Academies, as CoffeeHouser knows, are booming. There were around 200 of them when Michael Gove became Education Secretary last May. Now, just a year later, and steaming well ahead of expectations, there are over 600. This is, as Benedict Brogan suggests in his Telegraph column today, one of the great successes of the coalition era — albeit one that owes a debt to Andrew Adonis, Tony Blair and all the school reformers that came before them. And it is a triumph of quality, as well as of quantity. The simple, overwhelming truth is that academies are, on the whole, better than the schools they replace. Just look at the table released by the Harris Federation, comparing their academies to their LEA predecessors:
And there is even more supporting evidence doing the rounds at the moment, thanks largely to Julian Astleand and John Rentoul. Both have highlighted a recent report by the LSEwhich finds not just that academies improve standards within their own exam halls, but also that — crucially — they improve standards in surrounding, council-run schools too.
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