It is said that success has many parents, and that has certainly been true of the London Challenge – the much-feted programme of between-school collaboration in the 2000s, whose steps included groups of heads benchmarking themselves using ‘families of schools’ data, school to school support, improvements to teacher supply and academisation.
So it will be interesting to track the reaction to the new research we published on Monday which challenges the consensus that these changes were responsible for the London schools miracle – the transformation in outcomes for disadvantaged children such that poor kids in the capital now do better than average income kids outside it.
The analysis – carried out by researchers at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Institute of Education – raises as many questions as it answers, but this shouldn’t distract from its central messages.
First, that primary schools have been the biggest driver of the London effect. The analysis shows that most of the relative improvement in London schools over the past decade for disadvantaged children dates back to changes in primary schools in the late 1990s. Other programmes like Academies or the London Challenge can’t account for this because they either happened too late or were focused on the secondary sector.
Second, that better results are not primarily about ethnicity. It has sometimes been argued that London’s exceptional results are less to do with their schools than aspirational ethnic minority families. But this analysis suggests that this is – at best – only a partial explanation. In 2012, just 20% of inner London’s relative advantage over other areas could be explained by demographics, a smaller proportion than explained by the positive impact of either primary or secondary education (around 30% and half respectively).
Third that the London effect is a misnomer. Birmingham and Manchester have also seen marked relative improvements, though somewhat smaller and later. Better FSM results in primary and in secondary schools are not just a question of London vs the rest. They’re also a question of big cities.
Fourth, that London secondaries are still special. Though other cities also get good results for FSM children, London does uniquely well at higher attainment (albeit absolute levels of FSM kids getting 8A-B at GCSE are low) and is better than anywhere else at translating good GCSEs into A-Levels. This may be where the London Challenge has had some bite.
Of course none of this tells us what we really want to know for policy purposes: namely what has driven the improvement in primary schools? The research rules some things out (Teach First, Academies, more resources), but it isn’t definitive about what did make the difference.
The least implausible option arises from a coincidence of timing. The researchers note that primary school improvements followed closely on the literacy and numeracy hour – the prescriptive requirement from Labour’s first term for primaries to spend an hour a day on the basics. There is a clear link between better Key Stage 2 results in 1999 and better GCSEs five years later.
It would be easy to take this as a public policy lesson: a victory for the top down public service reform and ‘deliverology’ over the more touchy-feely collaboration, challenge and support that characterised the London Challenge.
But the research doesn’t quite get us to that position. It’s true that the Literacy and Numeracy Strategies happened at the right time, and in the right kind of school. But for them to be the cause we need to explain why they worked better in London (and Birmingham and Manchester) than anywhere else, and why their results only impacted literacy (numeracy was fairly stable). So we’re left with causes ruled out, a possible contender, but no final explanation.
Time for more research it seems......