A network of opportunity

Linking academies can help teachers to cater more effectively for disadvantaged children

By Lesley Smith

ARK Schools runs eight academies, six in London and one each in Portsmouth and Birmingham. The charity was created in 2004 to develop a network of outstanding non-selective inner city schools that would meet the needs of local children through the academies programme.

From day one, our focus has been on raising attainment for disadvantaged children and securing for them the educational opportunities that middle-class children take for granted. For a charity that aspires to transform children’s lives, in 2004 the academies programme was a made-to-measure opportunity.

New academies were offered the greater freedom to organise around the needs of their pupils. To achieve rapid and sustainable improvements in achievement they would be less constrained by the national curriculum than maintained schools, they could vary the school hours and their teachers’ pay and conditions. 

For ARK, those freedoms are important. Five of our eight academies replaced schools that were in difficulties or had under-performed for a number of years. In one case, becoming an academy was the alternative to closure.  Our academies have high percentages of pupils on free school meals, high numbers with English as an additional language and most start with above average mobility in the year. More than half the pupils joining year 7 have poor prior attainment in English and mathematics. 

So the ability to concentrate on depth before breadth to raise achievement in maths and English before broadening the curriculum was essential. So too were the ability to run a longer school day, to match rewards to performance, to incentivise high achievement and to design a small school model where teachers had close relationships with smaller number of pupils. 

Our schools need to attract and retain exceptional teachers and leaders, committed to the formidable task of turning around schools that have often been demoralised and suffered “initiative fatigue”.  We demand a lot - so we are pleased that despite the challenges and sheer hard work required, morale is high; applications are rising, few posts need re-advertising and retention and results are improving.  Recent recruitment open days for the Ark Academy opening in Wembley attracted an encouraging 600 registrations for 45 posts so enthusiasm is clearly infectious.

As a multiple academy sponsor, ARK created a network for a number of reasons.  Many are obvious and practical. Networks offer economies of scale and of expertise. They enable the provider to create rigorous systems to manage quality assurance and accountability. Our Director of Education, Sir Michael Wilshaw, runs our internal programme of school monitoring, holding principals and their teams accountable for school performance across a range of measures.  Experience demonstrates that individual governing bodies find it much harder to manage and challenge school leaders as their relationship with the school is focused on one person and their accountability and measurement tools are limited. At local authority level, relationships are more remote and incentives to raise performance can be compromised by political or other considerations.  For the head teachers themselves, a network offers more responsive and sustainable support. 

The experience of some of the most effective US charter school groups, like KIPP, Uncommon Schools and Noble Street Charter Schools, suggests that highly accountable, mission-driven, non-profit organisations have greater success in closing the achievement gap because they are accountable to boards of directors who are entirely mission aligned and have the highest expectations of student progress.  

At Noble Street, in Chicago, more than 75 per cent of students start school below their expected grade level yet more than 85 per cent of graduating students go on to college. Independent research demonstrates that KIPP schools are closing the achievement gaps that exist in the US between black and white pupils in maths and reading.

Where successful charter schools have established networks, they have restricted their size to around 12 schools, to ensure that their focus is not diluted. Most face the same challenges as ARK; to maintain a strong sense of purpose and a consistent high standard of education and behaviour across all their schools, as well as to provide excellent shared services and ensure strong financial management.

US charter schools have greater freedoms than UK academies.  They have no obligations beyond their own pupils, so aren’t required to provide sports centres, community services, to promote community cohesion, public health education or act on other responsibilities that our schools acquire from time to time.  They are measured on outcomes and are responsible for their own inspection and monitoring and define drivers of success in their own terms.

ARK’s network enables us to spread the use and costs of additional resources. We can offer teachers a career framework where they can train, work with and learn from mentors and colleagues in different schools and at different levels. We can manage human relations, IT and financial management at a group level, freeing principals to focus on the elements of school management that drive pupil achievement

As importantly, we could create a family of schools with a shared ethos, where staff could share knowledge, resources and experiences and pupils would benefit from competitive and collaborative, inter-school activities beyond their own academies.

Our schools have specialist support in literacy, maths, special educational needs, extended schools programmes and professional development. This morning’s ARK Schools senior team meeting was typical. We evaluated a programme for year 7 pupils having problems with the transition to secondary school, reviewed training for academy governing bodies, had a progress report on school refurbishments over the summer and a discussion of a tool kit being developed to help staff and school leaders embed rapid progress and higher achievement in their academies. 

If it sounds like a mini-local authority, it’s not. We have fewer schools. They are chosen for their similar characteristics and needs.  The network’s relationships with individual academies are focused on how to help them achieve and sustain high performance.  ARK’s assessment cycle reports on pupil progress every six weeks, triggering rapid action where it’s needed.  Every discussion is informed by immediate, day-to-day reports of what schools need, what works and what is most effective – and by strong personal relationships with principals and staff, as well as knowledge of each individual school. And in a small network, feedback is rapid and experience informs policy quickly.

So as the Government opens the door to a rapid growth in the number of academies where does that leave multiple sponsors?

For ARK, there is a path to natural expansion, building on local relationships to offer greater support to primary schools that may become academies. Some have already formed relationships with local ARK academies, through year 6 literacy programmes or other partnerships.  Elsewhere, local authorities need to meet the needs of growing inner city communities. Parents and other groups are starting to come forward to find out more about how to create new schools, with a multiple sponsor as a partner. What they need is not just expertise but a template to create the systems of accountability to manage high performance.

When ARK Schools started, its tiny team did everything from negotiating expressions of interest and a funding agreement with government, to writing education briefs, planning the curriculum, recruiting staff, deciding on terms and conditions and transferring staff, winning planning consent, approvals to modernise listed buildings, creating design briefs and arranging the procurement of multi- million pound capital works.  Six years on, as one of the first accredited schools groups, we have some experience to offer would-be academies starting down that road.

ARK’s priority is to preserve and build on our early achievements. This month, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust reported that ARK academies are outperforming key stage 2 predictions of GCSE achievement by an average of 12 per cent, making ARK the top-performing multiple sponsor on this measure in a field that did well generally. 

Just 4 percent of children on free school meals go on to university. Those children need teachers and schools that will raise their aspirations to achieve as highly as middle-class children. Today ARK has 4,500 pupils. Over the next three years we expect to treble that number by developing a mixture of new and transition academies. But the need for networks with a strong focus on achievement remains great.

US charter schools demonstrate that mission aligned networks can drive high achievement in communities with the greatest economic disadvantage. Here, Walworth Academy, which became an academy in 2007, beat its key stage 2 predicted GCSE performance by 20 percentage points in 2009  - 45 per cent achieved 5+ GCSEs including English and mathematics against a predicted 25 per cent. We need to sustain and replicate that achievement in our schools and we need new networks that can match it across our inner cities.

To find out more about this article, visit: www.arkonline.org

29 June 2010

Lesley Smith. Director of Communications, ARK Schools