Academies relocate difficult pupils to boost results, study finds
The analysis of government figures has indicated that a number of academies, particularly in London are disproportionately more likely to move difficult pupils to other schools before they sit GCSE exams, in comparison to local authority maintained schools.
Education Datalab has called for an overhaul of the government’s GCSE performance measure to better reflect the entire educational experience of individual students.
If implicated, the proposal would re-weight each school’s GCSE scores according to the number of terms students spent there, which according to the study, would paint a drastically different picture.
Dr Rebecca Allen, a director at Education Datalab who led the research, said the findings revealed a ‘significant issue’ in particular areas and could cause ‘great damage’ to the educational opportunities of many of the most vulnerable pupils.
Allen maintained there was a clear pattern of children moving from certain schools in the run up to taking their GCSEs.
Dr Allen said: “When we reran the performance data based on a student’s time in school, there were enormous changes to some schools’ performance. This was overwhelmingly a London problem and it was happening much more frequently in academies.
“Those schools that saw a massive fall in the proportion of students gaining five good GCSEs were almost all academies.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education insisted there was ‘no incentive’ encouraging schools to relocate students.
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