Free school doesn't enter entire Y11 for any GCSEs as they would all fail.

[noblegiraffe]

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/free-school-gcse-exams-no-year-11-pupils-mature-enough-not-ready-route-39-academy-north-devon-a7863006.html

There were only 13 pupils in Y11 at Route 39 Academy, but none of them were entered for any GCSEs, because they were 'neither academically ready nor sufficiently mature or resilient to have taken the examinations'.

What on earth is going on at that school?

Attempt to derail !

Noble - good poiont (I cross-posted).

So the list overstates success in two ways:

1. It does not include all those that have failed.

1. It includes new academy schools opened by successful existing chains or schools, that are only designated 'free' schools because this is the only designation allowed for a new school.

Flying,

Your claim is a little bizarre.

My town doesn't have any LA secondaries at all - all are converter or sponsored academies. The teachers teaching in them have transferred from LA to academy management entirely straightforwardly, and it seems likely that the same will continue to be true when one of the academies sponsors a new school (designated a 'free' school because it has to be, but actually just a new academy). No sabotage...

Flyign, do you have evidence that staff have caused converter academies to fail, just because they are no longer underr LA control? Your argument, if true, would apply absolutely equally to them. Many grammar schools, btw, which I know you are in favour of, are converter academies, as the bribe to convert to academy status some years ago was really very worthwhile.

Do you have evidence of staff sabotaging grammar schools because they have left LA control? oOr have they stayed virtually the same?

There are several Outstanding standalone free schools, including Michaela. And actually the process for interviewing and approving those who want to set up a new free school is now much more rigorous. The problem is, there are still a lot of free schools from the early Gove days when they were approved at the drop of the hat in areas without a need for extra places. Route 39 is a classic example.

Just looking at some of the inadequate schools. Robert Owen Academy (11% pass at GCSE this year, -1.72 progress 8, £4 million spent on building, 54 pupils on roll) is a 14-19 vocational school and is included on the list. It really doesn't make any sense to exclude UTCs and studio schools from the list when they are very similar.

Bertrand asked if there were any free schools doing well and it appears that there are many.

cantkeepawayforever
Just as an experiment, I opened a random selection of the 'Outstanding' schools and Inadequate ones in the Free school list. All the Outstanding ones are actually academy schools opened as new schools by existing academy trusts - so not free schools at all by the original definition, a much more sensible designation would be 'Academy school'.

I've just looked at the first 10 schools in the 'outstanding' list -
All Saints, Barrow, Becket and Canary Wharf appear to be parent/teacher led. Obviously, I didn't bother looking at the schools with 'Ark' in the title.

^All the Inadequate ones that I opened were 'stand alone' free schools with their own board of trustees, as the free schools policy originally envisaged.
Interesting.^

There are only 9 'inadequate' schools listed - did you look at any of the 119 'good' schools?

You are correct though, parent-led free schools have now been side lined by academy trusts.

No, my sampling methodology was not remotely scientific! I just clicked randomly down the list (to avoid over-sampling from 'families' like Ark or Harris) and looked just at the extremes of the Ofsted criteria.

My hypothesis would be that 'new academies' within MATs [ie not free schools as originally envisaged] are more highly represented in the top grades and less represented at the lower grades, with the opposite being true for genuinely parent-led free schools - ie that what Bertrand meant [genuinely free schools] are relatively unsuccessful, whereas the schools that mast people don't realise are technically described as free schools [actually new academies within chains] are about as successful as the general school population.

When I have enough time, I'll have a more systematic look.

I retract what I said earlier about it being a pru type of school. I just thought that's what it must be from earlier posts. Basically it should close! What a total waste of money and a vanity project. It was never needed.

cantkeepawayforever
Unless you are prepared (I am not) to look at the history of all the schools in the list you will have a difficult task and some of the schools will fit into more than one category.

What I was prepared to do was click on the 'outstanding' schools to see if any of them had previously been inspected (very easy to do) - 5 of them had - all previously rated 'requires improvement' and now 'outstanding' within a relatively short space of time.Therefore the potential for a newly established school to rapidly improve seems quite realistic.

If you look at the requires improvement and Inadequate schools, there are plenty more that have not made rapid improvement in a short space of time, failing more than one inspection, so I'm not sure you can draw any conclusions.

A very quick look at the 'requires improvement' list reveals approx. 8 schools that have had more than 1 full inspection - 2 or 3 of those are rated 'good' in 2 or 3 areas plus several others have positive Section 8 Reports.

Looking at the schools beginning with the letters A and B in the 'good' list (19 schools) 4 of these have also improved from 'requires improvement' to 'good' relatively quickly.

My youngest goes to a 'good' (according to ofsted) free school. It's not part of an academy chain but has been set up by a group experienced in education. It is in a deprived part of the city, selects on distance but takes people from 20 odd miles away (they choose it - it has a very different approach). The dept for education seem to love it - they keep using it as an example for various things - (which interests me as it is very anti-Govian).

Compared to the grammar my middle son is at I believe it offers a better education. But middle son will get more GCSE's (youngest should be able to get enough to go to whatever university he wants to should he want to).

So they can work in the way they were intended (although my son's school may not be what Gove had in mind)- I'm really happy with the school.

Oh and their first inspection was good.

Clavinova - tbh that wasn't what i looked at. The first Ofsted inspection for the schools I looked at stated their origins ('A single academy set up by a group of trustees' or 'Set up by xyz chain / group of schools')

All schools, of any type, can go up and down the gradings, and this is probably more the case when a school is new, so I think it is hard to argue that bad free schools are better than bad non free schools because their Ofsted grade has changed more quickly. It would be very interesting, if the data was available, to compare the gradings of new-academies-designated-free-schools 2 years after their start vs new LA schools of the same age when the LAs were still allowed to set up schools...

It is worth noting that several of the Outstanding schools were graded as such when they had 2 small year groups in the school, but will almost certainly not be inspected again for 5-10 years, by which time they will be very, very different. Conversely, low gradings will often be more reliable at reporting the current quality of a school (this applies to all schools of all types) , because they are likely to be more recent due to rapid re-inspection.

There are several Outstanding standalone free schools, including Michaela
What are you basing that on? Their own data? Their highly publicised book? No gcse results yet...

Yogi,

I would agree that judging a 2 year old school, with only a couple of year groups in school 'Outstanding' (which basically excuses them from re-inspection for many, many years - local Outstanding schools are on 10 years and still waiting for an inspection) is possibly premature.

Hopefully, Ofsted will inspect once the school has some external exam results as well, to validate their original judgment - but perhaps not.

There are at least a couple of schools who got 'good with outstanding features' before posting any results, who then went on to get poor results. 28% A*-C for Saxmundham Free School (not reinspected since 2014). One wonders if it would have got the original judgement if it had those results. I suspect not!
Judging schools without exam data means relying on subjective data made up by the teachers.
schoolsweek.co.uk/free-school-disappoints-with-28-gcse-rate/amp/

Incidentally, Saxmundham Free School was controversial when it opened because it wasn't needed, it stole pupils and teachers from another local secondary school.

amp.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/22/free-school-cut-suffolk-gcse-results

Progress 8 for Saxmundham Free School is 'average' though.
Almost half of the year group were classed as 'low attainers' at KS2 - presumably none or very few of these pupils would have been expected to achieve 5 GCSEs A*-C, nor a proportion of the 'middle attainers'. I notice that 70% of the pupils were entered for the EBacc - too challenging perhaps and definitely a mistake for the league tables.

Which category of free school would cantkeepawayforever put this school in - parent led or otherwise?

Parent led - from the Ofsted report:

"The school was founded by the Seckford Foundation Free Schools Trust, to meet the wishes of parents for more choice in educational provision within the local area."

Whether Ixworth, the third school opened by this Trust, 2 years later than the initial 2, is a parent-led one is more debatable - it has more in common with the 'new school opened by existing MAT' model.

(Ixworth requires improvement, but again has no real exam results)

Michaela School is notorious - so many journalists and educationalists have written articles about this school they must have visitors every other week - therefore its ethos, leadership, curriculum, teaching and behaviour is under constant scrutiny and inspection. Michaela is probably not a school I would send my own dc to (it's not set up for white, middle class kids) but the head teacher seems to relish showing off her school despite the 'marmite' reactions.

Unlike the 'previously outstanding', maintained primary school near me which really did have inspections 10 years apart and wouldn't allow any prospective parents to visit the school at any time - it's now rated as 'good'.

Beccles, the third school in the group, was again rated Good in 2014 but has a below-average, -0.37 Progress8.

I genuinely doesn't seem sensible to compare Ofsteds between established schools with a track record of real external exam data with Odfsteds of recently opened schools with a small number of year groups.

Perhaps annual or biennial 'interim assessments' should be used for new schools, to weed out those which are doing appallingly badly abnd failing children, with full Ofsteds that are comparable to established school ones being carried out once they have external exam data available for, say, 2 years?

Yes, the Seckford Foundation Free School Trust appears to be a private school provider connected to Woodbridge Independent School.