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Education Policy Institute:
Reflections on 'Academies: 15 Years On' Conference

13 July 2016

Yesterday the Education Policy Institute, in partnership with the Sutton Trust, hosted the 'Academies: 15 years on summit'. This was an opportunity for researchers, policy makers and system leaders to come together and consider the latest evidence on the impact of academies on pupil outcomes and what Government should do now.
Dr Olmo Silva presented the work that he, Professor Stephen Machin, and colleagues at LSE have carried out at a system level. This work, commissioned by EPI, looked at the impact of pre-2010 sponsored academies and provided the first robust analysis of the impact of post-2010 secondary converter academies. They found positive impacts for the early sponsored academies, with improvements that were equivalent to five grades across a pupil's GCSE subjects. They also identified positive effects for converter academies that had previously been rated as outstanding - equivalent to about two grades across a pupil's GCSE subjects. But they found no effect for converter academies previously rated as good or satisfactory. Given that such schools make up around two thirds of converters, this is a worrying finding.

This article was published online by the Education Policy Institute on July 13, 2016
Link to article here

Related publications
Academies 2: The New Batch, Andrew Eyles, Stephen Machin and Olmo Silva, Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper No.1370, September 2015
Academy schools and pupil outcomes, Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin. Article in CentrePiece Volume 20, Issue 2, Autumn 2015

Related links
Stephen Machin webpage
Olmo Silva webpage
Education and Skills Programme webpage

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