It’s with good reason that John Tanner (Academy policy is challenged) raised a question in Cabinet to Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Schools Improvement, Melinda Tilley, about moves towards sponsored academy status which is being proposed for a number of primary schools in Oxford and Oxfordshire.

Councillor Tanner makes the point “there is no firm evidence that academy status will improve standards for children”.

While relatively few primaries have yet become sponsored academies, the Government’s view that “academies have a strong track record” doesn’t stand up to analysis. A new review by educationalist Henry Stewart of Department of Education figures reveals that 60 per cent of pupils in non-academy secondaries achieved five A* to C grade GCSEs last year compared to only 47 per cent in the 249 sponsored (secondary) academies.

Stewart’s breakdown of the figures makes it clear that council-run schools with a similar intake to academies but with less funding, performed better in 2011 than their sponsored academy counterparts.

Mrs Tilley is reported to have said that Education Secretary Michael Gove expected all schools to eventually become academies, which is not accurate. At a recent Education Select Committee hearing, Gove declared that he expected most secondary schools in England to become academies during this Parliament, not primaries.

Either way, evidence in support of sponsored academies as the instruments for what Mrs Tilley calls “the step-change” simply doesn’t, on the basis of the Department of Education’s figures for 2008-2011, bear consideration.

Accuracy matters! Schools matter! Children matter!

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH, Bowness Avenue, Headington, Oxford