Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what analysis they have carried out of the performance of sponsored academy schools compared to similar local authority maintained schools based on GCSE results in (1) 2013, (2) 2014, and (3) 2015.

The Department published a supplementary analysis to the academies annual report in June 2013 which included analysis of the 2012 results for sponsored secondary academies compared to similar local authority maintained schools. The paper has been attached to this answer.

Our success in meeting our commitment to tackle failing schools by bringing in academy sponsors means that there is no longer a large enough pool of maintained secondary schools to allow a robust approach to identifying similar schools against which we can assess academy performance, such as the matching methodology used in our June 2013 analysis. A matching approach has been used in other analysis of primary schools such as that published in May 2016 by SchoolDash to conclude that sponsored academies “become noticeably better in a relatively short time following academy conversion.”