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Academies are no better than conventional comprehensive schools, research suggests today.
A study that claims their GCSE results are "statistically indistinguishable" from other schools' figures has cast further doubt on the Government's £5billion education reforms.
Ministers say academies - secondary schools run by businesses, churches or charities free of some restrictions - are responsible for dramatic improvements in results.
It has been claimed the improvement in GCSE scores has been about four times the national average. The Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics studied GCSE results at 27 academies opened between 2002 and 2006.
It found these had improved but the achievement "looks less impressive" when compared with other poorly performing schools nearby as test scores there showed almost the same improvement.
The study by Professor Stephen Machin of University College London, and Joan Wilson of London's Institute of Higher Education said: "Overall these changes in GCSE performance are statistically indistinguishable from one another." It echoes a 2007 study co-authored by academics at Cambridge University that said specialist schools were no better at raising results than normal comprehensives
A Department for Children, Schools and Families spokesman said: "Surveys demonstrate parents like academies and pupils are proud to go to them."
The latest league tables compiled by the Evening Standard show 43 secondary schools in London teaching 42,650 pupils failed to meet a key target of having at least 30 per cent of pupils achieving five C grades in subjects including maths and English.
Ten of the schools were academies which cost an estimated £250 million in taxpayers' money to establish. Three have been open for at least five years - the Harris Academy in Peckham, Capital City Academy in Brent and the Business Academy Bexley.
Critics say this should have been more than enough time to bring about dramatic improvements from the weak comprehensives they replaced.
Ministers hailed the results as an improvement on previous years, when 67 London comprehensives failed to reach the target.
The academies have been attacked by unions and Left-wing MPs as a "part-privatisation" of state education.
Reader views (1)
Hi All.
To suggest the Academies are better than comprehensives is a lie.
These Academies are preventing contact in Rugby games, the schools are like fortresses, without windows, and were there are windows they have thick blinds and shut them, threatening on the spot fines as the norm, Hedge Fund and Church of England funded, which equates to the Military Industrial Complex funding our schools, and you think the military want in our schools cost free?
If you want your children to become the brown shirts of yesterday, today named 'GREEN SHIRTS', then continue to allow the military to empty the minds of your children, turn your children against you the parents.
Lancashire police have just released a DVD to encourage your children to tell tales on their friends and during the one to one interviews with psychologists, ask very personal questions, leading questions about you the parents.
This is going on in the primary schoolds as I write, with lessons aimed at finding out what every second of home life is aboiut for each child.
They are useing your children to create files on every family in this nation ready for the changes in social services so they can remove children from school and of course you the parents.
Give this information your attention, because they have already created these files, and have already chosen the children they say are at risk...of course their idea of risk is to have parents who do not follow the dance of the Nazi.
- Life, Accrington UK
