If only it were that simple...

One of the frustrations of getting older is as your knowledge of what tends to work in different situations grows, so does your awareness of your inability to impart it to other people. You can't live other people's lives for them or change their behaviour. At best you can influence, nudge and cajole; all the while aware that your recommendations may be misunderstood and misinterpreted with occasionally disastrous consequences.

I am worried by Toby Young's latest unevidenced assertion that we can now dispense with innovation and choice in our school system and simply, "roll out to scale what we know works". 

Jacques' 'Seven Ages of Man' in "As You Like It" is one of Shakespeare's better known soliloquies and I am sure those who have seen Toby's performances over the last ten or so years will recognise his fourth stage 'the solider',

"Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation"

But after the soldier should come 'the justice'

"Full of wise saws and modern instances"

However, we simply do not know yet what works. Not from the examples cited and anyone who claims otherwise is probably trying to sell you something.

If one takes overall Ofsted judgements over the last 5 1/2 years as an evidence base, whilst there is some evidence that sponsored academy chains (and not just the ones that Toby likes) have significantly improved school effectiveness [1]. It is equally true that LA maintained schools have also improved school effectiveness, although not perhaps as much [2]. The counterbalance to this is that for many converter academies there has been a slight erosion of effectiveness [3].

Now before we get too carried away in any direction this was entirely predictable. Regression to the mean and the impact of fragmentation in closed system must be isolated before we take to the rooftops to proclaim a new Jerusalem.

I have remarked here before on the ironic echoes of Stalinism in the academy programme. For all its trumpeting of 'Freedom', it is more centrally controlled and bureaucratic than anything that preceded it. Working in the sector sometimes feels like living in a hybrid of Owell's and Kafka's dystopian futures. And if it feels like that to me, imagine how it feels to a school leader or a teacher.

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[1] Of 863 sponsored primary academies that were nearly all RI or below at the point of conversion 619 are now Good or better
[2] 2,753 LA maintained primaries that were RI or below in 2014 that figures is now 1,291 Although of course 863 of these have become academies that is at least 700 LA maintained schools that are now Good or better
[3] Of 3,489 converter primary academies most of which were Good or better at the point of conversion 352 are no RI or below

Source for all the above calculations