Educational models that offer innovative and parent-led approaches to the curriculum have been contentious for some time.
While some laud these models as providing school leaders with more power and flexibility to improve learning outcomes, some studies have suggested that school autonomy is undermining fairness in public education.
For example, in Australia, a report by Deakin University found that while on paper the reforms are designed to give increased freedom to principals, this is illusory when coupled with aggressive auditing of school performance.
Now in the UK, a study has found that the government’s free schools program is failing to deliver on its original promise of offering innovative and parent-led approaches to the curriculum.
The research, published by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) and the Sutton Trust, said only one third of established free schools have “demonstrated a novel approach”.
Of the 152 primary open free schools in England, 35% were found to be innovative, compared to just 29% of the 113 open secondary free schools.
Innovative free schools were those found to be based on an innovative concept, which is central to their identity and ethos, and is widely embedded in the curriculum or in school activities.
For example, Judith Kerr primary school is a bilingual school in which German language and culture is embedded throughout the curriculum. At the Rural Enterprise Academy, students study subjects like agriculture and animal management, alongside academic subjects.
Commenting on the report, Sir Peter Lampl, founder of the Sutton Trust, said that while free schools were meant to bring new and innovative providers into the education sector to drive up standards and improve school choice, few are fulfilling that original purpose.
“Our research finds that while free schools are often located in disadvantaged areas both primary and secondary free schools have lower proportions of disadvantaged pupils than their catchment areas,” Lampl said in a statement.
“This is unacceptable. Free schools need to make serious efforts to recruit more students from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
Elsewhere, the idea that school autonomy can drive improved results continues to raise more questions than it answers.
Internationally renowned Finnish education expert, Pasi Sahlberg, who was previously director-general of Finland’s Ministry of Education, has said that in the United States, “school autonomy has often led to the lessening of teacher professionalism and autonomy for the benefit of greater profits for those who manage or own non-government schools”.
“It is about the freedom of the school management – not necessarily the teacher – who operate without due regard for the community or for local democratic control,” Sahlberg said.