Today, EPI launches its complete interactive benchmarking tool,
which compares the performance of individual academy trusts,
local authorities, federations and dioceses across four key
performance indicators:
Alongside the tool, EPI has published a new report that brings
together findings from our benchmarking tool, along with results
from our Decisions in Education in
England (DEEP) survey of senior leaders working in school
groups.
Key Findings
On the school workforce
-
MAT leaders identify recruitment as their biggest challenge.
Amongst secondary schools, multi-academy trusts have, on
average, significantly higher annual turnover of classroom
teachers than local authorities (16.9% in the median MAT,
14.4% in the median LA), and annual turnover is even higher
in larger MATs (19.5% on average).
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Although we cannot assume causality, at secondary, high
teacher turnover is negatively correlated with overall
attainment and post-16 destinations. However, there is no
such correlation between teacher turnover and the progress of
both disadvantaged and low prior attaining pupils. At
primary, we found no correlation between teacher turnover and
headline KS2 attainment.
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Similarly, higher levels of efficiency are associated with
higher rates of classroom teacher turnover. This suggests
that teacher turnover isn't necessarily a negative outcome,
if for example schools are adept at identifying and retaining
only high-quality teachers, this could potentially help drive
efficiencies.
On financial health
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At primary, multi-academy trusts are around twice as likely
to have positive in-year balances compared to other group
types. At secondary, MATs are almost three times as likely to
have positive in-year balances than other school groups
(though on average, they represent a smaller percentage of
overall budgets than in primary).
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90 per cent of MATs in our survey used top-slicing (taking a
fixed proportion of funding from all schools) rather than
pooling funding across all schools. On average they
top-sliced around 6 per cent of school budgets.
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Diocesan school groups typically self-generate the largest
fraction of their income, over 6 per cent on average, whilst
academy trusts have the lowest self-generated income. This
may reflect the level of affluence of the communities which
schools serve.
On pupil inclusion and attainment
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Larger MATs (with 10 or more schools in a phase) have, on
average, higher rates of persistent absence, suspension, and
unexplained exits than smaller MATs and local authorities.
However, these larger MATs admit greater rates of
disadvantaged pupils and have higher attainment outcomes for
low prior attaining and disadvantaged pupils.
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Primary school groups linked to dioceses (MAT and non-MAT)
have intakes that are less representative of their local
area. However, they have relatively low levels of persistent
absence and relatively high overall attainment.
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Internal exclusions are not captured in national data
collections but findings from the DEEP survey indicate the
use of internal exclusion is more prevalent in secondary
schools – less than 3 per cent of sampled secondary schools
reported not using internal exclusion at all, in comparison
with almost a quarter of primary schools.
Policy recommendations
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The Department for Education should now publish easily
accessible metrics for school groups, in line with its
approach of "trust quality descriptors". This would allow
users to see the relative strengths and weaknesses of school
groups and allow a more informed understanding of their
performance and how they reflect their local
communities.
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The accountability and inspection system should be reviewed,
and consideration should be given to how it can better
reflect the different pupil demographics and circumstances of
individual schools. Schools that admit representative
proportions of disadvantaged pupils or those with additional
needs should not be penalised under any potential new
system.
-
The school admissions code should be reviewed with a focus on
inclusion. In particular, it should consider why certain
types of school groups (such as dioceses) appear to be less
likely to reflect their local areas in terms of the number of
pupils from low-income backgrounds that they admit.
-
Consistent Financial Returns should move to collecting the
income and expenditure of local authority education teams
akin to the data reported by trusts on central teams through
the Academies Accounting Return. This would allow for better
comparisons between how trust central teams and local
authorities top-slice and re-distribute grant income.
Louis Hodge, Associate Director for School System and
Performance at the Education Policy Institute (EPI),
said:
“With large increases in academisation over the last decade, an
increasing number of schools are now working as part of wider
groups and networks.
“Yet our understanding of the relative strengths and weaknesses
of different groups has, to date, been patchy and inconclusive.
This new research provides a strong foundation on which to build
a more rounded understanding of how school groups in England are
performing.
“We hope it will enable informed conversations across the
education sector about the features of effective school groups
and how school groups can be supported to improve their
performance.”
ENDS
You can find an embargoed copy of the report, The Features of
Effective School Groups, here.
You can access the online interactive benchmarking tool here.
Methodology
In this programme of work we have developed a suite of metrics
covering school group performance across four domains of pupil
attainment and progress, pupil inclusion, workforce
sustainability, and financial management.
The focus is on a series of key metrics, which we believe help to
identify an effective school group:
In constructing our metrics, we pool data from across three
school years - 2016/17 to 2018/19 - to create an average result
for each metric across that time period. This period represents
the latest 3-year series of metrics unaffected by the disruption
to schools during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Notes to Editors
About Education Policy Institute
The Education Policy Institute (EPI) is an independent,
impartial, and evidence-based research institute that promotes
high quality education outcomes, regardless of social background.
We achieve this through data-led analysis, innovative research
and high-profile events. Find out more about our work here.
This research has been kindly supported by GL
Assessment and Capita Entrust.
