; http://politics.guardian

.co.uk/toryleader/story/0,,156668

6,00.html

4. Laws D, Speech to Liberal

Democrat Conference, 19

September 2007; www.libdems.

org.uk/conference/brighton-2007-

david-laws-speech.7744.html


the top will prevent the spirit of the 2006Act from becoming practice, leaving – inthe absence of any alternative programme– stagnation and stasis.

Choice and Competition: An International PerspectiveSupply-side reforms have gone furthest inSweden and the US. The evidence fromthese countries suggests that the introduc-tion of independent or charter schoolsimproves the performance of all schools,including existing state schools.

Under the Swedish system, state andindependent schools receive public fund-ing on more or less equal terms. Providedthat they fulfil certain basic requirements,all kinds of schools are eligible, includingreligious schools and schools run by busi-nesses for profit. There are really only twoserious limitations to the operation ofindependent schools: they must pledge notto charge students an additional tuition feeand they cannot select students on thebasis of academic performance. A recentcomprehensive analysis of the effects ofschool choice in Sweden found that theeffect on average grades of a 10 percentagepoint increase in the private school share isjust below 1 percentile rank point. Thestudy also found that “the individual gainfrom attending a private school (the pri-vate-attendance effect) is estimated to beonly a small part of the total effect, about0.1 percentile rank point. Thus, the totalachievement effect is mainly driven byother peoples’ choice of private school inthe municipality.”5 Another analysis of theimpact of school choice reform found noevidence at all that competition diminish-es the quality of state schools.6

In the US, a number of states have runrelatively small-scale voucher programmesallowing selected children to use statemoney to attend private schools. Thesehave come under sustained attack from theAmerican judiciary, despite numerous

studies showing that public schools subjectto voucher competition make greater aca-demic gains than similar schools not facingcompetition.7 More impressively, since1991 40 states plus Puerto Rico and theDistrict of Columbia have enacted charterschool legislation. There are now over 1.1million children studying at over 4,000charter schools nationwide. These schoolsare similar to English academies in beingindependent state schools run by a diverserange of sponsors. Like academies theyhave considerably more freedoms thanother state schools but are not allowed tocharge fees or select academically. Unlikeacademies they receive less funding percapita than other state schools (an averageof 78 per cent).8 Over the past six yearsthere have been 70 reports on the impactof charter schools. Forty of these makesome attempt to analyse student perform-ance over time. Of these, 21 found thatoverall gains in charter schools were largerthan other schools in their districts. A fur-ther ten found that certain categories ofcharter school produced higher gains (forexample, elementary schools in Arizona).Five found comparable gains with otherschools and only four found that otherschools allowed for greater studentimprovement.9

Even those who deny the overall efficacyof charter schools would find it difficult toignore the incredible success of certaingroups of schools under particularly innova-tive sponsors. For example, from runningone Houston school in 1994, KIPP(Knowledge is Power Programme) now runs57 charter schools educating 14,000 chil-dren across 17 states. Over 90 per cent ofthese children are black or Hispanic and 80per cent are eligible for the American equiv-alent of free school meals. The schools’results are astonishing. In the 2005-06school year, 100 per cent of KIPP eighth-grade classes outperformed their districtaverages in both mathematics and read-ing/English language, as measured by state


10

5. Böhlmark A and Lindahl M,

“The Impact of School Choice on

Pupil Achievement, Segregation

and Costs: Swedish Evidence”,

IZA Discussion Papers No 2786,

pp 41-42, 2007; www.iza.org

6. Sandström F and Bergström F,

School Vouchers in Practice:

Competition Won’t Hurt You!

Research Institute of Industrial

Economics, 2002

7. For an overview of these stud-

ies see Forster G, Monopoly vs

Markets, Milton Friedman

Foundation, p 42, 2007,

8. National Alliance for Public

Charter Schools, 2007 Charter

Dashboard; www.publiccharters

.org/content/publication/detail/21

47/

9. Hassel B et al, Charter School

Achievement: What We Know,

National Alliance for Public

Charter Schools, p 9, 2007



Introduction

exams.10 KIPP has recently received $65million from a number of donors to open afurther 42 schools in Houston – showinghow a system with genuine supply-side flex-ibility responds to successful innovationfrom new suppliers.11

The Rising TideThe economist Caroline Hoxby ofHarvard University, the leading researcherinto school choice, has famously conclud-ed that “a general increase in school pro-ductivity could be a rising tide that liftedall boats and the gains and losses from real-location might be nothing more than crestsand valleys on the surface of a much high-er water level.”12 Professor Hoxby’s researchhas found that the three essential elementsof successful school choice reform are:independent management, per capitafunding that follows the pupil to the cho-sen school and a responsive, fluid supplyside.13

In England there has been some move-ment on the first two elements in recentyears – and research suggests that thechanges have made a difference, thoughthey have not gone far enough. There isplenty of evidence that Hoxby’s first essen-tial element, independent management,contributes strongly to school performance.Research from the Sutton Trust confirmsthat independent fee-paying schools inEngland perform better than state schoolseven when the economic background oftheir pupils is taken into account, and itattributes this to the autonomy enjoyed bythe leaders of such schools.14 Research fromthe Specialist Schools and Academies Trust(SSAT) confirms that the independence ofheadteachers in the city technology colleges(CTCs) was an important element of theirsuccess. The independence of academies iscited as a key driver of their early success byPricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in itsdetailed evaluations of the academies pro-gramme. (This is discussed in more detail in

Chapter one).15 However, the majority ofschools remain highly regulated environ-ments, absorbing valuable managementtime.

Hoxby’s second essential element, percapita funding, supposedly exists in theEnglish schools system. We regularly hearministers talk of funding in terms of “perpupil” amounts. However, in reality fund-ing for community schools, and volun-tary-controlled schools, remains in thecontrol of their LA and so they rarelyreceive the per capita sum announced bythe Treasury. Councils make local deci-sions based upon their own staffing andoverhead costs and other developmentalpriorities, frequently leading to delays forthe schools and uncertainty in their annu-al budget settlement. As Hoxby explains,a system that does not have funding thatrelates to the pupil will not be responsiveto demand.16

So the first two of the essential elementsidentified by Hoxby, independent manage-ment and per capita funding, are partially,haltingly, happening in English schools,but the third, a flexible supply side,remains almost entirely constrained. Thismeans that education reforms that aredirected towards improved choice for par-ents may disappoint because they do notallow the full effect of the choice decisionto be exercised and they do not result in anexpansion of the number of good schools.As research from CentreForum explains:“Choice requires an excess, as well as adiversity, of supply. Meaningful choicerequires that supply to be of high quality.Until such time as the supply side has beenliberalised, those pupils currently in under-

10. For more information see

www.kipp.org

11. “Charter School Effort Gets

$65 million Lift”, The Washington

Post, 20 March 2007;

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-

yn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR

2007031902027.html

12. Hoxby C, “Rising Tide”,

Education Next, Winter 2001

13. Ibid

14. Sutton Trust, Blair’s

Education, an International

Comparison, June 2007

15. PricewaterhouseCoopers,

Academies Evaluation 4th Annual

Review, DCSF, 2007 ,

16. Policy Exchange will be

releasing a report in 2008 calling

for a thorough overhaul of the

school funding system

“ The independence of academies is cited as a key driverof their early success by PricewaterhouseCoopers in itsdetailed evaluations of the academies programme”


performing schools will find it difficult orimpossible to access a place at a higher per-forming school.”17

In comparison with several internation-al examples, the English system remainsconstrained by regulatory and physical bar-riers.18 In a comprehensive review of theresearch evidence on school choice, theSocial Market Foundation confirmed thatschool choice reforms can lead toimproved school quality, but that theEnglish system is too constrained on thesupply side to be able to respond to theparental demand that is generated bychoice: “Contestability under parentalchoice can work to improve the qualityand the efficiency of state schools, giventhe right policy conditions. This is the con-clusion of a large number of the studieslooking at school choice. There is a sub-stantial amount of research relating to

school choice, in particular on the compet-itive effects of school choice policies onstate schools. The UK has combinedchoice policies on the demand side withlittle flexibility on the supply side, which,as a result, has had little scope for respond-ing to parental preferences. In addition thenumber of school places has declined overtime. Flexibility and capacity are thereforetwo possible explanations for why theresults have been less positive than thosefrom countries in which overt selection hasbeen restricted and, importantly, choicehas been accompanied by new forms ofprovision.”19

This report will examine the major hur-dles that need to be overcome in the questto open a new school, together with poten-tial reforms that would free up the systemfor operating schools in a more flexibleway.


12

17. Marshall P, Tackling

Educational Inequality,

CentreForum, 2007

18. See School Reform: A Survey

of Recent International Experience,

DfES, June 2006; “Free to

Choose, and to Learn”, The

Economist, 3 May 2007; Hoxby

papers on school choice pro-

grammes in US, NZ, Sweden and

Holland: www.economic.harvard

.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers.html

19. Williams J and Rossiter A,

Choice: the Evidence. The

Operation of Choice Systems in

Practice, National and

International Evidence, The Social

Market Foundation, October 2004


1The AcademiesProgramme

Academies are widely seen as the educationsuccess story of the Blair years. Early analy-sis of results shows faster than averageimprovement and they have proven verypopular with parents. They have also beenwidely criticised, but usually for the con-siderable expenditure on new buildingsthat has come hand-in-hand with an acad-emy project. In this chapter we review thestory so far: the early successes and the cur-rent fears that the Brown Government issubverting the original purpose of acade-mies by increasing local authority involve-ment. We look at the law governing acade-mies and show that the programme couldgo much further than it does without fur-ther legislation. We argue that if freedom isgood for some schools then surely it isgood for all schools.

In order to obtain an up-to-date view ofthe programme and its operational con-straints we interviewed 17 sponsors repre-senting 50 academies. We asked sponsorsabout the help or hindrance that theyencountered as well as the changes thatthey would make to improve the situation.Our findings are summarised throughoutthe chapter.

The Story So FarAcademies are independent schools withstate-funding. The department websitedescribes them as follows: “Academies arepublicly funded independent schools thatprovide a first class free education to localpupils of all abilities. They bring a distinc-tive approach to school leadership drawing

on the skills of sponsors and other support-ers. They give Principals and staff newopportunities to develop educationalstrategies to raise standards and contributeto diversity in areas of disadvantage.They are all ability schools established bysponsors from business, faith or voluntarygroups working in highly innovative part-nerships with central Government andlocal education partners. The Departmentfor Children, Schools and Families(DCSF) meet the capital and running costfor the academy in full.”20

So far academies have primarily beenused to replace failing schools – thoughthere is no legislative reason for limitingacademies to areas of disadvantage. Theyfulfil two of Caroline Hoxby’s essential ele-ments of school choice reform: independ-ent management and per capita funding.As such they have been recognised as a seri-ous attempt to increase diversity of supplyin the state sector and many supportershave made enormous contributions oftime and money to enable academies to beset up. There will be 82 academies open bySeptember 2007, with a further 100 proj-ects in the pipeline.21 The Government iscommitted to opening 200 by 2010 and,so far, 400 in total.

Academies are effectively an extension ofthe city technology colleges (CTCs) thatwere set up during the 1980s and 1990s bythe last Conservative administration.Fifteen CTCs were established in highlydeprived areas from 1988 to 1993 and theyhave all been successful in terms of theirexam results since, as the graph below


20. www.standards.dfes.gov.uk

/academies

21. Source: DCSF Academies

Division


shows. The blue line is the average of the15 CTCs’ GCSE results over time and theblack line is the national average. Theimprovements did not all happen quicklyor in a straight line, but the passage of timehas shown that this supply-side educationreform was successful.

Four of the original CTCs (BRIT,Macmillan, Dixons and Leigh) are now inthe top 50 English schools in terms of“contextual value added” meaning thatthey are out-performing expectationswhen deprivation is taken into account.CTCs have now mainly converted into

academies in order to secure their futurefunding.

The early signs are that the academies arehaving a similar impact on achievement.PricewaterhouseCoopers’ evaluations togeth-er with recent National Audit Office analysishave confirmed that there are strong signs ofprogress and that standards are improving.Where an academy has replaced a failingschool, public exam results are included inthe statistics, but some brand new academieshave not yet taken GCSE exams under theirnew management and are still filling up withstudents.

22. The Academies Programme,

National Audit Office, February

2007

% of students attaining 5+ GCSEs graded A*-C from 1997-2006

Average % of all CTCs

National UK Average

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

CTC performance at GCSE compared with national average 1997-2006

(Source DCSF)

Summary academic performance for academies:22

2005 2006 Change

% Pupils scoring 5+ A*-C at GCSE Academies 34 40 +6

National av. 56 58 +2

% Pupils scoring 5+ inc Eng and Maths Academies 16 22 +6

National av. 43 45 +2

Contextual Value Added (KS2 to KS4) Academies na 1018.2

National av. na 1000.5

Average advanced level points Academies 541

National av. 722

14




Academies Evalution, 3rd Annual

Report, DfES 2006, and 4th

Annual Report, DCSF, 2007,


Academies Evaluation, 4th Annual

Review, DCSF, 2007

25. Ibid

The academies programme


Academies’ results have improved whencompared with their predecessor schools.Taking the GCSE results of 20 academies, 40per cent achieved five or more GCSE atgrades A*-C, which compares well with FreshStart schools (35 per cent) and is catching upwith Excellence in Cities schools (47 percent), although still below the national aver-age (58 per cent). Given the short time peri-od of the programme and the intense diffi-culties of the failing schools that academieshave replaced, both the NAO and PwCregard these results as highly encouraging.23

The academies’ average contextual valueadded score of 1018 indicates that theacademies are making a significant differ-ence in the areas of deprivation where theyhave been located. (The national average of1000 is the “baseline” for measuringwhether or not a school has achieved betteror worse results than expected when socio-economic context is taken into account.Schools are adding value relative to expec-tations when they score above 1000.)

Performance in academies is rising fasterthan the national average, starting from alower base. Crucially, this is being achievedwhile they are admitting higher numbers ofpupils eligible for free school meals (FSM)and with special educational needs (SEN)than both the national average and the aver-age in their catchment areas.

The relative proportion of pupils eligiblefor FSM has fallen in some academies,attracting criticism that they are not ade-quately serving deprived areas. This criticismis based on incorrect analysis as several acad-emies have taken over from predecessorschools that were not full. As they now havemore pupils than their predecessor schools,the relative proportion of pupils entitled toFSM may fall, while the absolute number onFSM is rising. As the PwC review noted:“There has been an overall increase in theabsolute number of pupils eligible for freeschool meals (FSM) in academies. Similarincreases in absolute numbers, albeit on asmaller scale, are also evident relation to

English as an additional language (EAL) andspecial educational needs (SEN).”24

The PwC review attributes some of acad-emies’ early success to their independence, aswell as examples of good practice that arefound in many schools, such as behaviourmanagement, focus on attendance and excel-lent pastoral support, as well as to theimproved social mix of the intake.

“Some of the improvement in pupil perform-ance can be explained in terms of the fact thatthe social and educational profile of pupilsentering academies is improving, and at a ratethat is faster than other similar schools.However, there is also clear evidence from theevaluation…that much of this performancecan be attributed to individual academiesdoing things differently, and well, on theground…including using a number of criticalsuccess factors, or ‘enablers’, which are key fea-tures of the academies initiative and which, ina sense, distinguish academies from otherschools. Such enablers include academies’ inde-pendent status, governance and leadership, allof which are being used to various degrees byacademies to improve pupil performance.”25

The report is clear that, “Independent statusprovides academies, in principle, with thefreedom and flexibility to work outside tradi-tional boundaries by using differentapproaches to curriculum, admissions,timetabling, recruitment, staffing and gover-nance.” PwC found that independence wasbeing used in the following ways:

� More academies are increasing the num-ber of teaching hours by extending theschool day.

� Teachers’ pay and conditions are beingadjusted to accommodate the longerschool day.

� There is evidence of a more flexible use ofsupport staff to strengthen learning teamsand provide additional support to teach-ers in order for them to focus on theircore duties.


� Curriculum options and pathways arebeing significantly changed in some acad-emies.

� Some principals are working in partner-ship with their sponsors to accessresources which they report would nothave been previously available.

The report concludes: “Independenceappears to have given principals, staff, andgovernors far greater confidence toexplore new avenues of funding and newpartnerships within the wider communi-ty.”26

Crucially academies are also extremelypopular with parents. All but three of the 42academies opened last year were oversub-scribed – 15,000 families applied and wereturned away.27 One academy had 1,200 appli-cations for just 180 places. When one consid-ers that they have replaced schools thatnobody wanted their children to attend this isan extraordinary turnaround. As one academysponsor told us: “Over 1,000 people appliedfor 180 places at our academy last year, and100 of those put in appeals which it took usten days to process. Whatever the papers say,people want to come to our academies.”

26. Ibid

27. Ibid

Academies: the case of Hackney

The London Borough of Hackney is one of the most deprived areas of England. Although significantregeneration is now taking place through both public and private initiatives, it has had a history of edu-cational failure. In August 2002 the local education authority was replaced by a not-for-profit LearningTrust. The trust faced a severe shortage of school places and a school-age population growing at 6 percent a year. It believed that the academies programme offered a way to fund and build the new schoolsthat the borough needed. A bold strategy was agreed that includes three brand new academies. Amongtheir sponsors are UBS investment bank, the late Sir Clive Bourne and the Jack Petchey Foundation.The two academies that have opened so far are oversubscribed and have attracted enormous parentalsupport. The first indications of success appeared in August 2007, when Mossbourne CommunityAcademy celebrated Key Stage 3 results of 90 per cent, well above the national average of 79 per cent.The academies will have GCSE results from 2009. Hackney’s overall ranking in London (based on theaverage of all value added indicators) has risen from fifteenth in 2002 to sixth in 2006.

Since the arrival of the academies education standards have been rising throughout schools inHackney. Teachers comment that the academies have made them take stock, demonstrating howchoice and potential competition can “lift all boats”.

% of 15 old pupils achieving 5+A*-C (and equivalent)

2003 2004 2005 2006 % change

Hackney Average 39.2 45.1 47.2 50.3 11.1

England Average 52.9 53.7 56.3 58.5 5.6

% of 15 year old pupils achieving 5+A*-C (and equivalent) including English and maths

2003 2004 2005 2006 % change

Hackney Average 26.4 32.1 34.1 36.2 9.8

England Average 41.9 42.6 44.3 45.3 3.4

16



Are Academies’ Freedoms Under Threat?Tony Blair was a fervent supporter of acad-emies and regularly spoke on their role inthe English education system. WhileGordon Brown and Ed Balls have notstopped the programme, as some hadfeared, they have been considerably lesspositive. Noticeably, Balls has stoppedusing the phrase “independent stateschools” – which had acted as a powerfultagline for the programme. Some of his firstdecisions involved rolling back the free-doms of academies; and more than thisthere has been a clear, if subtle, change inthe ethos of the programme that threatensits future value. Academies are subject toincreasing centralisation and standardisa-tion in building projects, increasing co-sponsorship with local authorities andtighter teaching and curriculum require-ments.

Right from the launch of the programmethe main teaching unions have campaignedvigorously against academies, especiallyover any variation in teachers’ conditions ofemployment. As a result, academies arenow required to employ only teachers reg-istered with the General Teaching Council,even though this rule does not apply inother independent schools. Ironically, acad-emy sponsors had transferred staff whowere not even qualified teachers or regis-tered with the GTC from predecessorschools.

However, the real sea change happenedafter Brown became Prime Minister. EdBalls, in his first speech as Secretary of Statefor Children, Schools and Families, stated:

All academies now actively collaborate withschools and colleges in their area, just as allschools should co-operate with academies.Currently, all academies replacing localauthority schools proceed with local author-ity endorsement at the feasibility stage, andat the funding agreement stage we alreadyhave a duty to consult local authorities and

we take their concerns fully intoaccount…At the heart of the innovation inthe curriculum that academies make possi-ble is flexibility, which we will maintainfor all new academies—built on the plat-form of the core national curriculum that,as with most existing academies, all newacademies will follow in English, maths,science, and information and communica-tions technology.28

This announcement confirmed that localauthorities now have a de facto veto overacademies. It also withdrew one of their keyfreedoms– to follow their own curriculum.In line with the consistent opposition ofthe National Union of Teachers to acade-mies’ freedom from local authority control,Steve Sinnott, the NUT General-Secretary,said: “I welcome Ed Balls’s statement givinglocal authorities a greater say in the plan-ning of academies. This is a direction oftravel of which I thoroughly approve.”29 Infact, local authorities’ veto over academies isnot clearly defined and can be based solelyupon an ideological opposition to acade-mies. The London Borough of TowerHamlets, for example, has refused the offerof an academy with sponsorship fromGoldman Sachs investment bank, despitebeing one of the most deprived areas in thecountry with low educational perform-ance.30

A veto for local authorities immediatelyconstrains the programme since a numberof the more ideological authorities do notfavour provision of this type. One sponsorthat we interviewed found the localauthority in Hull (constituency of the for-mer Education Secretary, Alan Johnson) sohostile to its plans, that it has started devel-oping plans elsewhere. Another sponsorexpressed concern at the increased role oflocal authorities: “Where will academies bein the Brown regime? We’ve heard rumoursLEAs will have more control over them. Wereject that. We’ll work with LEAs, but notfor them.”

28. Balls E, speech, Hansard, Col

1322, 10 July 2007

29. www.teachers.org.uk/story.

php?id=4052

30. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/

education/6221170.stm




It is important to note that there is nolegislative reason why local authoritiesshould be able to veto an academy. TheEducation Act 2002 requires only that con-sultations about the establishment of theschool (academy) should be held with:

(i) the local education authority in whosearea the school is to be situated; and

(ii) if the Secretary of State thinks a signifi-cant proportion of the pupils at theschool is likely to be resident in one areaof another local education authority,that authority.31

Even where local authorities are prepared toengage with the programme they are increas-ingly doing so as co-sponsors – which defeatstheir original purpose: increasing diversity ofsupply. As of July, 20 academies had been co-sponsored by their local authority.32

Manchester, Sunderland and the LondonBorough of Camden, have recentlyannounced co-sponsorship of academies. Aswe will show in the next chapter at least onelocal authority has agreed to co-sponsor anacademy primarily to avoid having to hold anopen competition for providers who wish tobuild a demographically necessary school.This is a direct perversion of the intention ofthe academies programme.

Sponsors are certainly alarmed at thistrend. One told us “all the sponsors that areinvolved in the academy we co-sponsor arebemused that an LEA can be a sponsorbecause often the LEA are part of the prob-lem. The whole point is that academies wereto be independent.” The PwC report which,as we saw in the previous section, pointed tothe independence of academies as one of thekey drivers of their success, noted: “Newsponsorship arrangements are emerging,including co-sponsorship by local authori-ties, which have given rise to issues thatneed to be further explored in next year’sfieldwork. These include the implicationsfor the independent status of academies.”The report also comments that “changes to

the policy landscape, including the impactsof Building Schools for the Future,Extended Schools, 14-19 Curriculum, andEvery Child Matters have all been signifi-cant for academies, and have resulted incloser links being forged between academiesand their local community of schools. Thereare challenges for academies in negotiatingthis evolving policy landscape.”33

Sponsors have also expressed concernsover the attitude towards academies at theDCSF. Some, who had been involved fromthe start, reported that an initial energy,freedom and zeal in the DCSF academiesdivision seemed to have been eroded as theacademy model became more mainstream,and as pressure has mounted to raise thenumbers being set up. One told us: “Weare starting to feel like the DCSF is justone big LEA.” There are also concerns thatproblems over budgetary control withinone or two projects have led to increasing-ly stringent procurement processes culmi-nating in the delivery of academies becom-ing part of the national Building Schoolsfor the Future (BSF) scheme in March2006. (We describe the impact this has hadon the process of building an academybelow.) Sponsors feel that Partnerships forSchools, the quango responsible forBuilding Schools for the Future, is anothercentrally controlled barrier in their path.

31. Section 482(3)(a) and (b)

32. Hansard, Col 1378W, 26 July

2007


op cit

The purpose of the academies pro-

gramme is to increase the freedom of

schools and diversity of provision. As

such, academies should have freedom

over their curriculum and they should

be sponsored by organisations other

than the local authority

Recommendations:

1 Restore curriculum freedoms for

new and existing academies.

2 End local authority co-sponsor-

ship of academies.

18



34. In this Section “agreement” is

also known as a funding agree-

ment and “person” is also known

as a sponsor

35. Section 482(2)(a) and(b)

36. www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/

acade-

mies/faq/?version=1#2778527



What Does the Academies Legislation Allow For?The legislation that allows for the creationof academies goes much further than thecurrent government programme. As wehave seen, the programme has focused onrebuilding failing schools in co-operatinglocal authorities, with a sponsor “paying”£2 million for the privilege of providingnew leadership. This is quite a restrictedmodel, which is why the Government isstill some years away from its target of 400academies out of around 3,350 secondaryschools. But the legislation does notrequire that academies be built fromscratch or that they can only replace failingschools. It also does not require that localauthorities support the decision or thatsponsors have to put up £2 million. Webelieve that such a narrow interpretation ofthe academies model is an unnecessaryblock on the original purposes of the pro-gramme.

Section 482 of the Education Act 2002simply provides that:

The Secretary of State may enter into anagreement with any person: a) to establish and maintain, and to carry

on or provide for the carrying on of, anindependent school in England, and

b) to make payments to that person.34

There are very few limits on the character-istics of an academy. They must have thefollowing characteristics:

a) a specialism – in that it places empha-sis on a particular subject area, orparticular subject areas as specified inthe agreement;

b) provides education for pupils of differ-ent abilities who are wholly and main-ly drawn from the area in which theschool is situated.35

It does not have to replace a failing schoolor be built in a disadvantaged area. Yet the

Government insists that this be the focusof the programme. A section on theDCSF website about the criteria for acad-emies states: “Most of them replace exist-ing weak or underperforming schools. Asa broad rule of thumb, the Governmentis prepared to consider any secondaryschool where in 2006 fewer than 30 percent of pupils gained five or more GCSEsat grades A* - C (including English andMaths) as a potential academy project. Inaddition, local authorities should alwaysconsider an academy as an option fordealing with a school in special measures,or subject to an improvement notice,whatever its results.”36

The usual reason given for this is thatto focus on any schools other than theworst would dilute the programme.However, this is only true because of thehuge capital costs involved in building anew academy. Again, although many ofthe failing schools replaced by academieswould have needed to be rebuilt anyway,there is no reason why academies shouldalways be new builds. The Governmenthas already tacitly accepted this by allow-ing independent schools into the statesector through the academies scheme. InSeptember 2007 William HulmeGrammar School in Manchester and theBelvedere School in Liverpool becamethe first independent schools to enter thestate sector in this way. Of course, neitherof these schools was previously under-achieving academically; and neither ofthem has been rebuilt. As there are nosignificant capital costs attached, theDCSF does not see the addition of theseschools to the academies programme as adilution of focus. In a speech to theHeadmasters’ and Headmistresses’Conference in October 2007, SchoolsMinister Lord Adonis, announced thatthree more successful independentschools were on the road to academy sta-tus: Colston Girls’ School and BristolCathedral School (both in Bristol) and


Birkenhead High School. In doing so hespoke of “embracing innovation, andcombining choice and diversity withexcellence”.37

It is difficult to disagree with this ambi-tion, but it seems in stark contrast to theGovernment’s professed focus on failingschools. The teachers’ unions were quick tosee the danger of such a widening of theacademies programme, denouncing LordAdonis’s speech (unlike their warm praisefor Ed Balls). Steve Sinnott, the NUTGeneral-Secretary, rejected “the implica-tion that somehow private schools and thequality of teaching within them is betterthan that in state schools”.38 Of course, theunions are well aware that any expansionof the programme threatens centralised paybargaining because academies have thefreedom to set their own pay and condi-tions for teachers.

We know from the PwC report that itis the independence of academies and theethos of the sponsors, not just the newbuilding, that makes them successful. Weknow that the Government is in principlehappy for successful schools to becomeacademies (albeit previously independentones). So why not allow any school thatsigns up a reputable sponsor and has aclear plan of action to become an acade-my? If freedom works for the existingacademies why should it not be availableto all schools? Schools Minister JimKnight was recently asked this very ques-tion and replied bluntly: “My depart-ment has no plans to extend these free-doms more widely.”39 He gave no reasons.

In the same speech that announced theentry of three new independent schools

to the academies programme LordAdonis also scrapped the £2 million feefor private schools that wish to sponsoracademies. This followed Balls’sannouncement earlier in the summer thatuniversities were exempted from thesponsorship fee.

Other sponsors, however, are stillrequired to pay up. Those we inter-viewed felt it was a severe constraint.One said: “If a sponsor is thinking ofdoing it more than once, it [£2 million]would be problematic.” The DCSF doesallow a reduced contribution of £1.5million but only after a sponsor has setup three academies. Again the originalrationale for the fee was the large capitalcosts of building a new academy. Thereare two points here. If sponsoring anacademy no longer meant automaticallybeing involved in a new build then thiswould not apply. Secondly, the DCSFhas recently announced that, in any case,sponsors’ contributions will go intoendowment funds for the schools andthe capital costs will be met entirelyfrom public funds. There seems littlereason why the fee should now be com-pulsory; it remains solely as a barrier topotential sponsors. In our survey ofsponsors, a change to the £2 millionrequirement came joint second on a listof changes that would most encouragethem to set up another academy. Asanother sponsor said: “It’s hard to findpeople to go through all the hassle. Bythe time you’ve finished, you want themto pay you £2 million!”

There is nothing in the law to preventthe supply of many different types ofacademy to respond to the varying needsaround the country. For example, someprimary schools may wish to becomeacademies. Another model that could beutilised in the future is the multi-schoolacademy where a governing trust signsone contract to run several schools.Although a number of sponsors have

37. www.dfes.gov.uk/speeches/

media/documents/hmcbournemo

uth.doc

38. www.teachers.org.uk/story.

php?id=4107. In 2007, 30 per

cent of children at private schools

achieved three As at A Level

compared to 7.4 per cent in com-

prehensive schools, see

“GCE/VCE A/AS and Equivalent

Examination Results in England,

2006-07 (Provisional)”, DCSF

39. Hansard, Col 890W, 15

October 2007

“ Another model that could be utilised in the future isthe multi-school academy where a governing trust signsone contract to run several schools”

20



gradually added schools to their portfo-lios there is no reason why the DCSFcould not enter one funding agreementwith a sponsor for a group of schools.Central services like human resourcesand finance could be provided from ashare of the funding for each academy.

Building Schools for the FuturePerhaps the most significant change to theacademies programme since its inceptionwas the decision in mid-2006 to bring theprocurement of all buildings within thegovernment’s Building Schools for theFuture (BSF) scheme.40 All new academiesare now managed by Partnerships forSchools (PfS), the quango that deliversBSF. This was publicised as a move togreater cost-effectiveness by using procure-ment mechanisms that BSF will provide,and followed a number of cost overruns onthe first series of academy builds. Althoughthere certainly were lessons to be learntfrom the project management of the first

academies, the sponsors that we inter-viewed were especially worried by this cen-tralising shift.

One spoke of the “invidious nature” ofthe programme: “It dictates physical layout and everything follows from that. TheBSF programme is locking the door on anygenuine diversity for decades to come. It iscompletely top-down. There is in effect noparental decision-making on how it isspent. The role of the consumer is virtual-ly non-existent…the Government dictatesin ever increasing detail; a surrogate forparental choice.”

In announcing this change the DCSFstated: “…integration of academies withBSF will bring about more cost-effectiveprocurements and will maximise the valuefor money that the programme can deliv-er…it will create a more integratedapproach to estate planning – as academieswill be included in local authorities’ estateplanning this will allow more integratedimplementation of their strategic vision forsecondary education provision across thelocal authority.”41 The last point highlightsthe move towards standardisation and cen-tralisation of the academies programme.The independent management of thebuildings aspect of academy developmenthas effectively been removed.

Guidance to sponsors from the DCSFconfirms their more limited role:“Sponsors will have a limited role duringthe academy construction, but will be keptinformed of progress and will be consultedwhen required. However, sponsors willneed to promote the construction work asan important part of the academy’s visionto contribute to the overall needs of thelocal community.”42 As a result of thissponsors’ risk is actually increased sincethey will have little say in the constructionprocess but are being asked to sign-off andtake forward the ownership of the land andbuildings. Liabilities from building workcan take years to emerge and years to beresolved.

40. www.bsf.gov.uk

41. “Response to the Third

Annual Report from the

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Evaluation of the Academies

Programme”, DfES, July 2006

42. “Guidance to Academy

Sponsors on PfS”, DCSF

If more freedoms are good for some

schools they will be good for all

schools. There is no reason for every

academy to be a new build or for

retaining the compulsory £2 million for

any sponsor.

Recommendations:

3 Allow any school with a suitable

sponsor and a viable plan for

using its new powers to apply

for academy status.

4 Remove any obligation to pay a

sponsorship fee. If organisations

are prepared to provide a finan-

cial endowment for their acade-

mies this will obviously be wel-

comed.

5 Engage large sponsors in multi-

school funding agreements.




Under the new BSF framework, acade-my sponsors are not allowed to meet theirproject managers before selection, despitethe crucial role that the project managerplays in the delivery of such a complexproject. Two sponsors have described as“ludicrous” and “crazy” this new barrier inthe delivery process. As in any profession-al appointment, meeting the person whowill be so germane to the success of theproject is a standard practice and one wayof reducing risk. The sponsors we inter-viewed had particularly strong views onthis aspect of academies’ delivery, agreeingthat they should have the freedom to be,or employ, their own project managers.One sponsor told us that it was “extreme-ly unhelpful to have a project manager.We could have done it better ourselves.”Another said: “We’ve tried to avoid proj-ect managers. It’s an awful system. Wehave people here who could do it. We hadto sack some before and they were charg-ing lots of money…Only one or two PMshad any competence and we had to trainthem.”

When asked in our questionnaire toname “the top three things you wouldchange to make you most likely to open upanother academy” improvements in projectmanagement, procurement and standardsof consultancy came first. The irony is thatthe major academy sponsors were really get-ting to grips with the processes of develop-ing a new site when the powers to do so

were taken away from them. One sponsortold us that the Specialist Schools andAcademies Trust had published a pamphlet,On Time, On Budget, which mapped theideal procurement process based on hisexperience in Walsall. Unfortunately, hesaid, “we can’t now follow the procedure wefollowed in Walsall, or use the same archi-tect, because the regulations have changed!”Another sponsor expressed frustration thatthey were not able to transfer knowledgefrom one build to the next: “Sponsors areonly allowed to use architects and so onwho are on their [local authorities’] books.Previously we were able to transfer our proj-ect team from the first academy to the sec-ond. We can’t do that now.”

It makes sense for new sponsors to

be helped in building their first acade-

my; it makes little sense to prevent

existing sponsors from using their own

people and acquired knowledge.

Recommendations:

6 Devolved capital and project

management to established

groups should be actively

encouraged.

7 Refurbishment budgets should

be given to academy sponsors

to use as they see fit once they

have established themselves.

22



2Demand and Supply in English Education

You may think that there is a set procedurefor deciding when a new school is necessary–perhaps a formula or a statutory planningprocess that takes into account parentaldemands, the existence or lack of projectedsurplus places and the performance of exist-ing schools. It is, however, left entirely to thejudgement of local authorities. Changesbrought about by the Education andInspections Act 2006 mean that LAs have torespond formally to unhappy parents whowant a new school, and must have “regard”to increasing diversity and choice in theirarea; but this means little in practice.Moreover there is DCSF and AuditCommission guidance (the Government haspersistently denied that this amounts torules) on surplus places, which focuses entire-ly on the economic costs rather than the edu-cational costs of a lack of good places. Simplyput, there are no effective mechanisms tomake local authorities respond to demandwhen it is not in their ideological or econom-ic interest to do so.

In this chapter we examine the evidencefor unmet demand and review the schoolplanning process. At the end of the chapterwe make a number of recommendationsdesigned primarily to enforce the spirit of the2006 Act and give parents a genuine voice.

Is There Unmet Demand?The current English system suffers from animbalance of demand for good school placesover supply, especially in those parts of thecountry where the population is growing.The sheer number of children who fail to

gain a place at their parent’s first choiceschool and the quantity of subsequentappeals are indicative of this. Recent pollsreveal serious dissatisfaction among parents,more of whom are moving to the private sec-tor or using private tutors.. Those parentswho cannot afford these options are, ofcourse, disproportionately affected by thelack of good school places.

There are an estimated 1.5 million chil-dren applying for a school place in any givenyear – split between those aged 4 aiming forprimary school and those aged 10 aiming forsecondary school places. Local authority sta-tistics for admissions reveal that 31 (out of150) authorities have more than 20 per centof parents failing to get a place at their firstchoice of school: a fifth of all educationauthorities are disappointing at least a fifth ofthe pupils in their area (33 authorities did notprovide information).43

Parents are entitled to appeal against theadmission decisions made by their localauthority when they are dissatisfied with theschool place allocated to them. In 2006,there were 78,670 appeals, representing 5.2per cent of admission decisions. The level ofdissatisfaction is higher for secondary schooladmissions, where parents appealed 8.3 percent of decisions. More than 20,000 of all theappeals were successful (36 per cent), whichappears to be a relatively high success rate. Itis not clear why so many appeals succeed, butit may mean that admissions processes arenot being conducted completely correctly orfairly. In 1997, there were 76,971 appealsand the level remains around 80,000 everyyear: they have not been declining over the

43. “Myth Behind School

Admissions Claims Exposed”, The

Daily Telegraph, 10 March 2007



past ten years.44 More important than theoverall level of appeals, however, is their dis-tribution across local authorities, indicatinghigher levels of dissatisfaction in some partsof the country. In eight authorities more than20 per cent of secondary admissions lead toappeals; the figure is more than 10 per centin a further 34 authorities. The table belowshows the LAs with the highest number ofsecondary appeals and the number of chil-dren affected.

A slew of recent polls has found parentsincreasingly discontented with the currentsystem. A YouGov poll for Reader’s Digest ear-lier this year found that only 41 per cent ofparents believe that schools catered well forall abilities; down from 61 per cent when thepoll was undertaken 20 years ago. In 1987,

47 per cent felt they had an adequate say inthe running of their children’s school; todayit’s 30 per cent.45 Teachers’ TV commissioneda poll in October 2006 which revealed that330,000 children were not at their firstchoice school and that 22 per cent of parentswere not happy with the school allocated bytheir local authority and would prefer to usea private school.46 The poll found that dissat-isfaction is particularly acute in London,where more than three times as many parentswant to send their children to private schoolthan the national average.

A poll commissioned by the Children’sSociety in October 2007 found that 51 percent of parents would be prepared to movehouse to get their child into a good school.One in seven (14 per cent) agreed that they

44. DCSF Admissions Appeals

statistics: www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgate

way/DB/SFR/s000728/SFR18-

2007.pdf

45. www.readersdigest.co.uk/

images/files/State%20School%20

Survev% 20Fu 11%20ResuIts.pdf

46. www.teachers.tv/node/17587

Authority No of Admissions No of Appeals % Appealed

Slough 2,085 599 28.7

Birmingham 13,765 3,711 27.0

Bradford 6,555 1,659 25.3

Havering 3,456 851 24.6

Bury 2,164 531 24.5

Lewisham 2,102 438 20.8

Manchester 5,077 1,042 20.5

Enfield 4,003 820 20.5

Darlington 1,272 245 19.3

Leeds 9,580 1,837 19.2

Richmond upon Thames 1,580 295 18.7

Barnet 4,051 704 17.4

South Gloucestershire 3,470 591 17.0

Kingston Upon Hull, City of 2,942 496 16.9

Blackburn with Darwen 1,958 330 16.9

Dudley 3,982 671 16.9

Barking and Dagenham 2,457 403 16.4

Derby 3,313 491 14.8

Lambeth 1,951 263 13.5

Hounslow 3,574 477 13.3

Hammersmith and Fulham 1,253 166 13.2

Poole 2,099 264 12.6

Warwickshire 7,206 905 12.6

Westminster 1,804 225 12.5

Kent 19,889 2,478 12.5

Source DCSF

24



would go as far as giving false information,such as lying about their faith or where theylived, a figure that rose to 23 per cent inLondon.47 The problem is even acknowl-edged by the DCSF: in guidance to LAs onthe Education Act it notes that research onparental preferences in 2001 showed thatalmost three in ten parents (28 per cent) didnot apply to their nearest state school.48

Parents in London were over two-and-a-halftimes more likely not to apply for the nearestschool than those in shire authorities.49

The Children’s Society also argued thatthe shortage of good school places impactsmost on the most disadvantaged membersof society. They quote research from theCentre for Market and Public Organisationat the University of Bristol which found that44 per cent of children who are eligible forfree school meals have a good school nearbycompared to 61 per cent of their better-offpeers.50 This problem was recently con-firmed in Ofsted’s first annual review.Among schools inspected in the past year,20.2 per cent had 30 per cent or morepupils entitled to free school meals. Ofthose schools judged inadequate, 36.5 per

cent had 30 per cent or more pupils entitledto FSM. Ofsted concluded that “dispropor-tionate numbers of deprived pupils attendinadequate schools”.51

Although the most disadvantaged groupsare left behind in inadequate schools thosewho can afford it are leaving for the privatesector in ever greater numbers. The propor-tion of children attending private schoolsremains relatively low, at around 7 per cent,but the graph shows clearly that the trend hasbeen rising whether the school-age popula-tion has been rising or falling. Even a 0.1 percent increase in children attending privateschool, represents 8,000 families choosing toleave the state education service and pay forschool fees from their post-tax disposableincome.

There has been an increase of over50,000 places at independent fee-payingschools during the past ten years.52 In cer-tain parts of the country the flight to theprivate sector is more pronounced: in tenlocal authorities more than 20 per cent ofchildren attend private schools – seven ofthem are in London.53 According to a 2004MORI poll for the Independent Schools

47. www.childrenssocietv.org.uk/

all+about+us/media+centre/latest

+n ews/the+good+childhood+

inquirv/Good+Childhood+Learnin

g+launch.htm

48. Parents’ Experiences of the

Process of Choosing a Secondary

School, DfES Research Report

278, 2001

49. Ibid

50. Burgess S, Briggs A,

McConnell B and Slater H, School

Choice in England: Background

Facts, CMPO Working Paper No

06/159, University of Bristol, 2006

51. The Annual Report of Her

Majesty’s Chief Inspector of

Education, Children’s Services

and Skills 2006/7, p 65, The

Stationery Office, October 2007

52. Independent Schools Council

53. Schools and Pupils in

England: January 2007 (Final),

DCSF:

www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/S

FR/s000744/index.shtml

52

51

50

49

48

47

46

45

44

43

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

8.45

8.40

8.35

8.30

8.25

8.20

8.15

Tota

l num

ber

in IS

C s

choo

ls (t

hous

ands

) Total number in all schools (m

illions)

Comparison of total number of pupils in all schoolsagainst total number of pupils in independent ISC schools (1997-2007)

Demand and supply in English education



54. Ireson J and Rushforth K,

Mapping and Evaluating Shadow

Education, ESRC Research

Project, Institute of Education,

2005

55. O’Shaughnessy J and Leslie

C, More Good School Places,

Policy Exchange, October 2005

56. www.opsi.gov.uk/SI/em2005

/uksiem_20052149_en.pdf

26


Council, 50 per cent of parents wouldchoose private schooling if they couldafford to. In the YouGov poll for Reader’sDigest this had risen to 59 per cent.

Those not wealthy enough to afford pri-vate education but desperate to improve thelife chances of their children are increasinglyusing private tuition. A comprehensive sur-vey of the use of such additional tutoring bythe Institute of Education in 2005 showedthat 27 per cent of school-age children hadreceived some form of extra private help.54 Insome schools up to 65 per cent of childrenhad received extra help, indicating an under-lying dissatisfaction with school quality.Altogether, this adds up to a picture ofparental dissatisfaction with the current sup-ply of education services in certain parts ofthe country, particularly urban areas withgrowing populations. In such areas there isunquestionably a pressing demand for moreand better schools.

School PlanningThe Education and Inspections Act 2006introduced changes to the way that localauthorities are supposed to admit newproviders to their education services. TheAct abolished the old school organisationcommittees (SOCs), with the aim ofincreasing competition and transparency.As outlined in Policy Exchange’s MoreGood School Places report, the SOCs werecommittees of existing state educationproviders, set up in 1998 to bring grant-maintained schools back under govern-ment control. School organisation com-mittees displayed the classic symptoms of“producer capture” by allowing existingproviders to protect their own positionwithin the system against the threat ofnewcomers. Through the SOCs, existingstate schools were able to prevent morepopular rivals from expanding or newschools from entering the market, if it“harmed” them – ie provided competi-tion for places. New and independent

schools were regarded with particular sus-picion.55

Unfortunately, the function of the com-mittees has now been returned to the LAs,which hardly improves the situation. If any-thing it makes it worse as the producer cap-ture problem remains, but there is less trans-parency. Additionally authorities no longerhave to produce a school organisation plan, arequirement introduced in the SchoolStandards and Framework Act 1998. Thepurpose of this document was to provide aframework for decisions about pupil-placeplanning. Authorities had to publish detailedreasons for decisions about school planning.Even if one did not agree with these decisionsat least the school organisation plans provid-ed transparent data about the projectionsLAs were using.

Without any apparent reason the duty toproduce this plan was repealed in 2005 aspart of the Children’s Act 2004. Along with18 (!) other statutory plans it was replacedwith the Children and Young People’s Plan(CYPP), which each authority had to pro-duce for the first time in 2006, and is updat-ed annually. This plan, however, is supposedto cover the authority’s entire strategy for“discharging their functions in relation tochildren and young people” – which coversquite a lot.56 Unsurprisingly, there is littleroom for detail. Camden’s CYPP, for exam-ple, contains one solitary paragraph onschool planning. Others contain nothing atall. Some LAs, including Essex and SouthGloucestershire, have continued to publishschool organisation plans anyway, suggestingthat they are, in fact, quite useful. Withoutthem there is no way a member of the publiccan get any sense of the reasoning behindschool planning.

Even if we are no longer able to see theprocess we must assume that LAs are engag-ing in some kind of planning rather thansimply sporadic crisis management. So whatdo they have to consider? Most of the focusremains on surplus places, of which moreshortly, but since May 2007 authorities have


57. www.dfes.gov.uk/schoolorg/

dataguidance

Documents/duty%20to%20respo

nd%20to%20parenta1%20repres

entations%20v2%22007-07-

ll.doc, p1

58. “Establishing a New

Maintained Mainstream School, A

Guide for Local Authorities”, p 49,

DCSF, May 2007



had a statutory duty “to promote diversityand increase parental choice in planning andsecuring the provision of school places”.There is also an “an explicit duty” on LAs forthe first time to respond formally to parentsseeking changes to the provision of schools intheir area, including new schools.57 Whatdoes this mean in practice? Well, where thelocal authority is satisfied that the communi-cation from parents amounts to representa-tion under the new duty, then they shouldinvestigate and respond in a proportionateway according to the circumstances of thecase. So basically the authority now has towrite a letter saying No. Even if every parentin the authority wrote in, the only responsenecessary would be a polite rejection.

Moreover, despite the EIA guidance that“All LAs will need to think creatively aboutcapturing the views of the full range of theirlocal residents” it is impossible to find any-where to register dissatisfaction through localauthority websites. Most make no mentionof the new duties on their website despiteexplicit guidance that “we expect LAs tomake information available to all parentsinforming them of their new rights”.Furthermore, the School Commissioner,introduced in the 2006 Act to monitorchoice and diversity and parental satisfaction,does not have a website at all.

As for the new duty to promote diversityand choice it is difficult to see how this meansanything in practice. If, if, an authoritydecides to build a new school, and it is not anacademy, it now has to engage in open com-petition with other suppliers – in the nextchapter we look at the problems with thecompetition process. But there has been onlyone true competition so far because it is soeasy for LAs to rationalise a decision not tobuild a new school on the grounds of existingsurplus places. Running schools with excesscapacity is not economically efficient, but inorder to give parents some choice it is neces-sary to have some surplus within the systemat any time. Unfortunately, the schools thatare successful tend to be oversubscribed and

full, leaving the surplus places in weakerschools. New, potentially better, schools willtypically not be approved by local authoritieswhen there are surplus places, regardless oftheir quality.

So what is a surplus place? In 2001-02schools were measured and given a definednet capacity, a fixed number that relates tothe number of pupils that can be fitted intothe buildings based upon a formula forpupils per square metre. If a school is provid-ing education to a smaller number of pupilsthan this, then it has surplus places.

Since local authorities control all deci-sions on school opening or closure, there istypically resistance to the opening of anynew provision unless proven to be requiredover and above existing surplus places, evenif these are in the worst school in theauthority. In guidance following theEducation and Inspections Act 2006, theDCSF acknowledged that when decidingon whether to build a new school LAs“should take into account not only the exis-tence of spare capacity in neighbouringschools, but also the quality and popularitywith parents of the schools in which sparecapacity exists and evidence of parents’ aspi-rations for a new school. The existence ofsurplus capacity in neighbouring less popu-lar or successful schools should not in itselfprevent the addition of new places.”58

However, as with so much of the EIAguidance, practice contradicts the rhetoric.Every year the DCSF sends a letter to all LAsto gather data on their surplus places. Theletter is revealing in the narrowness of itsfocus on the economic inefficiency of surpluscapacity: “the surplus places return informsthe Department of the extent of spare capac-ity in different parts of the country. It helpsus monitor whether local education authori-ties are taking action to reduce it. For eachschool which has a surplus of 25 per cent ormore (and at least 30 places surplus) thecommentary should provide details of howthe school is performing and what action isunderway, or planned, for the future of the


59.

www.dfes.gov.uk/netcapacity/doc

s/LA%20Guidance%201etter%20-

%202006.doc

60. www.audit-commission.

gov.uk/Products/NATIONAL -

REPORT /FC8B4B31-C278-4987

-8EFADAOF2 C20A6DB/

ACResponseHigherStandardsBett

erSchoolsforAll.pdf, p 4

61. “School Destinations of

Secondary School Pupils

Resident in London Boroughs”,

DCSF, 2007: www.dfes.gov.uk/

rsgate-

way/DB/SBU/b000739/contents.s

html

28


school. Where no action is proposed the LAshould set out the justification for maintain-ing such schools.”59

Moreover, the DCSF employs the AuditCommission to provide guidance to authori-ties on surplus capacity and it has an evennarrower focus on the economic impact ofsuch capacity than the department. In itsresponse to the White Paper that led to the2006 Act the commission argued that “theexpectations of users should be realisticallymanaged and grounded in provision which isaffordable and does not result in poor valuefor money. There needs to be a managed bal-ance between the supply of and demand forschool places. The promotion of wider choiceoverstates both what is necessary or feasible forall.”60 It went on to argue for explicit region-al advisory levels of acceptable places, regard-less of the quality of those places, and that“the previous benchmarks of 10 per cent ofplaces in aggregate and 25 per cent in indi-vidual schools should be reinforced.”

Given that the commission is the auditorfor local authorities, it would be a brave LAthat ignored its 10 per cent and 25 per centbenchmarks. Indeed, a quick glance throughthe minutes of any local authority discussionon surplus places shows that these bench-marks are usually accepted unquestioningly.In fact, until 2003-04 this benchmark wasone of the Audit Commission’s “best valueindicators” by which local authorities werepublicly judged. So it was, and remains, arule in all but name.

Judging surplus places on quantity ratherthan quality allows local authorities toignore demand for more good school placesas economically inefficient. As the chair of aSouth London education foundation toldus: “In Merton, three schools are only halffull and yet none are being closed. The qual-ity is not good enough but they don’t wantnew ones in.” An education consultant toldus: “There won’t be any new schools aroundhere while there are still any places in failingschools available…You have to prove thatthere is a need for any school and this gets

blocked if there are any places in otherschools around.”

The most recent statistics available, for2006, show that there were 757,623 surplusplaces – up by 8 per cent since 2001, inEnglish schools. Some 49 local authoritieshad more than 25 per cent surplus places inmore than 15 per cent of their primaryschools. They are under instructions to getthese levels down and this is having a knock-on effect within the schools. Schools are beingmerged and closed down, and sites are thenbecoming available for sale or development(see chapter 4).

At the other end of the scale, 70 authoritieshave fewer school places than children, butthere are still surplus places because so manyparents choose schools in neighbouring LAs.This allows the authorities to justify decisionsnot to open new schools. So the fact that par-ents are so unhappy with the available qualityof schooling that they travel outside their localauthority becomes a self-perpetuating justifi-cation for blocking new suppliers from open-ing new schools. The table on the followingpage shows the 20 local authorities with thelargest number of “exports” relative to“imports”. (It is worth noting that Hackney’snumber of “exports” will come down nowthat the Learning Trust has taken over fromthe local authority.)

Some of these “exported” children are trav-elling astonishing distances daily to get a goodschool place. Detailed figures from the DCSFon where children resident in London bor-oughs go to school reveal some incrediblejourneys. Perhaps the greatest, in terms of dis-tance, is that of four children resident inLambeth but attending school inHertfordshire. But there are thousands of lessextreme examples of children travelling out-side London to get to school; like the 130children travelling daily from Islington toHertfordshire or the 109 travelling fromGreenwich to Kent.61

It is only once a council has a pressingdeficit of school places, even within its lesssuccessful schools, that decisions start to


favour new provision. In the cases ofLambeth, Hackney, Camden and otherLondon boroughs with a shortage of places,this can be after many months or even yearsof delay. A Guardian article on the problemin 2004 reported that in Enfield “three yearsago, the situation was so bad the authorityhad to provide emergency teaching in BowesRoad library for youngsters without a place.At its peak nearly 100 children were beingtaught in the library, mainly pupils who werenewly arrived from other countries or fromother parts of London, many of whom need-ed specialist one-to-one teaching.”62

Of course, where surplus places remainthey are often found in schools that are notperforming well. These schools are, by defini-tion, the ones that fewer parents are choosing

as their first preference. A breakdown of thequality of surplus places by Ofsted category isnot publicly available but many of our inter-viewees have told us that local authorities usethe schools with spare places for those pupilsthat are excluded from other schools, harderto place, or for those who have arrived in theUK as asylum seekers or the children of eco-nomic migrants and who do not speakEnglish. Some excess capacity is useful for anLA in case it needs to place a new arrival, andthe level of excess capacity that is requiredcan never be predicted accurately. Thoseschools that are oversubscribed and popularwill be full and so unable to take any morepupils once the school year has started.

We argue that the clear failure of localauthorities to respond to parental demand in

62. “Battling to Meet Demand for

School Places”, The Guardian, 26

January 2004

Local authorities with the largest exports of students as a percentage ofschool population 2007 (secondary schools)

Local authority Net difference between Net difference between

imports and exports* imports and exports as

a % of school population

Hackney -3,600 -52.5

Lambeth -3,950 -49.4

Reading -2,313 -46.9

Knowsley -1,922 -21.9

Bristol, City of -3,239 -21.5

Lewisham -2,398 -21.3

Harrow -1,669 -18.4

Nottingham -1,759 -12.4

Wolverhampton -1,591 -11.4

Ealing -1,604 -11.3

Leicester -1,828 -10.9

Merton -806 -10.2

Thurrock -836 -9.5

Manchester -2,124 -9.3

Bracknell Forest -495 -9.1

Bradford -2,637 -8.9

Greenwich -1,091 -8.9

Haringey -921 -8.4

Kingston Upon Hull, City of -1,215 -8.1

Stoke-on-Trent -1,083 -7.9

* Negative figure indicates LA is a net exporter of pupils. Source: DCSF




many parts of the country indicates a needfor more stringent rules to trigger the cre-ation of new schools. The focus should notbe on the economic cost of surplus places,but the educational cost of failing to haveenough good school places. The system iscurrently overstating its capacity by includingall school places, regardless of how weak theymay be. Only 51 per cent of secondaryschools inspected by Ofsted since September2006 have been judged good or outstand-ing.63 If surplus places in these schools onlywere counted, the total would be consider-ably smaller.

For a start local authorities should, onceagain, have to publish a school organisationplan every five years. Unlike the previousplans, however, they should not focus exclu-sively on minimising surplus places across thesystem but on increasing the number of goodschool places. There should be an explicitfocus on measures of unmet demand, such asthe number of surplus places at good or out-standing schools. Others could include: thenumber of children unable to go to their firstchoice school; the number of appeals againstfailed applications; and the percentage of par-ents who registered a desire for new provision.

Central government could set limits acrossthese categories – for example:

� There should be a minimum of 5 percent surplus places in good or outstand-ing schools.

� The number of parents failing to get theirfirst choice of schools should be fewerthan 10 per cent.

� The number of admissions appealsshould be fewer than 10 per cent.

� Fewer than 10 per cent of parents shouldhave registered a desire for new provision.

While there could be exceptional reasons forfailing on any one of these measures (forexample, areas with grammar schools willnaturally see higher levels of appeals) if anyauthority failed on three of these four meas-ures it would be a clear sign that it was fail-

ing in its statutory duty to provide suitablechoice and diversity for parents. Authoritiesfailing on at least three measures should beforced to include provision for new schoolcompetitions in their plan. Only by forcingrecalcitrant LAs to respond to clear demandcan central government enforce the spirit ofthe 2006 Act.

63. Annual Report of Her

Majesty’s Chief Inspector 2006-7,

p 25, Ofsted, 2007

The spirit of the Education and

Inspections Act 2006 is being ignored by

those who have responsibility for school

planning. Local authorities must be held

to account in a transparent way for their

response to demand for good school

places.

Recommendations:

1 Restore the responsibility for local

authorities to produce school

organisation plans every five

years.

2 These plans should include

details not only of surplus places

projections, as previously, but also

measures of parental demand: the

number of surplus places at good

or outstanding schools; the num-

ber of parents failing to get a

place for their child at their first

choice schools; the number of

appeals and the number of par-

ents registering a desire for new

provision.

3 If any authority is failing to meet

demand measured in this way

they should be compelled to

include provision for new school

competitions or academies in

their plan.

4 Each local authority should have a

clearly navigable section on its

website for parents to register a

desire for new provision and all

parents should be made aware of

their right to register such a desire

during the admissions process.

30



3 A Fair Competition?

We have seen how the focus on keepingdown the number of surplus places worksagainst the aims of the Education andInspections Act 2006 to increase diversityof supply in the school system. As thepopulation of young people is falling inmost parts of the country at the moment(see Chapter 4 for figures), local authori-ties are able to justify the status quo oneconomic grounds. In some areas, howev-er, the numbers of young people areincreasing because of internal migrationand immigration. So occasionally thepressure to build a new school becomes sooverwhelming that even the most recalci-trant local authority cannot ignore it.When this happens the LA has twooptions. It can either build an academy orstart a competition between alternativesuppliers for the right to build and runthe new school. Some will choose the for-mer simply to avoid the latter. If theauthority decides to go for a competitionit can offer its own entry. If it does thenthe competition will not be judged by theauthority but by the Office of the SchoolsAdjudicator.

As this is a fairly new process, andauthorities have been less than enthusias-tic about embracing it, we have only onereal competition to critique.Nevertheless, it is already clear that theprocess is flawed in a number of ways.First, authorities can avoid competitionsby opting for an academy and then “co-sponsoring” it. Secondly, it is so costly fora new supplier to enter a competition

that there is little enthusiasm to do so.Thirdly, the school’s adjudicator does notappear to have been impartial in their solejudgement between a local authority andother suppliers. In this chapter we willlook at each of these problems in turn,while offering policy recommendations tosolve them.

Building a New Maintained SchoolWith effect from 25 May 2007 a newstatutory framework was applied to theestablishment of any new maintainedschool in England. Where the localauthority wishes to see a new schoolestablished it must either:

� invite proposals for the school as pro-vided for in Section 7 of EIA 2006and the School Organisation(Establishment and Discontinuance)(England) Regulations 2007 (SI: 2007No 1288). The process is generallyreferred to as a “competition”. This isexpected to be the route by whichmost new schools will be established;or

� apply to the Secretary of State for con-sent to publish proposals for a newschool, without running a competi-tion, as provided for in Section 10 ofEIA 2006.64

The only way an authority can avoid run-ning a competition is where it is workingwith sponsors to establish a new academy.

64. www.dfes.gov.uk/schoolorg

/data/guidance_Documents/New

SchoolGuide per cent202007-09-

05.doc, p 2



This can provide a perverse incentive forsupporting the academy programme. Aswe saw in Chapter one, there is anincreasing trend for local authorities toco-sponsor academies, which defeats thepurpose of the programme: to increasediversity of supply in the school system.Where an LA actively wishes to avoidincreasing diversity of supply throughcompetition it can use the co-sponsorshipof an academy to retain control over anew school. In these circumstances theacademy programme can work againstincreasing diversity.

The London Borough of Camdenrecently had to organise new school pro-vision to address its growing deficit ofschool places. The council decidedagainst holding a competition, however,as it was nervous about the way such aprocess might go and was reluctant tolose control of school provision. An inter-nal briefing paper drawn up by officials atCamden council to explain why council-lors should support co-sponsoring anacademy with University College London(UCL) made plain the desire to avoidcompetition:

There is a significant risk that because ofthe emphasis in the…guidance on diversi-ty, a community school bid would notwin the competition and one of the spon-sors would then be asked to set up analternative school to a communityschool…The outcome of the competitioncould be a sponsor that the council doesnot approve of or that would not want towork as part of the family of schools inthe way that University College Londonhas indicated it does.65

So the council decided to approve theacademy project with UCL. This has ledto local outcry – partly because of aNUT-inspired campaign against the prin-ciple of academies – but also because the

lack of a competition seems to workagainst parental choice. One letter in alocal newspaper argued: “How can thecouncil think it can provide the best newschool if it only looks at one of theoptions?”66 It is not in the interests of theacademy programme to be used as adefence against open competition.Changes recommended in the first chap-ter that would prevent local authoritiesfrom co-sponsoring academies wouldhelp to close this loophole. Even so itseems odd that academies are exemptfrom competition; it devalues them bymaking it seem as if they are somethingimposed upon communities. Of course,in a situation where an academy werereplacing an existing failing school orwhere academy powers were being givento an existing school, there would be noneed for a competition.

Preparing for CompetitionIf a competition does take place the pro-posers (potential suppliers other than thelocal authority) have four months to pre-pare a bid. Government guidance insiststhat the sorts of proposers it wants tocome forward include:

� parents and community groups� universities and FE colleges� education charities and business foun-

dations� voluntary and religious groups,

including church and faith communi-ties

� those offering distinctive educationalphilosophies

� existing schools or consortia ofschools.67

It is extremely difficult to see, though,how some of these groups, especiallythose without previous experience of theeducation sector, could hope to fulfil the

65. Extract from London Borough

of Camden internal memo, quot-

ed in “UCL Lead in School Race”,

Camden New Journal, 12 July

2007

66. “Five Good Reasons to be

Suspicious of UCL bid for Swiss

Cottage School”, Hampstead &

Highgate Express, 20 July 2007


data/guidance_Documents/New

per cent20school per

cent20competitions per

cent20guide per cent20final per

cent202007-10-30.doc, p 2

32



demands of the bidding process. For astart the guidance is 51 pages long. Theappendix listing information that mustbe included in proposals runs to 35 dif-ferent categories. These include detailedinformation on subjects as diverse asextended services; how the proposals willcontribute to enabling children to behealthy; and the proposed arrangementsfor travel of pupils to the school.Proposers are also expected to outline thestaffing arrangements and providedetailed financial plans.68 One intervie-wee who participated in the first compe-tition observed that the information newentrants are required to provide shouldreally be drawn up once the project is inprogress rather than beforehand.

In order to negotiate this complexprocess the DCSF graciously offers pro-posers “up to three days free consultancysupport from an educational specialist withknowledge of preparing proposals and therelevant legislation”.69 This is unlikely to beof much value to a parent or communitygroup. In fact the bidding process violatesthree out of the five rules for effective com-petition in local government markets asexplained by Pricewaterhouse Coopers in a2006 paper for the Department ofCommunities and Local Government.These are, first, that the competitionshould involve “effective commission-ing…elaborate processes and high bidcosts are unlikely to positively affect out-comes”. Secondly, there should be lowentry and exit barriers. And thirdly, thereshould be “competitive neutrality…Thereneeds to be a level playing field for all typesof provider, including across the private,in-house and third sectors.”70 In thisprocess the local authority has an in-builtadvantage because of its knowledge of edu-cation bureaucracy and the local area andbecause its has the funds to finance a bid.

Any government genuinely committedto the principle of competition should be

prepared to invest a relatively smallamount to allow any group to put togeth-er a serious proposal. Every proposershould be eligible to draw funds to sup-port the bidding process. This should beenough to allow one member of thegroup (or a bought-in consultant) towork full time researching and preparingthe bid, and then shepherding it throughpublic consultation and the competition.The whole process is supposed to takeseven to eight months so bidders shouldbe able to apply for up to £50,000 fund-ing. There would need to be vetting toprevent fraudulent bids and also a limiton the number of times one organisationcould access funding (it will learn theropes over time). The cost would, howev-er, be minimal. If ten authorities held acompetition in any given year (rememberonly one has been held so far) and fivesuppliers entered each one, the totalannual cost would be £2.5 million –around a hundredth of the amount thatthe DCSF spends on central administra-tion every year. It would be a small priceto pay for a genuine commitment todiversity of supply.

In addition to offering financial supportto bidders, the process could be redesignedto involve the public at an earlier stage.Currently decisions on crucial issues ofprovision (like extended schooling) have tobe made before any public consultation hasbeen held. The first (and only) publicmeeting required by the guidance takesplace after the four-month process of con-structing the bids. Surely it makes sense forthere to be a meeting early on so that pro-posers can gauge opinion of their generalplans before embarking on extensiveresearch. This would allow them to modi-fy their plans if necessary – or even dropout of a time-consuming process if theirplans were unwelcome. A second meetingcould be held once the full proposals hadbeen completed.

68. Ibid pp 30-34

69. Ibid p 28


“Developing the Local

Government Services Market to

Support a Long-term Strategy for

Local Government”, DCLG, May

2006

A fair competition?



The CompetitionThe new process for entering the main-tained sector is in its infancy. Only onecompetition has actually gone to judge-ment. However, this competition, inHaringey, North London, resulted in thelocal authority being awarded the newschool and it will be another communityschool. Of course, this does not representan increase in diversity for the Boroughof Haringey and the decision has beengreeted with dismay by those who ten-dered for the new school. It raises seriousquestions about fairness and the role ofthe school adjudicator in the competi-tion.

So who are the school adjudicators?They are ten individuals appointed by theDCSF to deal with admissions disputesand school reorganisations. They makedecisions on a huge range of planningissues: school closures; enlarging or amal-gamating schools and competitions. Yetdespite their powers they are entirelyunaccountable beyond having “regard” toguidance provided by the DCSF. In thecase of competitions for new schools thisguidance is so broad as to allow almostany interpretation. The statuary guidancefor the adjudicator explains that “theGovernment wishes to see a dynamic sys-tem in which…new providers have theopportunity to share their energy and tal-ents by establishing new schools”. Thereis a specific duty to “consider the extentto which proposals…will add to thediversity of provision in the area” as “theGovernment wishes to enable local com-munities to benefit from the energy andtalents of new providers and to increaseparental choice”.71

Yet in their judgement on Haringey thethree adjudicators involved more or lessignored this, arguing instead that a “smallmajority” of individual responses fromparents were in favour of a communityschool, despite acknowledging that the

three proposals from alternative supplierswould increase the diversity of places andthe community school proposal wouldnot. However, this argument was some-what undermined by the adjudicatorsthemselves when they admonishedHaringey for its failure to produce animpartial consultation document for par-ents and local groups. The consultationdocument insisted that “the new schoolshould be a non-denominational, inclu-sive school, which suggests a communityschool”. As the adjudicators noted “thisseems to imply, falsely, that no other typeof school could be non-denominationaland inclusive”.72

The unfairness of having one of theparticipants run the consultation processwas confirmed in interviews with two ofthe external providers who entered thecompetition. They described the suspi-ciously “stony silence” that greeted theirpresentations at the public consultationmeeting, followed by “rapturousapplause” for the Haringey submission.We also understand that the meeting wasadjourned and reconvened to allow theHaringey team to revise their presenta-tion, and their second attempt includedmany good ideas gleaned from a reviewof their competitors’ proposals. One ofthe participants told us: “The competi-tion process was very expensive for us,and I could tell that the outcome wasgoing to the local authority anyway. Wewill have to think carefully before puttinga lot of resources into future competi-tions.”

Any consultation process run by, andbased on a document written by, one ofthe competitors is unlikely to be fair andimpartial, yet the adjudicators used thisconsultation as a reason to ignore theguidance to increase diversity. This isclearly unacceptable. In future, consulta-tions must be run by DCSF staff or byindependent consultants appointed by


data/guidance_Documents/NewS

choolGuide per cent202007-11-

06.doc, p 42

72. www.schoolsadjudicator.

gov.uk/upload/STP000229 per

cent20Haringey per

cent20competition.doc, paras 42-

45

34



the DCSF; if one of the competitorswrites the rules it cannot be a fair compe-tition. Moreover, the guidance needs tobe stronger so that the adjudicators can-not ignore the spirit of the EIA 2006.There should be a presumption that asupplier other than the local authoritywill win the competition. If the adjudica-tor does wish to award the school to theLA it should have to explain why it is notin the interests of the local community toincrease diversity.

Finally we need to consider if theschool adjudicators are genuinely impar-tial. All ten of the current adjudicatorsare what could be termed members of theeducational establishment. Seven haveheld senior positions in local authorities.Of the other three, two have held seniorpositions at Ofsted and the third wasassistant director of planning at theFunding Agency for Schools. It is likely,therefore, than any given panel made upof three of these adjudicators will bebroadly sympathetic to the aims of localauthorities, even if they involve sabotag-ing the EIA. Given the immense powersof the Adjudicator’s Office surely thereshould be a range of backgrounds andskills represented? There are no formerheadteachers; business leaders or “lay”parents on the list of adjudicators.Having a diverse group making decisionsabout school supply would undoubtedlyincrease the diversity of supply. AsPriceWaterhouseCoopers noted in itspaper on effective competition in localgovernment “within a market all the con-ditions [necessary for effective competi-tion] may be present but cultural andpolitical factors could impact and influ-ence what happens in practice”.73

73. Pricewaterhouse Coopers,

“Developing the Local

Government Services Market to

Support a Long-term Strategy for

Local Government”, p 7, DCLG,

May 2006,

According to the latest annual report

from the Office of the Schools

Adjudicator, although it has judged only

one competition to date “there are likely

to be more shortly”, in which case it is

essential that the rules are fair.

Recommendations:

1 Academies should be included in

the competition process so that

communities are offered a gen-

uine choice (except where acade-

mies are replacing failing schools

or academy powers are being

given to existing schools).

2 A fund should be set up to allow

proposers to employ someone

full-time to research and prepare

their bid and to shepherd their bid

through the competition process.

We estimate a cost of around £2.5

million a year.

3 Proposers should have the oppor-

tunity to put the general outline of

its bid to a public meeting before

having to prepare the full bid.

4 The public consultation should

not be run by the local authority if

the authority is participating in the

competition.

5 Guidance for the Office of the

Schools Adjudicator should be

rewritten so that there is a pre-

sumption that an alternative sup-

plier will be chosen.

6 School adjudicators should be

appointed from a wide range of

backgrounds so that political and

cultural sympathies do not prevail

over the spirit of the Education

and Inspections Act 2006.

A fair competition?



4Planning for the Future

In the last chapter we saw how CamdenCouncil is attempting to avoid holding acompetition to build a new school byauthorising a new academy which they will“co-sponsor”. We discussed the unpopular-ity of this move among local residents,because it denies them a real choice. Butthere is another reason for this unpopular-ity. The school is being built in entirely thewrong part of Camden. There are alreadythree secondary schools near the site – oneof them, Quintin Kynaston, is just 200yards away, and another, Haverstock, is amile away. The increase in the number ofchildren that led to the decision to build anew school has happened in the South ofthe borough – meaning children attendingthe new school will have to travel acrossCamden. Moreover, the school is beingbuilt on a busy junction and on too smalla site. According to current designs theplayground will be on the roof.

Why is this happening? Because schoolscan only be built on land designated fornon-residential purposes. This is known,in planning parlance as D1 land and is alsoused for hospitals, museums and librariesamong other things. Local authorities areincreasingly selling off D1 land for residen-

tial development – without taking intoaccount the impact of future populationgrowth on public services. As one primaryschool provider told us: “The single biggestobstacle to us in setting up new schools isgetting a site. Getting a site for a newschool is almost impossible.” This problemwill only get worse – and is a huge blockon supply-side reform. Without land LAscannot build new schools to satisfydemand even if they did wish to honourthe spirit of the 2006 Act.

Mortgaging the Future: The Sale of D1 LandState control of industry and public servic-es has been steadily diminishing since itspeak in the 1970s. But one area that hasseeming immunity from this trend is hous-ing and planning. Decisions on what tobuild and where, be it a block of flats ornew seat of learning, are still the almostexclusive preserve of the State. In recenttimes, the inability of the Office of theDeputy Prime Minister to match soaringhousing demand with a woefully inelasticsupply, has contributed hugely to unprece-dented price rises.

Existing planning regulations dictatethat schools must be built on D1 land.That such land be preserved for publicusage is essential, particularly given thatthe insatiable demand for housing thatexists in much of the UK will ensure that,if not protected, private developers willsnap it up. This situation is unavoidablebecause of vast discrepancies in purchasingpower between education providers and

“ One primary school provider told us: “The single

biggest obstacle to us in setting up new schools is

getting a site. Getting a site for a new school is almost

impossible.””

36


74. www.dcsf.gov.uk/rsgateway/

DB/SFR/s000744/UPDATEDSFR3

0_2007.pdf, Table 1

75. www.communities.gov.uk/

docu-

ments/planningandbuilding/xls/52

8961

76. Source: Greater London

Authority

Planning for the future


residential property developers. There willbe little capacity for any growth in thefuture if no sites are available for expan-sion of public service infrastructure.

As we saw in Chapter two the mechanismfor planning the provision of school places isalmost completely opaque. School organisa-tion plans, which used to set out the pupilprojections underlying school planning deci-sions, have now been subsumed into thechildren and young people’s plan – whichcovers a huge range of issues. Each authorityis under a statutory requirement to produceone, but precious little of it is devoted to thestrategic planning of school places. We alsosaw in Chapter two that such planning asthere is tends to be focused on reducing sur-plus places for purely economic reasons.Little thought seems to be given to increas-ing the number of good school places. Thishas led to a reduction in the overall numberof schools: there are 1,000 fewer primaryschools in England than in 1998 and 225fewer secondary schools.74 The emphasis onreducing surplus places has led many author-ities to conclude that they are correct to beclosing schools or amalgamating them intovery large schools.

Amalgamation and closure have natural-ly led to an increase in available D1 land.However, current trends do not suggest D1land is being protected as one would expectof so vital an asset, rather that local author-ities are acquiescing to its sale and subse-quent change of use for private develop-ment. If a LA decides that a school is toclose there is nothing to stop the land beingsold. Land for housing or commerce willalways command higher prices and so anauthority will gain financially by changingthe use. Undoubtedly, if a choice has to bemade between selling land for a high pricetoday and keeping it for a possible futurepublic use, the council’s obligations toobtain “best value” on disposal are frequent-ly cited as the reason for opting to sell.

However, the “best value” obligationdoes not prevent the authority from retain-

ing the land for future community use if itwishes to. The Local Government Act1972: General Disposal Consent 2003removes the requirement for authorities toseek specific consent from the DeputyPrime Minister and the Secretary of Statefor any disposal of land where the differ-ence between the unrestricted value of theland and the consideration accepted is £2million or less. It therefore offers authori-ties some freedom to exercise discretion inthe disposal of their land, reserving it forcommunity or education use even if theresidential price could have been higher. Inother words, local authorities could allo-cate their land to schools or other commu-nity services, rather than to developers.This has not, though, prevented the emer-gence of a worrying decrease in theamount of D1 land available for publicuse.

Statistics from the Department forCommunities and Local Governmentindicate a consistent movement of publicland to residential status. Between 1995and 2004, on average, 253 hectares of landwere changed from “community services”to “residential”: a total of 2,530ha (6,251acres) over ten years.75 Only 17ha a yearhave been changed in the other direction.This reduction in available land is alreadybeing felt in the education system. Wehave seen the problems it has caused inCamden. In another example, a new acad-emy in Hackney was allocated a primaryschool site, even though a secondaryschool is usually four to five times larger.Compulsory purchase of extra space wasnecessary before the academy site couldaccommodate a secondary school of thenecessary size and, as a result, two of thelevels are below ground.

Statistics from the Greater LondonAuthority reveal that 6,500 residentialunits have received planning permission onD1 land.76 The following table shows theten London boroughs where most D1 landis being switched over to housing use. We


have added a third column that shows thedeficit in secondary school places in certainboroughs – their plans to build morehomes compound the existing problem ofa shortage of good school places. Thoseboroughs which are schooling childrenfrom other boroughs may also run into dif-ficulties if new housing boosts schooldemand in their area. We conclude that theprovision and planning of housing needsto incorporate the demand for schoolplaces much more closely. It does seemremarkable that, according to these GLAstatistics, Lambeth is proposing over 500new housing units on D1 land when halfthe schoolchildren resident in Lambeth areeducated in other boroughs. Lambeth’sshortage of school places has been a localissue for many years, but seems even fur-ther from being solved.

A Rising PopulationSo the closing of schools to reduce surplusplaces has led to the sale of school land,primarily for housing. Of course, sellingthe land implies an assumption that demo-graphic trends are permanent. We believethat this is a spectacular misreading offuture trends, with serious implications forschool choice in future years. We knowfrom DCSF information on school rollsthat our national school-age populationhas been falling in the recent past and will

continue to do so in the short term. Since1998 the number of children in primaryschool has fallen by 322,000. Secondaryschool numbers peaked in 2004, sincewhen they have fallen by 56,460.77 Thesefalls are due to a cyclical drop in the birthrate in the late Nineties that will continueto impact on school rolls. Current projec-tions suggest a further drop of 150,000primary school children and 530,000 sec-ondary school children over the next tenyears.78

This will lead to many more surplusplaces; many more school closures and fur-ther sales of D1 land. In the short term itwill be harder to increase good schoolplaces through competitions. In the longterm it could be catastrophic because thebirth rate is now on the rise again. Afterreaching a low of 594,634 live births in2001, it rose to 669,601 in 2006 – a levellast seen in 1993.79 Projections suggest thatrises will increase in future years.

In addition, the Office of NationalStatistics has consistently underestimatedthe number of migrants to the UK – earli-er this year it revised projections upwardsby 45,000 annually to 2031.80 The LocalGovernment Association has recentlyreleased a report on the difficulties thisunderestimation causes for local authori-ties, one of which is an absence of schoolplaces. Using the example of Hull thereport explains: “Until recently there have

77. www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/

DB/SFR/s000744/UPDATEDSFR3

0_2007.pdf, Table 1

78. Milburn A, “Give a Credit,

Save a Child”, Sunday Times, 28

January 2007

79.

www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/

theme_population/Table_1_Summ

ary_Table.xls

80. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/

main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/2

8/nimm128.xml

Borough Name Proposed Total Residential Units Level of import/export of

(with change of use from D1) school children

Wandsworth 943 13.3% imported

Lambeth 525 49.4% exported

Camden 505 14.8% imported

Islington 490 1.6% exported

Greenwich 381 8.9% exported

Merton 355 10.2% exported

Havering 330 3.5% imported

Barnet 320 5.6% imported

Sutton 307 16.0% imported

Southwark 299 1.1% exported

38



been surplus places in many schools inHull and parts of the East Riding, butthese are being reduced through reorgani-sation. There were already difficulties find-ing places for children in certain yeargroups, and this could make it difficult toplace children, especially if they arrive dur-ing the school year.”81 Other authorities,such as Leicester and Slough, report simi-lar problems.

Additionally there seems to be a lack ofco-ordination across the country betweenhousing plans and school closures based onreductions in current surplus places.Infrastructure to accompany housing issupposed to be governed by Section 106 ofthe Town and Country Planning Act1990.82 Section 106 obligations are effec-tively negotiated agreements betweendevelopers and local planning authorities,which determine what the effects of devel-opment will be and, consequently, whatadditional provision is required. The endresult of this process ought to be some-thing approaching sustainable develop-ment. Unfortunately the efficacy of suchagreements has been repeatedly called intoquestion. Developers criticise them fortheir inconsistency and lack of transparen-

cy. Lord Nolan’s Committee on Standardsin Public Life found planning obligations“were the most intractable aspect of theplanning system with which we have hadto deal…[and that they] have a tremen-dous impact on public confidence”.83

Indeed, with respect to education, thereis no specific provision that guarantees thatappropriate schools will accompany newresidential developments. As we saw inChapter two the situation has alreadyreached crisis point in inner London, withvast numbers of children “exported” daily toouter London or even surrounding coun-ties. However, problems are now developingnationwide. In June 2007, officials fromHertfordshire County Council were forcedto arrange for temporary classrooms to beinstalled at three St Albans primary schools.Despite parents having warned it that theremight not be enough school places, thecouncil was apparently surprised by the levelof applications for primary schools this year.In recent years new housing has been builtin and around St Albans, but the education-al demand that this would create has notbeen correctly predicted or provided for.There are still no plans for a permanent newschool to be built.

81. www.lga.gov.uk/Documents/

Publication/estimatingthescaleofm

igration.pdf, p 90

82. The Town and Country

Planning (Use Classes) Order

1987 (statutory instrument no

764): www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1987

/Uksi_19870764_en_2.htm

83. Standards of Conduct in

Local Government, Third Report

of the Committee on Standards in

Public Life, July 1997

6.6

6.4

6.2

6.0

5.8

5.6

5.4

5.2

5.0

4.8

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

General fertility rate: all live births per 1,000 women aged 15-44 (1986-2006)

Source: Office of National Statistics




84. Hansard, Col 135, 22

October 2007

85. www.ilkleygazette.co.uk/

mostpopu-

lar.var.1780992.mostviewed.city

_lead-

ers_to_tackle_ilkley_school_places

_concerns.php

86. archive.hampshirechronicle

.co.uk/2005/1/26/12768.html

87. “Protection of School Playing

Fields and Land for Academies”,

DfES Guidance 1017, 2004

88. www.englishpartnerships.

co.uk/rspsl.htm

89. www.englishpartnerships.

co.uk/rspsl.htm

40


In Colchester the local authority is inthe process of amalgamating two localschools, reducing the number of schoolplaces by 500 while 2,500 new houses arebeing built on the site of the formerColchester garrison.84 There are similarconcerns across the country, wherever newhousing developments are springing up,from Ilkley85 to Hampshire.86 With threemillion new houses promised by 2020 thisproblem is only going to get worse.

So local authorities are being encour-aged to reduce the number of surplusplaces in schools by the Government andthe Audit Commission in response to cur-rently falling school rolls, when we knowthat pupil numbers will start rising againdue to rising birth rates, when we knowthat the ONS has drastically underestimat-ed the number of immigrants and when weknow that pressure on housing is leadingto more and more new developments. Thisis staggeringly myopic. If we continue toignore these demographic trends manyother parts of the country will end up inthe crisis situation in which inner Londonauthorities currently find themselves.

Our recommendations from Chaptertwo would see local authorities refocustheir school planning away from the sim-ply economics of reducing surplus placesand towards increasing the number ofgood school places. However, the dynamicmarket that we envisage, in which LAs areforced to open new schools, thus exposingfailing ones, will only work if there is avail-able land. It is essential, therefore, that thesale of D1 land be halted so that excesscapacity can be maintained.

Playing fields are protected by separateguidance and receive more detailed protec-tion from disposal than school sites gener-ally.87 There have been fewer sales of play-ing field land in recent years and, underthe current guidance, any proceeds havegenerally been reinvested in communitysport. The Secretary of State has to be con-sulted before the sale of a playing field is

permitted. Similar protection could enableschool sites to be preserved.

Authorities should also have access toinformation about non-educational publicland that could be used for school places.English Partnerships runs a register of thenational surplus of public sector land.88 Thepurpose is to ensure that wider governmentobjectives are factored into land disposaldecisions, including housing needs andregional economic and housing strategies.This is a valiant effort at joining-up areas ofthe public sector that have previouslyknown little about each other’s assets. Awide cross-section of public sector organisa-tions have supplied information to the reg-ister about their surplus land. Local author-ity land is not yet included on the register,but English Partnerships is pressing for this.First refusal for sites is offered to public sec-tor: once the disposing agency has providedEnglish Partnerships with details of the sitefor inclusion on the register, there is a 40-day window for public sector agencies anddepartments to identify new uses for thisland. If the sites can be used beneficiallyelsewhere in the public sector they may betransferred at market value and then bebrought back into community use. So farabout 70 public sector agencies have sup-plied details of more than 750 sites,totalling more than 5,000ha of land.Almost 300 sites are in the South East.89

Although the focus of the register is thefreeing up of land for housing, there is noreason why the principle should not beextended to education. The key is to main-tain spare capacity that can be utilisedshould an unexpected need arise. Thiswould be particularly useful when it cameto setting up a new school. For instance, ifdemand from parents for a new schoolmanifested itself in an area of failingschools, it could be built on this spare pub-lic land without the usual delays, to speedthe transition of pupils. If needs be the sitesof failing schools could then be added to theregister for future use. At present though,


disappointingly little credence is given toschool provision by English Partnerships. Infact they report that they have not beenliaising with any would-be school providers.Even in the case of regenerating formerNHS hospital sites, already classified asviable D1 land, the focus remains on deliv-ering on housing targets, and in particularaffordable housing. With a waiting list forpublic housing of 1.6 million, and therecent assimilation of English Partnershipsinto the Department for Local Governmentand Communities, it seems that educationwill be consigned to the background in per-petuity. However, local authorities estimatethat for every house built on an estate, 0.5school places are required. A housing estateof 800-1,000 houses generates demand forat least one primary school. The focus mustbe holistic with respect to new develop-ments. The flexibility imbued in EnglishPartnerships must be extended further ifgood school places are to accompany theseubiquitous new developments.

Innovation and FlexibilityAs well as protecting existing D1 land bet-ter, we should look to allow the opening ofschools on a greater variety of sites andlocations. Innovation must be encouragedas available space decreases.

A good example of the type of innovationnecessary is provided by St Mary and StPancras Primary School in Camden. Thisone-form entry, 220-pupil primary schoolwas using a Victorian building with 1960sadditions, where the leaking roof and othermodernisation work would require invest-ment of £2 million. The London DiocesanBoard for Schools (Church of England)decided that a complete rebuild would bethe better long-term solution, especiallysince Ofsted had placed the school into spe-cial measures: radical improvement wasneeded in both the buildings and the educa-tion services. The estimated cost of rebuild-ing an inner city primary school is £4-5 mil-

lion, and, as a voluntary-aided school, thegovernors would have found it difficult toraise their 10 per cent contribution. Theirimaginative solution was to develop the sitejointly with UNITE, the student housinggroup. The primary school takes up theground and first floors and student accom-modation the three floors above. The combi-nation works well as the students can bemonitored and are not generally at home inthe day time. Key worker accommodationcan be another successful mix with a school,but shift workers may be disturbed by thenoise from the playground. Ensuring thesafety of the children means that residents insuch mixed schemes must be selected withgreat care.

St Mary and St Pancras Primary is a spa-cious, light and modern environment,which the teachers and pupils are enjoying;pupil behaviour has noticeably improved inthe smart new surroundings. Excellent out-door play space has been included, with aquiet garden area and a ball court that maybe used by the community. There is alsospace for the local Sure Start administrativeoffice, making the site a valuable resource forlocal families. Ofsted now rates the school“outstanding” and it is heavily oversub-scribed, with three applicants per place.Significantly this turnaround occurred with-in three years, well under the five-year stan-dard. Such joined-up thinking in the provi-sion of homes and school places is notunheard of, but it is rare. The example of StMary and St Pancras Primary School doesshow that many of the problems that wehave detailed can be circumvented.

“ The focus must be holistic with respect to new

developments. The flexibility imbued in English Partnerships

must be extended further if good school places are to

accompany these ubiquitous new developments”




Another way to increase flexibilitywould be to allow school providers todevelop on sites other than those strictlyclassified as D1. There would need to be aregister of possible sites for school provi-sion, and it should also be made much eas-ier for providers to secure a change in landuse. At present this requires planning per-mission. This may be desirable in mostcontexts, but with respect to schools a pre-sumption in favour of granting permisisionshould pertain except in exceptional cir-cumstances. The experience of the NewModel School Company illustrates prob-lem of planning barriers very well. Italready provides voluntary educationalsupport services in two London boroughsand runs a primary school in WestLondon. It charges very low fees and raisesrevenues through voluntary donations. Itdoes not seek any public funding for itscapital or revenue needs. According to thechief executive, Richard Williams, there isgreat demand from parents in parts ofLondon for new, independent schools atreasonable prices, but the issues of sites andbuildings, inspections and regulations areholding up the supply.

He cited in particular that finding landwith the relevant D1 category of planningpermission already in place to allow a schoolto operate was a major stumbling block.Local authorities, it seems, will resist achange of use application for a new school ifit is outside their control. Apparently this isthe case even when a provider would be tak-ing financial pressure off the State by edu-cating pupils at its own or donors’ expense.

One of the greatest blocks on supply-

side reform is the absence of land. The

myopic sell-off of land following school

closures could lead to a school places

crisis once the UK is hit with the double

impact of increasing birth rates and con-

tinued high levels of immigration.

Recommendations:

1 Land previously used for educa-

tional purposes should have the

same status as school playing

fields. Local authorities should

have to apply to the Secretary of

State in order to sell it – showing

that it will not prevent a dynamic

supply side.

2 D1 land owned by LAs should be

added to the English Partnerships

register of surplus public land.

English Partnerships should liaise

with authorities needing to

increase school places and other

educational suppliers looking for

suitable sites.

3 The DCSF should publish guid-

ance on mixed-use schemes and

help housing organisations to

liaise with educational providers.

4 Local authorities should be pre-

vented from denying change-of-

use planning permission to inde-

pendent schools for ideological

reasons, because such schools

will help to ease demand on main-

tained sector places.

42



Conclusion

The barriers to supply-side reform inEngland are not legislative but political.The recommendations in this report, takentogether, would see the spirit of the law,which favours diversity of supply, hon-oured in practice.

Academies demonstrate that bringingnew suppliers into education improvesresults and is popular with parents. Muchof their success can be attributed to theirindependence. The Government has yet toexplain why, if independence is good foracademies, it should be denied to otherschools. Every school should be able toapply for academy status if it has a sponsorand a viable business plan.

Local authorities are supposed to act ascommissioners of education services ratherthan suppliers; but it is clear that this is nothappening. Decisions on school planningremain politically motivated, and based onthe economic cost of surplus places ratherthan parental demand. We recommendthat planning for future places should beconsiderably more transparent; that meas-ures of demand should be published and, ifthese indicate a need for more good schoolplaces, local authorities should plan fornew schools.

On the rare occasions that they decideto build a new school, LAs are supposedto hold a competition, although they canavoid doing so by co-sponsoring an acad-emy – a practice that should be disal-lowed. Unfortunately, in the only compe-tition held to date, the schools adjudica-tor awarded the project to the localauthority in defiance of government guid-ance. Moreover, the public consultationwas run by the victor. Other biddersshould be helped financially in preparingtheir proposals and a neutral organisationshould be in charge of the public consul-tation.

Finally, the selling-off of D1 land couldlead to a shortage in new school provisiononce the impact of the rising birth ratestarts to kick in. Land previously used foreducation should be protected in thesame way that school playing fields arecurrently protected. In addition innova-tive mixed-used schemes should beencouraged and change-of-use planningpermission granted more readily to inde-pendent schools.

The legislation exists to give parents areal choice – all we need now is the politi-cal will to make it happen.




Supply and demand in English education


Cho

ice? What C

hoice?

Eleano

r Sturd

y and S

am F

reedm

anP

olicy E

xchange

£10.00ISBN: 978-1-906097-11-0

Policy ExchangeClutha House

10 Storey’s GateLondon SW1P 3AY

www.policyexchange.org.uk

For nearly twenty years parents have been allowed to choosewhich schools their children attend. Or that is the theory. Inpractice, hundreds of thousands are denied their first choiceand their children remain trapped in inadequate schools. Schoolchoice has failed to deliver because there is no market ineducation within which it can operate. Restrictions on thesupply of places in good schools mean that school providerscannot respond to parental preferences as they would do in anormal consumer market.

The supply side of the education market is so constrained byadministrative and even physical barriers that few new suppliersmanage to surmount them. These barriers are the focus of ourreport – why they occur and, most importantly, how they can beremoved. On academies we show sponsors’ unease at theBrown Government’s attitude and we ask why, if freedom isgood for some schools it should not be available to all schools?

On surplus places and competitions for new schools we showhow reforms passed under Tony Blair to provide potential newsuppliers with a number of routes to enter the state system arebeing ignored by local authorities keen on retaining control ofthe school system. And on planning we show how demographicgrowth could cause crisis for authorities who have focused onremoving surplus places with little regard for competition orflexibility of demand.

CHOICE WHAT CHOICE COVER HDS:CHOICE WHAT CHOICE COVER HDS 12/12/07 16:04 Page 1

choice? what choice? supply and demand in english education

Documents

choice hds

choice cover hds

sam freedman choice

new schools

policy experience

new policy ideas

policy development

good schools