WIREDGOV

Councils have called for a free hand to intervene early in struggling schools regardless of whether they are academies or authority-maintained.

The call from the Local Government Association (LGA) comes as research it commissioned into GCSE results at both academies and maintained schools is published by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER).

The results of the report 'Analysis of academy school performance in the 2011 and 2012 GCSEs' suggests academies do not necessarily outperform non-academies at GCSE.

The study found that in analysing school-level GCSE data since 2007, there is no significant improvement in the rate of improvement of GCSE results for academies over and above the rate of improvement in all schools.

It suggested characteristics of a school, such as strong leadership or the quality of teaching, could be responsible for differences seen, rather than the school's structure.

Commenting on the report, Cllr David Simmonds, Chairman of LGA's Children and Young People Board, said: "This LGA-commissioned independent report shows that schools that were improving strongly when maintained by their local council have continued to do so after conversion to academies, but that conversion has not on its own brought about improvement where schools were struggling to improve standards whatever their previous status. This is not a surprise because in the early days of the academy programme only schools that were already improving strongly were enabled to convert.

"Councils are restlessly ambitious for all children in their local area whatever type of school they attend but have to jump through many hoops before they are allowed to intervene where there are signs of failure. As Ofsted increases its inspection of councils' role in improving education, councils need a free hand to intervene early in struggling schools and to reassure mums and dads that their child's one chance at education will give them the best start in life."

Notes for editors

1. Read the full report

2. Analysis of academy school performance in the 2011 and 2012 GCSEs