Government statistics on academies under scrutiny

Government statistics on the effectiveness of academy trusts are under scrutiny from the UK Statistics Authority.

On Thursday, Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, told an annual conference in Bournemouth that the Government’s case for academies “deliberately suppresses” information.

He said the Government’s “case for a fully trust-led system” – its document outlining the benefits of academisation – “deliberately suppresses … that the top 10% of MATs that the Government cites are the ones with the lowest number of children on pupil premium and the highest number of children in grammar schools”.

He described the document as “truly a statistics scandal”.

The document was published in March alongside the Schools White Paper outlining the advantages for schools in multi-academy trusts.

The Government has said it wants all schools to be in MATs by 2030. In March, the NEU said the Government had misreported information in the report through use of data from the top 10% of MATs.

“The only response Government has to this uncomfortable truth is to argue that with a single governance structure, educational standards in the 90% can be as high as the top 10%, completely ignoring the statistics they have suppressed,” Mr Courtney said.

“Even if we all had the same governance structures as Mo Farah or Usain Bolt, some of us would still be straggling behind,” he added.

He said the NEU had complained to the UK Statistics Authority “about this disgraceful, deliberate misuse of statistics and the deliberate suppression of relevant data”.

“We await their response, but today we want to talk directly to Nadhim Zahawi,” he added.

The UK Statistics Agency said the Office for Statistics Regulation is investigating the matter.