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What are free schools and have they been successful?

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When free schools were introduced by the last coalition government, they were touted by then Education Secretary Michael Gove as a way to drive up standards and increase school places.

Seven years later, the success of his flagship policy is unclear, with critics branding it a failed experiment and a waste of taxpayers' money.

So what is so special about free schools and how have they fared so far? We take a look at the successes and set-backs.

What are free schools?

A free school is a non-profit-making, independent, state-funded school which is free to attend but which is not wholly controlled by a local authority, meaning they have greater control over how they operate.

With complete freedom from local authorities, free schools can rewrite the national curriculum. Nevertheless, they must offer a broad and balanced curriculum and are subject to the same Ofsted inspections as other schools.

Other powers include the freedom to set their own pay and conditions for staff, as well as change the length of school terms and the school day.

They are "all-ability" schools, meaning they can't use academic selection processes.

Free schools were first given approval in the Academies Act 2010, which stipulated that all new schools had to be academies or free schools. The first 24 free schools opened in autumn 2011.

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What are free schools - and have they been successful?

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When free schools were introduced by the last coalition government, they were touted by then Education Secretary Michael Gove as a way to drive up standards and increase school places. Seven years later, the success of his flagship policy is unclear, with critics branding it a failed experiment and a waste of taxpayers' money.

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Education reforms causing greater inequality

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Inequality in England's schools appears to have increased following government reforms, with fewer children from less well-off backgrounds now attending higher rated schools.

Authors of the 'Hierarchy, Markets and Networks' study, which will be released on Tuesday, warned current policies were creating a "system of winners and losers" as schools acted in "selfish" ways to protect their own interests.

Faced with pressures to perform to achieve higher Ofsted grades, for fear of being taken over by Multi-Academy Trusts that could narrow their curriculums, the report looked at the tactics schools were implementing to attract pupils and funding.

Two thirds of school leaders surveyed as part of the study agreed that "inequalities between schools are becoming wider as a result of current government policy".

The new state of the nation report by the UCL Institute of Education included 47 school case studies, from 2014 to 2017. It analyses how well the 'self-improving school-led system' (SISS) policy agenda, which was brought in in 2010 by the coalition government has worked, and the implications it has had on schools. The research also surveyed almost 700 school leaders, looked at 10 years of Ofsted results and analysed how well Multi-Academy-Trusts worked.

Report authors Professor Toby Greany and Dr Rob Higham found the system had become less equitable, with higher achieving schools accepting fewer pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds than before.

The report states: "The schools judged Good and Outstanding between 2010 and 2015 saw a relative reduction in the percentage of students eligible for free school meals (FSMs) compared to the 2005-10 period, while schools judged Satisfactory, Requires Improvement and Inadequate saw a relative increase. Schools that retained an Outstanding grade between 2010 and 2015 saw a greater relative reduction in FSM pupils compared to schools that were Outstanding in 2010 but that had been downgraded by 2015."

The report also found many schools struggled with the competitive pressures over the types of pupils and the levels of funding they could attract, leading to high stress levels.

The report quoted one school leader as saying: "It doesn't sit easily with my values as a teacher, but everybody wants those bright, sharp, well-motivated, middle class children who are going to get the top grades."

It also found "support for the most vulnerable children is reducing, with a tendency for these pupils to become more concentrated in certain schools".

Co-author Professor Toby Greany warned: "The problem is that the system is hard-wired to encourage selfish behaviour, because the consequences of a drop in exam scores or Ofsted grade can be so catastrophic.

"At present we see a system of winners and losers, with increasing incoherence and a loss of equity as a result."

While higher status schools seemed to be benefiting from policies, schools on the other end of the spectrum were facing more challenges, the study found, such as being undersubscribed and having "disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged, migrant and hard-to-place children."

The differences in schools were further highlighted by what schools interpreted as "challenging" behaviour. "Several schools in one locality, for instance, had been shocked to learn a higher-status neighbour made referrals to children's social care for 'repeated swearing' when, one of the headteachers argued, referrals 'in my staff's head [are for] things like biting, kicking, spitting ... injuring people'," the study said.

The study also looked at the effects of Multi-Academy Trusts, which some schools join voluntarily and others are forced to join due to poor performance. In MATs, a central board of governors manages the running of all school within the group.

The report found some school chose to voluntarily join local MATs that they felt were a better fit for their school, for fear of being forced to join national MATs, which they thought might narrow their curriculum.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: "We want to improve education for every child. This government has introduced the £2.5 billion Pupil Premium to support the education of disadvantaged pupils, and since 2010 we have seen the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers narrow by over 10% in both primary and secondary school.

"Thanks to our reforms and the hard work of teachers, the vast majority of pupils are in a good or outstanding school, 1.9 million more than in 2010, and an increase from 66% to 86% over that time.

"And thanks to our reforms schools that aren't delivering for young people are being turned around, with 65 per cent of schools made into a sponsored academy seeing improvement from inadequate to good or outstanding.

"But there is always more to do, which is why we are investing £23 billion by 2020 to create more good school places and we are targeting £72 million at the areas that need it most to help improve prospects and opportunities for some of the most disadvantaged young people."

The study was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and Education Development Trust.
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Education reforms causing greater inequality in schools, major study finds

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Inequality in England's schools appears to have increased following government reforms, with fewer children from less well-off backgrounds now attending higher rated schools.

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What is an academy?

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What are academies, how are they different from mainstream schools and why is the government so keen on them? BBC News website answers the key questions.

What is an academy?

Academies are independent, state-funded schools, which receive their funding directly from central government, rather than through a local authority.

The day-to-day running of the school is with the head teacher or principal, but they are overseen by individual charitable bodies called academy trusts and may be part of an academy chain.

These trusts and chains provide advice, support, expertise and a strategic overview.

They control their own admissions process and have more freedom than other schools to innovate.

How many are there?

Currently, 2,075 out of 3,381 secondary schools are academies, while 2,440 of 16,766 primary schools have academy status.

The number grew dramatically under the coalition government, from 203 in May 2010, and has continued under the present Conservative government.

Weren't academies all about improving failing schools?

They were once. The policy, which originated under Labour, aimed to improve struggling schools, primarily in deprived areas.

And this continues under the sponsored-academy model, where failing schools are taken over and run by an academy trust.

But it has changed radically to embrace all types of schools - successful or otherwise.

All schools - primary as well as secondary - have been invited to convert to academy status, with priority being given to the best performers.

What is the future of "academisation"?

In the last Budget, Chancellor George Osborne announced a forced academisation plan, under which all schools in England would either have to convert to academies by 2020 or be committed to converting by 2022.

This would have, in effect, ended the link between local authorities and schools that began in 1902.

However, the plans aroused strong criticism from teaching unions and others, including Conservative MPs and councillors, and have now been abandoned.

Ministers say the "goal" of academising all schools remains but attention will now focus on schools that are "clearly failing". Labour called it a "humiliating climbdown".

What are the benefits of academy status?

The government argues academies drive up standards by putting more power in the hands of head teachers over pay, length of the school day and term times.

They have more freedom to innovate and can opt out of the national curriculum.

It says they have been shown to improve twice as fast as other state schools. Others dispute that.

In the past, they have received £25,000 conversion costs from the Department for Education, and have topped up their budgets by as much as 10%, receiving funds for support services that used to go to the local council.

What do critics say?

A series of MPs' committees have criticised the academies programme for a lack of oversight, in terms of finances and public accountability.

Teaching unions have long argued that academisation has been used as a way of privatising the school system, while the government says it is about introducing innovation.

Now private providers run large "chains" of schools, and some of these grew very fast - taking on more schools than they could cope with.

This led to some of the largest chains being stopped from taking on any more schools.

Recently, the Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw criticised seven sizeable academy chains for failing to improve the results of too many pupils in their schools, while paying board members large salaries.

But he also acknowledged that great progress has been seen in many academies.

Who oversees academies?

Academies, like all schools, are inspected by Ofsted, but because of changes to the inspection regime, those classed outstanding are no longer routinely inspected.

Regional School Commissioners were introduced in 2014 to approve academy conversions and monitor standards at academies and free schools in their areas.

There are eight regional commissioners, who each work with a small board of head teachers. They cover quite a large geographical area and act on behalf of the Secretary of State for Education.

For example, 25 local authority areas are covered by the Regional School Commissioner for Lancashire and West Yorkshire.

If all schools become academies, it will mean each regional commissioner over-seeing thousands of them.

How about the rest of the UK?

Plans announced by ministers in Westminster do not apply to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where education policy is devolved, and where academies do not exist.

In Wales, school governing bodies set their own start and finish times - although local authorities can override them.

In Northern Ireland, the law states that the school day must be at least three hours for pupils under eight, and four and a half hours for pupils over eight.

In Scotland, education authorities set hours, but the school week is commonly 25 hours for primary schools and 27.5 hours for secondary schools. Scottish councils were banned from cutting the length of the school day to save money in December.

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What does it mean to be an academy school?

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What are academies, how are they different from mainstream schools and why is the government so keen on them? BBC News website answers the key questions. Academies are independent, state-funded schools, which receive their funding directly from central government, rather than through a local authority.

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What are free schools? Statistics

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Free schools are a type of academy introduced under the Coalition Government in 2011. They were a flagship policy of former Education Secretary Michael Gove. There are now more than 700 free schools that are either open or approved.

The Coalition document said that the free schools programme would, "give parents, teachers, charities and local communities the chance to set up new schools, as part of our plans to allow new providers to enter the state school system in response to parental demand".¹ The reality has been very different.

Research by the Sutton Trust and the National Foundation for Educational Research (NfER) found that by 2018 only one in five free schools had parents involved in their inception, and the proportion of parent-led schools had decreased over time. ²

It also found that over half (59%) of all free schools have been set up by Multi Academy Trusts (MATs). MAT involvement has jumped from around half of secondary free schools between 2011 and 2015, to over three quarters of those set up since 2015.

In 2010, before the first free schools were opened, Michael Gove said that "Innovation, diversity and flexibility are the heart of the free schools policy".³

However, the Sutton Trust and NfER research found that only one third of the free schools which had been set up demonstrated "innovative approaches to their curriculum or ethos."⁴

Like academies, free schools can employ unqualified teachers but analysis of Government data shows they do so at a much higher rate than other schools. While just 2.9% of teachers in all nursery/primary schools do not have QTS, the figure for primary free schools is more than three times higher at 10.2%. Similarly, while 5.4% of teachers in all state funded secondary schools do not hold QTS, the figure in secondary free schools is 8.9%. ⁵

Former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan claimed that free schools were "modern engines of social justice". ⁶ However, analysis of free school intakes by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) found that: "In primary free schools, 13.3 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals compared with 14.7 per cent of pupils nationally. Further analysis suggests that in primary free schools, and in secondary free schools serving the most disadvantaged areas, free schools are not necessarily attracting disadvantaged pupils in the proportions that might be expected."⁷

Free schools are often imposed on local communities without their input or consent. The decision on whether to approve the opening of a free school is determined centrally by the Education Secretary with scant regard for local views, the degree of need for new school places, and precious little transparency over the process.

This means free schools can open in areas where there is not a need for new school places. This can lead to a drop in funding for existing schools which in turn can have a negative effect on the education of pupils in those schools.

According to evidence provided to the Education Select Committee, "35% of the first four waves of free schools were in districts with no forecast need and 52% were in districts with either no forecast need or only moderate need."⁸

In 2017 the National Audit Office also found that many free schools had been built in areas with plenty of spare capacity, meaning many were struggling to recruit enough students to break even financially. This was also having a negative impact on existing schools. ⁹

According to the NAO, the DfE itself estimated that, "57,500 of 113,500 new places in mainstream free schools opening between 2015 and 2021 will create spare capacity in some free schools' immediate area".¹⁰

The NAO noted that this "spare capacity" can affect pupil numbers and therefore funding in neighbouring schools and referred to DfE data indicating that "spare places in 52 free schools opening in 2015 could have a moderate or high impact on the funding of any of 282 neighbouring schools".¹¹

The NAO also highlighted wasteful spending on free schools. It found that free school places are more expensive than places provided by local authorities, with a place in a primary free school opening in 2013-14 or 2014-15 costing £14,400 on average (33% more than places created in the same years by local authorities); while a place in a secondary free school cost £19,100 (51% more than a local authority secondary). ¹²

According to the NAO free school land acquisitions had cost £850m and officials had been paying "premium" prices. On average, the Government had paid 19% more than official land valuations for new sites, with 20 of the 175 sites purchased so far exceeding their official valuation by more than 6%. The NAO warned that the free school programme will cost £9.7bn by 2021.¹³

Despite this huge expenditure on free schools there is no evidence that they improve standards.

However, problems in ten free schools, including low standards, concerns over financial oversight and governance and a failure to recruit sufficient pupils have led to closure, planned closure or partial closure.

The NEU wants the Government to end the free schools' programme, with no further free schools approved and open free schools brought within the same regulatory framework and oversight arrangements as maintained schools. In addition, legal powers to establish new maintained schools and to direct local schools to expand where additional places are needed, should be returned to local authorities.

¹Angela Harrison, Coalition agrees on free schools, BBC News (20 May 2010), https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10130255

² Jen Garry et al, Free For All? Analysing free schools in England, 2018, The Sutton Trust (31 May 2018), https://www.nfer.ac.uk/free-for-all-analysing-free-schools-in-england-2018/

³ House of Commons Hansard (15 November 2010), https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2010-11-15/debates/10111511000013/FreeSchools

⁴ Jen Garry et al, Free For All? Analysing free schools in England, 2018, The Sutton Trust (31 May 2018), https://www.nfer.ac.uk/free-for-all-analysing-free-schools-in-england-2018/

⁵ DfE, School workforce in England: November 2017 (28 June 2018), https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2017

⁶ Nicky Morgan, Free schools drive social justice, DfE Press Release (22 May 2015), https://www.gov.uk/government/news/free-schools-drive-social-justice-nicky-morgan

⁷ Jon Andrews and Rebecca Johnes, Free Schools in England, EPI, (November 2017), https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Free_schools_EPI_Report_.pdf

⁸ House of Commons Education Select Committee, Academies and free schools (21 January 2015), https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmeduc/258/25810.htm

⁹ National Audit Office, Capital funding for schools (22 February 2017), https://www.nao.org.uk/report/capital-funding-for-schools/

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National Education Union (NEU) | NUT - The Teachers' Union

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Free schools are a type of academy introduced under the Coalition Government in 2011. They were a flagship policy of former Education Secretary Michael Gove. There are now more than 700 free schools that are either open or approved.

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Comparison of New Labour and Coalition policies on academies

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Comparison of New Labour and Coalition policies on academies

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Was the academies programme a revolution of education?

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General and brief explanation of Coalition educational policies and some evaluation

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Q+A on academies

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A. General questions about academies | Richard Cloudesley School

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E-Bacc government briefing

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Summary of the E-Bacc and its effectiveness with statistics and other resources at the bottom

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Requirements, what's involved etc

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Introduction

The EBacc is a set of subjects at GCSE that keeps young people's options open for further study and future careers.

The EBacc is:

English language and literature

maths

the sciences

geography or history

a language

Subjects

English

To count towards the English part of the EBacc, pupils need to take both English literature and English language GCSE exams.

Science

Pupils need to take one of the following options:

GCSE combined science - pupils take 2 GCSEs that cover the 3 main sciences, biology, chemistry and physics

3 single sciences at GCSE - pupils choose 3 subjects from biology, chemistry, physics and computer science

Languages

Taking any ancient or modern foreign language GCSE counts towards the languages part of the EBacc.

EBacc qualifications

To count towards the EBacc measure, qualifications must be included in the approved list of the qualifications.

EBacc measures

Secondary schools are measured on the number of pupils that take GCSEs in these core subjects. Schools are also measured on how well their pupils do in these subjects.

Pupils' attainment is calculated as an average point score, meaning that all results at all grades count towards the EBacc.

To calculate a school's EBacc average point score we:

add together the EBacc average point score for all pupils at the end of key stage 4

divide by the number of pupils in the group

To calculate a pupil's average point score we take an average of the points scored in the 5 EBacc subject areas. The EBacc is a performance measure for schools, not a qualification for pupils. Pupils' individual average point scores are not published.

EBacc impact

The EBacc is made up of the subjects which are considered essential to many degrees and open up lots of doors.

Research shows that a pupil's socio-economic background impacts the subjects they choose at GCSE, and that this determines their opportunities beyond school.

A study by the UCL Institute of Education shows that studying subjects included in the EBacc provides students with greater opportunities in further education and increases the likelihood that a pupil will stay on in full-time education. Sutton Trust research reveals that studying the EBacc can help improve a young person's performance in English and maths.

The government's ambition is to see 75% of pupils studying the EBacc subject combination at GCSE by 2022, and 90% by 2025.

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Skip to main content We use some essential cookies to make this website work. We'd like to set additional cookies to understand how you use GOV.UK, remember your settings and improve government services. We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.

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Article with some evaluation points

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Pressure on school budgets in England is leading to a narrower secondary curriculum, with teaching posts in some subjects being cut, unions have said.

Teachers of subjects not included in the EBacc league table measure are the most at risk, research from the ATL and NUT unions has suggested.

Of 1,200 union members polled, before the ATL annual conference in Liverpool, 93% were "pessimistic" about funding.

The Department for Education says funding is at record levels.

But in recent months school governors, head teachers, MPs and teacher unions have highlighted mounting financial problems in England's schools.

In December, the National Audit Office said funding was not keeping pace with rising national insurance and pension costs and the budget gap would reach £3bn by the end of the decade.

The two unions questioned teachers, support staff and head teachers last month - just over half were from secondary schools.

Almost three quarters (71%) of the secondary staff said there had been cuts to teaching posts in their schools in the past year, compared with 31% of the primary staff.

At secondary level, the greatest impact was on non-EBacc academic subjects, with 61% of respondents reporting cuts compared with 38% reporting cuts in EBacc subjects.

The English Baccalaureate or EBacc was brought in by the coalition government in 2010 for pupils achieving at least a GCSE C grade in English, maths, the sciences, a language and geography or history.

The percentages of pupils entering and achieving this standard are among measures used by government to determine a school's performance.

The poll suggests pupils' options are being narrowed throughout the secondary curriculum.

One London school has "shed" design technology at GCSE and removed religious education from the curriculum for 11-14-year-olds, according to a staff member.

Other teachers mentioned cuts to music, modern languages, drama, PE, and art, as well as to vocational subjects including engineering, construction, childcare and business studies.

Overall, 64% of secondary staff said there had been a reduction in vocational subjects in their schools.

According to the report, a quarter of secondary staff said their schools had cut teaching hours for some courses, "clearly creating a potential threat to students' chances of success".

At one Hertfordshire school, the teaching hours for A-level maths have been cut to four hours a week from five, said a teacher.

Of the staff polled at both secondary and primary levels:

76% said their school's budget had been cut this year

73% said there had been cuts to books and equipment

41% had seen cuts to special needs provision

18% reported cuts to English as an additional language

ATL general secretary Mary Bousted warned: "Unless the government finds more money for schools and fast, today's school children will have severely limited choices at school and children from poorer families will be even further disadvantaged because their parents may struggle to provide the resources schools can no longer afford."

NUT general secretary Kevin Courtney said: "Parents cannot sit back and watch their children's education harmed by this bargain basement approach to schooling. More money must be found for our schools.

"Our government must invest in our country and invest in our children."

The two unions are due to merge this year to form the National Education Union.

A Department for Education spokeswoman said the government had "protected the core schools budget in real terms since 2010", adding that there was "significant scope for efficiency across the system".

"We recognise that schools are facing cost pressures, which is why we will continue to provide support to help them use their funding in cost effective ways and make efficiencies."

The spokeswoman said the new Schools' Buying Strategy would help schools "save over £1bn a year by 2019-20 on non-staff spend".
Have your child's options at school been reduced? Are you a teacher concerned about a narrower secondary curriculum? You can share your comments by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk .
Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:

WhatsApp: +44 7555 173285

Send pictures/video to yourpics@bbc.co.uk

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Tweet: @BBC_HaveYourSay

Text an SMS or MMS to 61124 (UK) or +44 7624 800 100 (international)

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Budget squeeze 'reducing pupils' choice'

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Pressure on school budgets in England is leading to a narrower secondary curriculum, with teaching posts in some subjects being cut, unions have said. Teachers of subjects not included in the EBacc league table measure are the most at risk, research from the ATL and NUT unions has suggested.

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Six months ago, England was heading for a big shake-up of the exam system with a move to a new exam for 16-year-olds called the English Baccalaureate Certificate - but that idea has now been scrapped. Why? And what exams will teenagers take in future?

The EBC was a key part of Michael Gove's plans to "restore rigour" to England's exams system, which he said had been discredited and had become "dysfunctional" under Labour and been "dumbed down".

The EBC hit the buffers for political, practical and commercial reasons and in the face of strong opposition from the Liberal Democrats, the exams regulator Ofqual and MPs on the Education Select Committee.

The idea of an exam which was not for everyone was very unpopular with the Lib Dems and with teaching unions, who all warned of a move to a "two-tier" system or a return to the divisions of O-Levels and CSEs.

WHAT'S CHANGING

From autumn 2015:

No switch to English Baccalaureate exams

But teaching begins for new GCSEs in English, maths, the sciences, history and geography

These will be linear - taken after two years of study rather than in stages

Controlled assessments (i.e. coursework done in school) will be 'kept to a minimum'

No more 'tiers' of GCSEs - i.e. scrapping of the easier 'Foundation paper' where the maximum grade possible is a C

English and history will test 'extended writing'

Fewer 'bite-sized questions'

Those exams had been replaced by GCSEs, with the idea of an exam that all pupils could take, albeit at various levels.

Now, it seems, England will have what many had called for - a reform of the existing GCSE system - rather than a revolution in qualifications.

Pupils were due to begin studying for EBCs in some key subjects in 2015 and the qualifications were to be rolled out to other subjects after that.

The main difference between the EBCs and the existing GCSEs is that they would not have been set by a number of exams boards.

Other features, such as their being taken at the end of two years of study rather than in stages, and a cut in resit opportunities, have already been brought in under coalition changes to existing GCSEs. Pupils beginning GCSE courses this year are already affected by those changes.

At the moment, schools can choose which exam board they use for every subject and pay the individual boards.

'Badge of failure'

Mr Gove believes such a system fuelled what he called "a race to the bottom", with exam boards being tempted to offer easier qualifications to win schools over to their exams, leading to a "dumbing down" of qualifications.

The government's plan was to put each subject's EBC exam out to tender with exams boards and then choose one board to be the provider for a particular subject.

That proved unpopular with the exam boards themselves, who did not like the idea of investing time and money in tendering for one of the subjects only to lose out.

But the main thing which sank the EBC was the opposition to the idea of an exam which would not be suitable for all, most crucially, from the Liberal Democrats.

With only about 60% of 16-year-olds currently achieving the government's benchmark of five good GCSE passes including English and maths, it is clear many young people might not have passed the EBCs, which were being presented as more demanding than the current exams.

The idea had been that those students who could not succeed in those exams might get to do various other qualifications, including vocational options, and get a "certificate of achievement".

The Conservative chairman of the Education Select Committee, Graham Stuart, warned the certificate would be seen as a "badge of failure".

The criticism of that committee, coupled with a warning about speed of change from England's exams regulator Ofqual and fierce Lib Dem opposition to the EBC combined to defeat it.

What now?

So what of today's teenagers and schools?

Firm details emerged at Westminster as Michael Gove spelt out his change of heart, as well as his plans for a new national curriculum.

Pupils over 14 have already begun revamped GCSE courses, where exams are mainly taken at the end of two years' of study.

But Mr Gove has also announced that from autumn 2015, teaching will begin for "new" re-vamped GCSE courses in English, maths, the sciences, history and geography.

These will also be linear - rather being than taken in "chunks" and there will be no separate "foundation" papers for less academic pupils, where the maximum grade possible is a 'C'.

And officials say there will be fewer "bite-sized questions" and more depth.

Accountability measures for schools are also going to change - and school leaders are welcoming this.

At the moment, they are measured in league tables on how many pupils at a school achieve five good GCSEs (A* to C) including maths and English.

A recent addition to that was the "English Baccalaureate" measure - which measures how many achieve good passes in a certain mix of subjects the government regards as crucial to a good education.

They are maths and English, two sciences, a humanity (geography or history) and a modern foreign language.

It had been heavily criticised by teaching unions and some groups, especially those involved in the arts, who said it would narrow the curriculum and that fewer young people would study art and music and other non-Bacc subjects as a result of it.

And few schools were managing to "look good" on this measure. Across England, only about one in five teenagers achieved it.

That English Baccalaureate is not a qualification in its own right but rather a measure of achievement and many found the similarity between that and planned new EBC exam confusing.

This measure is remaining, although it could become less prominent because a new one is proposed, which will be a wider version, with more subjects included.

The new measure is already being dubbed "the best eight" because it would measure pupils' performance in eight GCSE subjects, which have to include English and maths, three English Baccalaureate subjects and three others.

Mr Gove told the Commons the changes would introduce a "more balanced and meaningful" system which would give a wider view of performance.

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Six months ago, England was heading for a big shake-up of the exam system with a move to a new exam for 16-year-olds called the English Baccalaureate Certificate - but that idea has now been scrapped. Why? And what exams will teenagers take in future?

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Relation to disadvantaged groups - good for evaluation

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It's not about good grades anymore it's now about what you got those good grades in. This year's GCSE results face additional scrutiny against the new EBacc benchmark: A*-C achievement in the five "core" academic subjects -- English, maths, science, a language and either history or geography.

Never mind how schools have performed. This is an indicator on which the government is failing.

The coalition government argues that "The EBacc is there to make sure that every single child gets a chance to study the core academic subjects..." But by basing the EBacc on A*-C performance, the least advantaged students may not get the chance to study EBacc subjects at all.

Schools' response to previous A*-C benchmarks has shown that league table pressure can lead them to discourage students deemed unlikely to achieve a C from taking non-compulsory subjects. One south-east London teacher outlined practice in her school, where students predicted less than a C were actively prevented from taking particular GCSEs:

When it came to options, the Director of Learning... made lists of students who were not allowed to do history. The other departments also published lists of kids who they didn't want. So on Options Day, where the students and their parents come and talk to you, I had to say I'm afraid that that subject is not suitable for you.

The EBacc will not only fail to address this scenario, it could potentially exacerbate it, by shifting the purpose of course entries entirely to securing the EBacc. A student judged to be unlikely to get a C not only risks failing to add to the league tables -- they are a potential distraction for teachers from the EBacc target. So students may now be being ushered into academic GCSEs to boost EBacc performance, as Michael Gove hoped, but the A*-C benchmark means that others will also be ushered out.

In theory, greater opportunities for those with who have fewer are at the heart of the EBacc. In July the Schools Minister stated that "[The E-Bacc] ...is about closing the attainment gap between rich and poor and about increasing opportunity". Yet, in light of the current correlation between lower exam performance and free school meal eligibility, those students liable to be excluded from EBacc subjects are disproportionately likely to be poorer. The focus on a C or above means not only that "risky" students may not even get the chance to try for a good grade, but that the value of doing the course itself is undermined. A significant percentage of D, E and F grades are achieved in compulsory English and maths: we can assume that taking the course, despite not gaining an A*-C, is still valuable. But this is not the message the EBacc is giving.

If the government is to realise its ambition of every student having a chance to study core subjects, the EBacc should be based on entry for courses. This would not only ensure that "underperformers" do not miss out, it would also lessen current pressures to deploy questionable performance-boosting strategies. Furthermore, it would contribute towards a move away from prioritising league table needs over students'.

The House of Commons Education Committee found little evidence that the EBacc would help the most disadvantaged. The A*-C focus is a key impediment. Ensuring equality of access to academic subjects is a positive goal; but the strategy is redundant if the most deprived lose out.

Anastasia de Waal is director of family and education at Civitas.

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How the EBacc risks shutting out the poorest students

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It's not about good grades anymore it's now about what you got those good grades in. This year's GCSE results face additional scrutiny against the new EBacc benchmark: A*-C achievement in the five "core" academic subjects -- English, maths, science, a language and either history or geography.Never mind how schools have performed.

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Relating to equity/equality of opportunity

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The coalition government has proven itself willing to be bold in reforming the state education system. The landscape of schooling has already begun to change as a result of moves to make academy status the norm across England and establish so-called 'free schools', both directly funded (in whole or part) by the state and systematically lessening the role of local authorities. Michael Gove's recent statement on the status of GCSEs and the introduction of a new qualification - the English Baccalaureate Certificate (EBC) - have been greeted as another momentous change, but what do the reforms really mean and who is likely to win (and lose) as a result?There is considerable scope for confusion because two separate exam-related reforms have been introduced using the same term,

The end of GCSEs?
Much of the publicity surrounding the proposed reforms has given the impression that GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examinations are to be abolished. In fact, there are no plans to abolish GCSEs as a whole. If the government's proposals are enacted in full, GCSEs will still remain as the dominant examination in most subjects. The proposed new examination, the EBC, will only apply in six subject areas: English, mathematics, the sciences, history, geography and language. The very first EBCs will be sat by school pupils in English, maths and the sciences in 2017.

From E. Bacc to EBC
'English Baccalaureate'.

The E.Bacc: The coalition's first White Paper on education (published in November 2010) introduced the 'English Baccalaureate' as a summary measure applying to pupils who gained higher grade GCSE passes (A*-C) in a specific range of subjects: English, maths, two sciences, a modern or ancient foreign language and a humanity (history or geography). The stated rationale was 'to encourage schools to offer a broad set of academic subjects to age 16, whether or not pupils then go down an academic or vocational route'.

The EBC: The proposed new qualification will be offered in a limited range of subjects and differ from GCSEs in several key ways, including the use of a final written examination as the only form of external assessment, thereby abolishing the use of internal assessment and modular approaches to teaching and learning.

So, the EBC is a type of exam while the E.Bacc is an overall profile of examination passes.

Questions of access and equity
It is too early to say what the impact of the EBC will be in terms of equity and opportunity for different groups of pupils. However, experience with the E.Bacc so far suggests that there are some significant problems to be addressed. The government has been clear in stating that the EBC should be open to the majority of pupils. Unfortunately, this is not a reality for the E.Bacc. Taken together (looking at the six subject areas needed to attain an E.Bacc) only a minority of pupils in England are even entered for the necessary subjects, let alone gain higher pass grades in them.

According to official statistics, in 2011 the majority of school pupils could not possibly attain an E.Bacc: around one pupil in five (21.6%) sat examinations in all the subjects required to qualify for an E.Bacc. These include some high status subjects (such as separate sciences) which schools often restrict to the pupils they judge to be 'most able': sometimes these judgements reflect genuine differences in achievement but research (both quantitative and qualitative) has consistently shown that teachers' preconceptions about certain groups also play an important role. As a result, all children do not have an equal chance of attaining an E.Bacc. Less than one in 12 pupils in receipt of free school meals (7.9%) and only one in 18 pupils designated as having a 'special educational need' (5.5%) access the full range of subjects, compared with almost a quarter of pupils who do not receive free school meals (23.8%). A similar pattern of unequal access is evident between pupils in different ethnic groups: whereas 32.8% of Indian and 21.5% of White British pupils entered the full range of E.Bacc subjects, this was true of 17.3% of Pakistani and only 13% of Black Caribbean pupils. These patterns of differential access are compounded by differences in attainment which mean that the introduction of the E.Bacc has widened inequalities of achievement between different groups.

The lesson of the E.Bacc experience to date is highly significant. In theory every pupil has the possibility of entering and achieving the E.Bacc: in reality, however, different groups do not have an equal chance of entry nor success. If policy-makers, educators and commentators are serious about widening opportunity and raising standards for all, then more work is needed to identify and address key aspects of the new examination.

Problems and possibilities
As the new examination is designed and implemented it will be crucial that all those involved take care to examine how the reforms impact on different groups of pupils. Simply applying the reforms to all is no guarantee of equity. Indeed, the lesson of previous reforms is that unless explicit steps are taken to account for questions of diversity, the reforms will likely deepen existing inequalities.

For example, one of the aspects of the EBC that has been emphasised by government is the return to a more traditional structure of assessment, where examinations are set (and marked) externally to the school and through a terminal exam at the end of the year. We should not forget, however, why different approaches were pioneered. The introduction of internal assessment and modular curricula were intended to avoid the all-or-nothing terminal exam at the year's end which often tested memory rather than real skills and understanding. Greater diversity of approach has allowed for assessment to become part of the learning process itself, helping to inform pupils (about their progress, strengths and weaknesses) and not merely operating as a badging exercise. The changes proved to be an excellent way of keeping more pupils engaged and raising achievement, especially among groups who were less successful in the more traditional examinations. A return to 'O' level style examinations could mean a return to lower levels of achievement among the groups who are frequently cited as the intended beneficiaries of reform, such as pupils in receipt of free school meals.

A welcome aspect of the EBC is the proposal to do away with 'tiering'. This is the system whereby two pupils who are taking the same subject, say maths, can find themselves entered for different papers which restrict the grades they can attain. Pupils judged likely to be high attainers are entered to the 'Higher' tier (where grades A* to D are available) but everyone else is entered in the 'Foundation' tier where, under normal circumstances, the very highest grade they can achieve is a C. Research consistently shows that differences in free school meal status and ethnicity can influence a pupil's chance of access to the higher tier. Abolishing tiers, therefore, could offer greater opportunities to groups who currently under-achieve. Once again, however, it will be necessary to keep the real-world impact of the changes in view. At present most secondary schools use selective teaching groups (called 'setting by ability') in many, if not all, E.Bacc subjects. Research shows that setting can institutionalise differences in attainment between groups and, because lower sets cover less of the curriculum, abolishing tiering will be of little use if Black pupils or their White peers on free school meals remain over-represented in bottom sets throughout their schooling.

Concluding thoughts
At the heart of public debates about school exams is a deep and unresolved contradiction. On one hand, examinations are meant to record an individual pupil's achievements and, of course, raising levels of educational success is seen as a desirable goal by policy-makers, employers and parents alike: a sign that standards are

rising. On the other hand, the year-on-year improvements in GCSE results led to an annual argument about whether exams were being 'dumbed down'. In 1988, when GCSEs were introduced, the highest passing grades (A-C) were awarded in 41.9% of cases; this year the figure (for grades A*-C) was 69.4%. This alone is evidence enough for some to condemn the GCSE as contributing to a fall in standards. The furore about alleged changes to grade boundaries in some GCSEs taken in the summer of 2012 is further evidence of the vital importance of public examinations. Amid the claims and counter-claims about 'standards' we should not forget that examinations play a vital role in the future life chances of young people.

It is unlikely that the conflicting views about GCSEs, standards, and the role of public examinations will be resolved anytime soon. In the meantime it is essential that the real-world impacts of the reforms are kept under scrutiny because, in the absence of clear moves to ensure equality of opportunity, research suggests that the unintended consequences could be a deepening of existing inequalities.

David Gillborn
Professor of Critical Race Studies
School of Education in the College of Social Sciences

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Examining exams: GCSEs, the E.Bacc and the question of Equity

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Michael Gove's recent statement on the status of GCSEs and the introduction of a new qualification - the English Baccalaureate Certificate (EBC) - have been greeted as another momentous change, but what do the reforms really mean and who is likely to win (and lose) as a result?

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LOTS of criticisms of the E-Bacc

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The coalition government is claiming that there is widespread support its for English baccalaureate. It is pointing to a YouGov poll taken in the middle of January which shows that the public, when asked which subjects studied at GCSE should count towards a school's league table position, list the following as their top options:

Maths

English language

Science

English literature

History

Geography

French, German, Spanish or other modern foreign languages

Game, set and match to Michael Gove you might think. But it's not as black and white as that.

First, the question asked in the survey is pretty loaded. Before the public are asked to answer the question they were given this background:

"The Government has announced plans stating that school league tables will only reflect the proportion of students who achieve GCSEs in core subjects like science, maths, english, history and geography. The government said this is aimed at discouraging schools from pushing students towards "easier" subjects to improve their league table position"

In a court that sort of preamble would be called 'leading the witness'.

Second, the list of subjects fails to include many of the subject students that are actually studying at GCSE - there is, for example, no reference to BTECs or combined science options.

Having said that the results of the poll do point to a problem for those of us who believe that the English baccalaureate is neither fish nor fowl: too broad to act as a measure of progress in core subjects and too narrow to be an indicator of all-round performance at age 16.

The public does relate to the emphasis on traditional subjects - not least because that is what many of them were familiar with when they were at school. So there is a communications challenge in persuading parents to have wider view of how best to assess their child's academic and broader development.

In part we can pray in aid the growing number of employers who are arguing for reform. Just last week the senior partner and chairman of PricewaterhouseCooopers, wrote:

' Students experiencing work for the first time...are like rough diamonds waiting to be polished. How do they work in a team or manage themselves under pressure? Can they think on their feet, make contacts, and link up ideas and people? Can they explain what they are doing to others? Can they sell their ideas, or recover from a setback? Can they push themselves farther than they are expected to?
'The door to the world of work and experiences like these need to be closer to the campus and the classroom room than ever before....the trend towards embedding and assessing work skills gained in education is here to stay."
The Times 29/01/11

But in part we also have to change the terms of the debate. Why, for example, do we need external exams at 16? Given that all young people will be obliged to stay in education and training until age 18/19 wouldn't it be better to focus on their assessment when they leave the school/college system rather than at the arbitrary age of 16 which harks back to a previous era when that was the norm for leaving school.

And wouldn't it be better to use a Tomlinson style diploma/baccalaureate as the means of charting and accrediting student attainment?

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The coalition government is claiming that there is widespread support its for English baccalaureate. It is pointing to a YouGov poll taken in the middle of January which shows that the public, when asked which subjects studied at GCSE should count towards a school's league table position, list the following as their top options: Maths English language Science English literature History Geography French, German, Spanish or other modern foreign languages Game, set and match to Michael Gove you might think.

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Pupil Premium government briefing

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General information on how the coalition aimed to create equality within education

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Issue

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are far less likely to get good GCSE results. Attainment statistics published in January 2014 show that in 2013 37.9% of pupils who qualified for free school meals got 5 GCSEs, including English and mathematics at A* to C, compared with 64.6% of pupils who do not qualify.

We believe it is unacceptable for children's success to be determined by their social circumstances. We intend to raise levels of achievement for all disadvantaged pupils and to close the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers.

The government is also committed to ending child poverty by 2020 by helping disadvantaged children outside of school.

Actions

To raise the achievement of all disadvantaged pupils, we are:

providing £2.5 billion of pupil premium funding to schools in the financial year 2014 to 2015, and increasing this funding to £2.545 billion in 2015 to 2016

requiring schools to publish details online each year of how they are using the pupil premium and the impact it is having

holding schools to account for the achievement of disadvantaged pupils through Ofsted inspections and performance tables

ensuring schools making unsatisfactory progress seek expert help by undertaking a pupil premium review

investing £136 million through the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to help schools raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils

promoting effective practice through a teaching and learning toolkit produced by EEF

making up to £50 million available for the summer schools programme from 2012

Background

Pupil premium

In April 2011, we introduced the pupil premium and the service premium. This gave schools £625 million of extra funding to close attainment gaps for disadvantaged pupils and to assist with the pastoral needs of children with parents in the armed forces.

Pupil premium funding has increased year on year. We will spend £2.545 billion in the 2015 to 2016 financial year.

We published an independent evaluation of the pupil premium in July 2013.

Ofsted have published 3 reviews on how schools are spending pupil premium funding:

In June 2013, Ofsted also published 'Unseen children: access and achievement 20 years on', which provides a comprehensive review of the current pattern of disadvantage and educational success across England.

Summer schools

In September 2011, the Deputy Prime Minister announced the annual summer schools programme. The scheme supports disadvantaged pupils as they move from primary to secondary school. The summer schools programme 2014 opened on 4 February 2014.

We published an independent evaluation of the summer schools programme in June 2013.

Impact

The pupil premium is designed to address inequality by giving every school and teacher the resources they need to help their most disadvantaged pupils, allowing them the freedom to respond appropriately to individual circumstances. Further information is set out in the equality impact assessment on 'The importance of teaching' white paper, published in December 2010.

Who we're working with

We are funding and evaluating several projects through the Education Endowment Foundation ( EEF).

The EEF is a registered, independent charity. They provide guidance on how best to use the pupil premium and have produced a toolkit for teachers and schools.

Appendix 1: service premium

This was a supporting detail page of the main policy document.

The service premium gives schools extra funding to support children and young people with parents in the armed forces. Pupils attract the premium if they meet the following criteria:

one of their parents is serving in the regular armed forces

one of their parents served in the regular armed forces in the last 3 years

one of their parents died while serving in the armed forces and the pupil is in receipt of a pension under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) and the War Pensions Scheme (WPS)

For the financial years 2013 to 2014 and 2014 to 2015, schools will receive £300 per eligible pupil.

The service premium is paid to schools as they are best placed to identify eligible pupils and assess what additional provision they need. Schools are responsible for using the service premium funding effectively.

Appendix 2: pupil premium

This was a supporting detail page of the main policy document.

The pupil premium gives schools extra funding to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils from reception to year 11.

We introduced a fund of £625 million in April 2011 to give schools £400 per year for children who:

were registered as eligible for free school meals

had been looked after for 6 months or longer

From April 2012, we extended pupil premium funding to children eligible for free school meals at any point in the past 6 years. For the 2015 to 2016 financial year, funding for the pupil premium has increased to £2.545 billion. Schools will receive:

£1,320 per pupil of primary-school age

£935 per pupil of secondary-school age

£1,900 per pupil who:

has been looked after for 1 day or more

has been adopted from care

has left care under a special guardianship order, a residence order or a child arrangements order

School accountability for the pupil premium

The pupil premium is paid to schools as they are best placed to assess what additional provision their pupils need.

Ofsted inspections report on how schools' use of the funding affects the attainment of their disadvantaged pupils.

We also hold schools to account through performance tables, which include data on:

the attainment of the pupils who attract the funding

the progress made by these pupils

the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their peers

We reward schools whose use of the pupil premium has significantly improved the attainment of their disadvantaged pupils with Pupil Premium Awards.

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2010 to 2015 government policy: education of disadvantaged children

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Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are far less likely to get good GCSE results. Attainment statistics published in January 2014 show that in 2013 37.9% of pupils who qualified for free school meals got 5 GCSEs, including English and mathematics at A* to C, compared with 64.6% of pupils who do not qualify.

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Is pupil premium really working? What about the future

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While pupil premium funding was introduced with the good intention of helping schools narrow the attainment gap, its future looks increasingly uncertain.
In April 2011, the coalition government introduced the pupil premium and the service premium. This injected an additional £625 million of funding to help schools close the attainment gap for disadvantaged pupils and to assist with the pastoral needs of forces children. It was flagged as new money at (another) time when schools were cash-strapped.

However, those of us in headship at the time will remember that, rather than being new money, the pupil premium was more a redistribution of what had been known as the Standards Fund. What had really changed were the rules about how the money could be spent.

Total pupil premium funding has increased year on year. Loudly though successive governments have proclaimed it, this is hardly a surprise since pupil numbers have increased and inflation has risen (albeit slowly). The government originally promised that the pot would rise to £2.545 billion in 2015-16 but, in fact, according to the most recent Commons briefing paper on the subject, it had risen only to £2.4 billion in 2017-18.

For better or worse?

In 2013 the DfE published an independent review of the initiative. This was carried out by a panel of academics. However, despite being two years into the pupil premium, the review looked only at the acquisition and deployment of funding. Hidden in the report is the rather disconcerting statement that:

'It is too early to measure the impacts of the Pupil Premium on attainment, and this evaluation only aimed to look at schools' perceptions of the Pupil Premium, and how it has influenced the support provided to pupils. However, almost all schools surveyed (95% or more) were monitoring the impact of the support they were providing for the pupils they targeted.'

Interestingly, the report notes that most schools saw the impact of the fund through the lens of additional staff appointments, notably the employment of additional teaching assistants. And this came a year after the publication of the Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit, which suggested that TAs were an ineffective strategy because they were high-cost, low impact! This appears to have passed by the review panel's attention.

The Sutton Trust and its government-funded extension, the Education Endowment Fund (EEF), seem to offer a more reliable and in-depth monitoring of the pupil premium. Its 2015 review noted, somewhat worryingly:

'At first glance, things do not seem to be getting much better: the headline gap between the proportion of pupils gaining five good GCSEs, including English and maths, for non-pupil premium and pupil premium children is barely closing (it was 26.4 and 26.2 percentage points in 2011 and 2014, respectively). However, this is a relatively poor measure for monitoring the gap since it ignores many improvements.'

This review carries an important message: that schools should 'concentrate on better results for pupil premium children, rather than narrowing the gap.' It makes the point that pupil premium money is actually improving the life chances of disadvantaged pupils.

'What matters to children from low-income families is that a school enables them to achieve a qualification to get on in life. If a low-income student gets a poor education from a school, it is little consolation or use for them to learn that the school served the higher income students equally poorly (the school's "gap'" was small).'

Schools should concentrate on better results for pupil premium children, rather than narrowing the gap

This message appears to have been ignored by Ofsted. The chief inspector reported that 'a common factor in the schools that do not improve to good or outstanding is that they have a higher proportion of deprived pupils', which misses the point made by Sutton Trust. The report goes on to point out that, in a third of schools that required improvement in 2015-16, the inspector recommended a review of the way the pupil premium was spent.

In 2017, the Education Policy Institute reported that:

'Disadvantaged pupils, on average, do not perform as well in school as their non-disadvantaged peers. Although there has been a greater focus on improving attainment in schools, the link between social demography and educational destiny has not been broken.'

Perhaps schools are caught up in an inescapable net, its warp defined by the desire to improve disadvantaged pupils' life chances and its weft by the fear of being found wanting by an inspection system that, for all its expressed desires, is rooted in their progress and attainment. No wonder it is creaking with strain.

'The pupil premium isn't working'

For the past few years several commentators have suggested that the pupil premium is not working, and cited precisely the aforementioned dichotomy. They have questioned the basis for allocating funding, they have railed against the premium being a top-up against the strictures of austerity and they have consistently resisted being judged against a measure that lacks integrity.

At the September meeting of ResearchEd, Professor Becky Allen (@profbeckyallen), director of the Education Datalab, gave a talk entitled ' The pupil premium isn't working'. She suggests that, on the contrary, 'it diverts the education system away from things that might work somewhat better.'

She has since outlined her case in a series of blog posts, where her arguments summarise the problems that have been inherent in the pupil premium from the beginning. She suggests that, with their onerous expenditure and reporting requirements, schools cannot focus on the real needs.

It is helpful to all of us dealing with the pupil premium to be aware of the points she makes.

The pupil premium does not target our lowest income students.

Poverty is a poor proxy for educational and social disadvantage.

Pupil premium students do not have homogeneous needs.

A school's gap depends on its non-PP demographic.

Tracking whether or not 'the gap' has closed over time is largely meaningless, even at the national level.

It isn't possible for a school to conduct the impact analysis required by DfE and Ofsted to 'prove' that their pupil premium strategy is working.

Reporting requirements drive short-term, interventionist behaviour.

It is doubtful whether within-classroom inequalities can ever be closed.

Schools are better off focusing on inequalities in cognitive function rather than socio-economic status.

This last point is important in the light of the wider direction of education thinking. It cannot be ignored that current training of Ofsted inspectors is pointing towards the whole cognitive function agenda and strategies such as dialogic teaching.

The pupil premium is not working (my #rED18 talk in 3 parts):
Pt I on attainment gaps - https://t.co/LbekQwNO1C
Pt II on interventions - https://t.co/rC24ICjiDh
Pt III on classroom inequalities - https://t.co/IqJRNHCbYr

- Becky Allen (@profbeckyallen) September 13, 2018

In May 2018, the then-new secretary of state for education, Damian Hinds told the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) that he wants 'us, together, to narrow the gap for the places left behind and provide better opportunities for the children who have the hardest start in life.' Which appears to repeat an old mantra.

However, Professor Allen, as chair of the workload advisory group, has the ear of the DfE and it is to be hoped that, rather than being regarded as heresy, her perspective on the pupil premium might prove to influence future policy.

Further reading and resources
Pupil premium toolkit: four steps to success Pupil premium accountability: how to embed positive discrimination Pupil premium audit templates Disadvantage: looking beyond the pupil premium

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Pupil premium: is it making a difference?

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While pupil premium funding was introduced with the good intention of helping schools narrow the attainment gap, its future looks increasingly uncertain. In April 2011, the coalition government introduced the pupil premium and the service premium. This injected an additional £625 million of funding to help schools close the attainment gap for disadvantaged pupils and to assist with the pastoral needs of forces children.

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Sutton Trust report on the Pupil Premium

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How schools spend the funding

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How the Pupil Premium fuels inequality

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It will pay for an additional 15 hours of free childcare for two-year-olds and give state schools some £2,000 more to educate children from low-income families. In addition, universities could be paid extra for awarding places to the most deprived teenagers.

In a speech at a school in Chesterfield, Mr Clegg insisted that it was "the right thing to do... even as we cut spending in other areas".

"We are all of us in government having to swallow hard in order to make the spending review work," he said. "We're all having to accept difficult cuts in many areas of public spending that we would very much rather avoid."

But the IFS study - submitted as part of a Government consultation into the plans - said it "could increase school funding inequalities".

Currently, school funding is tailored to particular areas, with wealthier counties typically receiving less than the most deprived inner-city councils.

The Government consultation into the pupil premium - being introduced from September 2011 - proposes providing a specific grant on top of existing funding.

The premium would vary across different councils, with a higher premium in areas with lower overall funding.

According to the IFS, this would effectively result in a "higher pupil premium in less deprived areas".

This feature is "justified on the basis that deprivation funding is currently lower or... spread more thinly, in less deprived areas", said the study.

"Disadvantaged areas already tend to receive higher funding, so the pupil premium would be relatively smaller for a deprived local authority and relatively larger for a more affluent local authority," said the report.

"At the extremes, the pupil premium in the local authority with the lowest total funding per pupil (Wokingham) is about two-and-a-half times greater than the value of the pupil premium in the local authority with the highest level of funding per pupil (Tower Hamlets)."

The IFS called for a flat rate to be applied to all children - irrespective of postcode - to iron out the inequalities.

Luke Sibieta, the report's co-author, said: "Attaching the same pupil premium to all disadvantaged pupils regardless of where they live would not only be simpler, it would also be more consistent with the Government's stated objectives."

Mr Clegg has refused to disclose exactly where the extra £7bn for the pupil premium would come from.

Sources have suggested that it is likely to be funded from cuts elsewhere in the education budget when the Government's long-term spending commitments are published next week.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said Mr Clegg's announcement on Friday was intended to divert attention from the damaging Lib Dem split over tuition fees.

"This announcement is nothing to do with fairness," she said. "It's a sop to Liberal Democrat backbenchers who at long last may be showing signs of rebelling as one totemic Liberal Democrat education policy after another is sacrificed to Tory ideology."

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: "It is impossible to know whether this targeted funding will be any improvement on the previous deprivation funding, or indeed, whether it will put mean more funding for those who need it most.

"And, until the comprehensive spending review, it is too soon to know whether this funding will be found from making cuts to existing support for poorer children."

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Coalition's pupil premium 'will fuel inequality'

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It will pay for an additional 15 hours of free childcare for two-year-olds and give state schools some £2,000 more to educate children from low-income families. In addition, universities could be paid extra for awarding places to the most deprived teenagers.

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Pupil Premium doesn't target the poor

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The pupil premium does not effectively target the lowest income pupils, a leading academic has warned.

The funding, which gives state schools extra money to help disadvantaged pupils, was introduced by the coalition government.

It is worth £1,320 for primary and £935 for secondary pupils who have been registered as eligible for free school meals during the last six years, and rises to £2,300 for those who have been in care.

However, Becky Allen, a professor at the UCL Institute of Education, set out a series of concerns about it in a talk at the ResearchED conference.

She said: "Don't ring fence funding for pupil premium students since they aren't the lowest income in the school, they aren't the most educationally disadvantaged, they don't have a homogenous set of needs, and ring fencing distorts optimal decision making for the leadership of the school, for governors, for Ofsted.

"But do give teachers the time and the environment to work out why students within their classrooms are learning different amounts."

She cited a 2009 paper that examined whether free school meal eligibility is a good proxy for family income.

She told the conference that it shows that "a large proportion of children who are eligible for free school meals are not actually in our lowest income households, and equally there's a large number of children who live close to the poverty line who are not eligible for free school meals."

She added: "One of the weird things about free school meals is that because it's attached to benefits, for the household the very act of receiving the benefits that then make them pupil premium eligible jumps their household income above another load of working poor who by the virtue of working are not eligible for free school meals."

Professor Allen said that even if the pupil premium did target perfectly the poorest pupils, poverty is not in any case a good proxy for educational and social disadvantage.

In a blog entitled 'the pupil premium is not working' that followed her talk, she writes that "children who come from households who are time-poor and haven't themselves experienced success at school often do need far more support to succeed at school".

She adds that pupil premium pupils do not have homogeneous needs, and that "categorising students as pupil premium or not is a bizarre way to make decisions about who gets access to scarce resources in schools".

In her talk, she raised concerns about the "pretty onerous expenditure and reporting requirements" attached to the pupil premium, including that schools track the progress of pupil premium pupils to show they are closing the gap.

She warned that measuring attainment gaps is "meaningless".

Professor Allen said: "This very act of ring-fencing the money and requiring an impact statement is distorting expenditure and it's distorting the focus away from thinking about high-quality classroom instruction, or even just hiring great staff."

Instead, she said the pupil premium should be rolled into general school funding.

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Pupil premium 'failing to target the poor'

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The pupil premium does not effectively target the lowest income pupils, a leading academic has warned. The funding, which gives state schools extra money to help disadvantaged pupils, was introduced by the coalition government.

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(Image: PA)

The pupil premium was one of the Coalition government's attempts to help disadvantaged pupils do better at school. It meant giving schools extra money for each one of their pupils who was deprived enough to be given free school meals.

According to official government figures the gap between disadvantaged school pupils and their more privileged peers is narrowing.

This is good news and a statistical endorsement of the Coalition's education policy.

That makes it look like the pupil premium has worked: this is a policy championed by the Lib Dems and whose sole purpose is to improve the attainment levels of poor students by increasing funds to publicly funded schools in England.

So far so good - expect something's not quite right.

The Government has changed the way they measure the "attainment gap"

Previously the so-called "attainment gap" was measured by looking at the difference between the proportion of advantaged and disadvantaged pupils achieving five or more grades A*-C in secondary schools.

If we use this traditional measure the gap has in fact widened.

In fact although 33.7% of pupils on free school meals achieved 5 A*-Cs at GCSE (including English and maths), among other pupils the figure rose to 60% in 2014.

Since last year the attainment gap widened by a further 0.3 percentage points, standing now at 27.0%.

In London the gap is widening even more

Two thirds of local authorities in London have seen poorer pupils slip further behind richer ones since Pupil Premium was introduced in 2011 - according to research by Demos, a think-tank.

According to the researchers, if the current trend continues "we would see a return to a wider attainment gap than before the coalition introduced the Pupil Premium within just two years."

Cue the government's new measure: the Disadvantaged Pupils Attainment Gap Index

You know what you just read? Forget it - wipe it out of your memory.

The Government's new and improved measure shows that ACTUALLY the gap is getting narrower.

A DfE spokesperson told us that "the 2014 results shows the gap has narrowed by almost 4% since 2012, the year after the pupil premium was introduced. This is a testament to the hard work of teachers and parents across the country."

A group of education experts have told Ampp3d they find the new measure baffling.

This is a £2.5bn program - is it working?

For now it appears the £2.5 billion pupil premium program to support pupils from low-income households is failing to close attainment gap in secondary schools.

The pupil premium is of course a new policy - and as such it will take time to see solid progress. But for the moment it is not travelling in the right direction.

In primary schools, it's a different story.

However earlier intervention appears to be more effective. Progress is being made according to both measures - and this is very promising. The hope is that it will have a knock-on effect on future secondary schools.

More cuts to come!

Recently the Prime Minister has pledged to to maintain current levels of per-pupil spending in schools. Sadly though, they will not be rising in line with inflation.

The pupil premium is excluded from this plan - it's been speculated that it may be slashed by £3billion by 2020.
[Sources: DfE, Demos, DfE statistics, DfE's new measure, House of Commons Library]
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The pupil premium was one of the Coalition government's attempts to help disadvantaged pupils do better at school. It meant giving schools extra money for each one of their pupils who was deprived enough to be given free school meals. According to official government figures the gap between disadvantaged school pupils and their more privileged peers is narrowing.

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University Technical Colleges - Commons Library briefing - UK Parliament

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University Technical Colleges (UTCs) are technical schools for 14-19 year olds, working alongside employers and universities, introduced under the Coalition Government. They operate as a type of academy, with relevant freedoms such as not having to follow the national curriculum, or employ teachers with qualified teacher status.

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More than two thirds of the university technical colleges visited by Ofsted in the last year are 'requires improvement' or 'inadequate', according to Schools Week analysis.

But the organisation that oversees UTCs claims the watchdog's inspection regime is not designed to measure their performance in the most accurate way possible.

Of the 14 UTCs inspected by Ofsted between February 2017 and February 2018, just four, or 29 per cent, were rated 'good'. None at all were rated 'outstanding'.

Meanwhile, 10, or 71 per cent, were 'requires improvement' or 'inadequate'.

The Baker Dearing Trust told Schools Week that UTCs are "new and innovative" colleges which are inspected "before many of them have a settled position in the local education landscape".

Its spokesperson claimed that the trust hopes that "over time", the "outstanding destinations" found at UTCs will "carry more weight" in Ofsted reports.

A total of 29 of the 14-to-19 technical institutions - including several which have since closed - have now been inspected, of which 17 (59 per cent) had the lowest two grades. This is compared to just 11.6 per cent of schools.

Baker Dearing pointed out that if only the 23 UTCs that are still open and have had inspections are taken into account, 52 per cent are at grades one or two.

The organisation, which seeks to champion and promote UTCs, said its objective is to have every UTC rated 'good' or 'outstanding', and claimed it works "closely and constructively" with those that have yet to reach the benchmark.

UTCs are new and innovative colleges which are inspected before many of them have a settled position

The brainchild of former education secretary Lord Baker (pictured), the UTCs programme was launched in 2011 by the then-education secretary Michael Gove.

However, it has recently emerged that Gove was forced to create the institutions by George Osborne and David Cameron. David Laws, who served as schools minister in the coalition government from 2012 to 2015, told Schools Week last month that Gove had "never liked" the policy, but had it "imposed" on him by the former chancellor and prime minister.

UTCs have attracted strong criticism over the years as many have struggled to recruit the right number of pupils at the age of 14.

Many of the scheme's critics, especially those in the schools community, say that pupils are not ready or inclined to move to a different school at the end of year nine. In response, some UTCs have since sought to admit 13-year-olds, while eight have either closed completely or become 11-to-18 schools.

The most recent inspection reports into UTCs, at the institutions in South Devon and Buckinghamshire, both produced 'requires improvement' ratings.

For Buckinghamshire, it was the second 'requires improvement' in a row. The college had just 147 students on roll, despite a capacity of 600, in the last academic year.

Inspectors who visited in January said that overall progress in English, maths and science has been "well below" the national average for the last three years, and the quality of teaching is "inconsistent".

South Devon UTC was inspected for the first time in January. The college currently has just over 200 pupils, but senior leaders were criticised because they have "not secured consistently effective" teaching as it has grown in size.

An investigation in January by FE Week revealed that almost every UTC missed their recruitment targets last year, leaving them with combined debts of over £11 million.

The ESFA is trying to retrieve cash from 39 of 44 UTCs still open in 2016/17.

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71% of UTCs got less than 'good' in the last year

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More than two thirds of the university technical colleges visited by Ofsted in the last year are 'requires improvement' or 'inadequate', according to Schools Week analysis. But the organisation that oversees UTCs claims the watchdog's inspection regime is not designed to measure their performance in the most accurate way possible.

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Page 68 onwards/search university technical colleges within the book

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Education has betrayed its promises to deliver upward social mobility and a brighter future. Young people study harder but learn less, running up a down-escalator of devalued qualifications to become overqualified but underemployed, unable to move forward with their lives.

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Relationship between work, education and the economy

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Ball has something to say about almost anything so try to google his name where you can as he is mostly used for your evaluations relating to policy!

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Links to different coalition resources if you're interested

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Links to different coalition resources if you're interested

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Mr Gove often stated his admiration for former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and for the education policies of former Labour Education Minister Lord Andrew Adonis and so it would not be surprising to find some similarities [as well as some differences] between previous Labour Government education policies and Coalition education policies.