Harris academy chain faces Edexcel inquiry into exam methods

An Edexcel exam processing centre in London. The exam board is investigating the Harris academey chain. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian

One of the country's best-known school academy chains, Harris, is being investigated by an exam board after an allegation of inappropriate methods used to boost results at one of its secondary schools in south-east London.

The Edexcel exam board has begun an inquiry after a complaint that in 2012 staff at the Harris Beckenham academy in effect led more than 20 BTec students step-by-step through coursework they should have tackled alone. The coursework is marked entirely within the school.

Edexcel, the country's biggest qualifications awarder, is looking into the conduct of the 2012 BTec in applied science, equivalent to two GCSEs, at the Beckenham school and has begun related checks at the other secondary schools in the group. On Thursday Edexcel described the extension to other schools as precautionary. It said it had finished gathering evidence and was now "working with Harris to improve a number of aspects" of the BTec.

The Harris Federation said Edexcel had told the chain it had found no evidence of malpractice. A Harris spokeswoman said: "Earlier this year Edexcel investigated science BTec at a single Harris academy after a complaint was made in 2012, but no evidence of malpractice was found. As part of this process, we have been working with Edexcel on ensuring our science BTec marking fully aligns with their expectations." The London-based Harris Federation, set up by carpet tycoon Lord Harris, is lauded by the education secretary, Michael Gove, as a beacon of the academy system for its work in deprived areas. Its chief executive, Sir Dan Moynihan, has acted as an adviser to the Department for Education (DfE) and was knighted last year. But a number of sources speak of a culture that can appear obsessed with boosting the percentage of pupils who gain at least five GCSEs or equivalent at C or above including English and maths, the indicator by which secondary schools are ranked in league tables.

Sources at more than one Harris school said students have been withdrawn from GCSE courses at the last minute because they were predicted to get a D or lower, thus pushing down average results down. Sources suggest this has happened, in some cases, only weeks or even days before the exam. Harris disputes that this happens regularly, or at very short notice. One teacher, speaking anonymously, said: "I've had students where a D would be an amazing result for them, or help them get on a course, and they're told they can't sit the exam. They feel they've wasted two years of work and they're understandably distraught. There's this almost steroidal culture of getting students to a C grade at all costs. There's a high staff turnover; many of the teachers are newly qualified and feel they can't challenge it."

The Edexcel inquiry centres around the BTec science intake at Harris Beckenham in 2012, the first academic year after the chain took over the former Kelsey Park sports college, a school with above-average levels of pupil deprivation, special educational needs and English as a second language.

Former pupils describe being told, a few months before GCSE science exams, that the lower two sets would instead take the BTec. To catch up, teachers led them through coursework they should have done alone over two academic years, they said. One pupil said: "We'd already done about a year-and-a-half of the GCSE. And the BTec is two years of coursework. So they basically … told us what to do."

Harris disputes this alleged version of events, saying some students were swapped from GCSE to BTec courses after the federation took charge of the school as it was seen as "more appropriate". Some were then registered late, erroneously.

Such changes were common, and normally done in consultation with parents, the chain said, but added that it was wrong to say this regularly happened at short notice. When Harris took over previous results were so poor that it was justified in focusing on courses where students had a better chance of passing.

However, some critics of Harris and some other academy chains question whether the system for ranking schools encourages too narrow a focus overall.

The measure of five good GCSEs including English and maths has long been condemned by some as too narrow and open to abuse. In February the DfE announced it would be replaced with a more complex, "value added" measure.

Harris has previously faced criticism that some of its schools rely too heavily on GCSE equivalents such as BTecs to boost results.

In its first academic year as Harris Beckenham, the school saw 53% of year 11 pupils get five GCSEs or equivalents, well up on the 36% in 2011. However, when GCSEs alone are measured, the rise was much smaller – from 30% to 33%. The percentage of pupils attaining the academically rigorous bundle of Ebacc GCSEs actually fell under Harris, from 14% to 5%.

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Becoming an academy gave our school the freedom to innovate

Talking heads: Trystan Williams believes in doing things differently with his school, from visiting the coldest classroom in the North Pole, to living with a group of Maasai Warriors in the hottest classroom in Tanzania. Photograph: Trystan Williams

I had no interest in becoming a teacher, my dad was a headteacher and my mum was involved in special needs education and I didn't want to follow their lead. I did a master's in sports science research at University of Wales and at the end of my master's, two of my senior lecturers came and told me they had a place for me on a PGCE course. They persuaded me to take it and they were absolutely right. I loved it.

I did the majority of my teaching practice in a really tough Welsh-speaking secondary school and discovered that what I really enjoyed was working with the most challenging kids. I was motivated by wanting to help transform lives of children. But I must admit in the first six months of my first job at Mounton House, a special school in Chepstow I did think: "What the bloody hell am I doing?" It was so challenging. I was PE teacher there for two years and then promoted to head of PE. After five years I got a job as deputy head of The Springfields Academy in Wiltshire.

We are the school that children who have been excluded from mainstream schools are sent to but when I started our school had the highest exclusion rate in the whole area. The school wasn't meeting the needs of all of our pupils. The first three years as a deputy were a massive learning curve. It was a tough school and there were some outstanding professionals here but there were also some that weren't so good. There were questions being asked regarding the future of the school and it was not far off closing.

Everything started to change when we became the first special school to be made a specialist sports college in 2005, which enabled us to be much more flexible in our curriculum and I was appointed head in the same year. The specialist sports college status meant we were able to be much more flexible in our curriculum. I was able to increase the amount of PE staff and fully restructure. The Youth Sport Trust has been instrumental in supporting me and my school, as well as helping us embed sports and PE in every aspect of what we do. In 2007 we got an outstanding Ofsted. Now 88% of our pupils are making more than two levels of progress in every subject at every key stage.

Our school has to meet the needs to society's most vulnerable and disaffected students. The students coming to our school have complex educational, social and emotional needs – including foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), severe mental health issues, complex communication and emotional difficulties, autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Asperger's – and these have resulted in multiple permanent exclusions from schools across six local authorities.

For us, everything comes down to aspiration. You have to unpick the root causes of problems and find creative ways of working with young people to achieve their potential. So that's what we do. We have 11 therapists employed by the school who work hand in hand with teachers. Three years ago 0% of our pupils got five A-Cs at GCSEs, now we have a rate of 30-40% A-Cs – including maths and English. It's incredible because 50% of our students come to the school in the bottom 2% nationally in literacy and numeracy – these were children who have been labelled as 'unteachable'. Now young people are leaving prepared for their next step, whether that's in mainstream colleges, apprenticeships or continuing specialist education.

The greatest hurdle so many of our students face is that of self-belief. If you can give them a challenging and stimulating environment, they truly begin to believe in themselves and the contribution they can make. You've got to be really creative. We don't even use the word 'behaviour' any more – it's about engaging learners and if they are disengaged they won't learn. With our pupils successful engagement is more likely to take place outside the classroom. We've opened a 100-acre farm. Pupils can learn as much about literacy and numeracy on the farm as in the classroom. It frustrates me that so often in education we stick to doing the same things we've always done. If you look at an operating theatre 100 years ago it's completely different, but look at a school 100 years ago and what have we really changed apart from swapping a blackboard for a whiteboard?

We have pioneered the concept of Extreme Classrooms at The Springfields Academy. Learning outside the classroom, whether collecting mini bugs on site or trekking to Everest Base Camp, is an intrinsic element of our work. The idea was started over a few beers with polar explorer Alan Chambers who suggested taking a group of our pupils on an expedition to the North Pole. At first I thought he was crazy but we ended up co-founding Extreme Classrooms, and six weeks later a group of our staff took a group of children to 'the coldest classroom', 78 degrees north.

Then through Engage in their Future, a network of 200 special schools, we took a group of children to spend 10 days to the 'hottest classroom', living with Maasai Warriors in Tanzania. We will literally go to the ends of the Earth to give our pupils an education.

In September 2011 we became an academy. We were the first residential school to become one and so have helped shape the process. There are real challenges in becoming an academy, including the huge differences around financial reporting and levels of accountability, but I now have much more freedom to innovate. Our relationship with the local authority has never been stronger and I have found being an academy has improved our outcomes because the money we get is used as we want it used – there is no spillage, that has been the biggest difference.

Yes. The new Ofsted framework is brutal but school leaders have to have the courage to see Ofsted and exams as processes we have to go through. In 2005 our school had a point score of 32 at key stage 4, that's barely the equivalent of one c grade at GCSE. Now we have a target point score of 260. So our pupils are making outstanding progress by doing things that are not traditional, by being creative and quirky, and we have the evidence to prove it.

We used to do things traditionally and that resulted in the worst rates of exclusion and not in education or training (Neet) figures in the local authority. In our school, staff members constantly think and rethink solutions to help their pupils learn. Let's face it, Ofsted is outcomes driven, it's all about results. I think teachers can overplan and should save their energy for teaching and being creative. I have enough faith and trust in my staff that I don't need to check their planning. I'm interested in outcomes and doing the best for our pupils.

A young man called Scott Prince came to our school at the age of 13 after being permanently excluded from another special school. I was asked by the local authority to buy him a three-wheeled bike. I refused and said we would instead teach him to ride a two-wheeled bike. After several weeks of hard work we saw him whizzing past the window on his bike. When he saw me, he threw the bike on the floor and shouted:"You're my dad!" I knew that meant he was really pleased with himself and really pleased with me. That will stay with me forever. Against the odds, instead of riding a three-wheeled bike with everyone staring at him, he could be as independent as any other 13 year-old because of the aspiration that he could ride a two-wheeled bike. We've won national awards, but that is a career highlight. I get my energy from spending time with my pupils, that's the reason I'm in this job.

Trystan Williams is principal of The Springfields Academy in Wiltshire. Find out more about Extreme Classrooms – including information on the Highest Classroom on Earth challenge to Everest in October 2013.

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Academy chains decide where children go to school

We shall not be moved: parents and children in Lapford, Devon, are angry at plans to move year 6 children from the local school to an academy further away. Photograph: Mark Passmore/Apex

Janet May says she speaks for her entire village as she vents her frustration. "The word I would use to describe my feelings now is desperate. As a group we are incredibly sad and angry, but we also feel powerless in the face of the refusal of the academy trust to engage with us. Their whole attitude has been one of contempt.

"They say they have listened to us. But they have not: they have not grasped the anger and frustration of this entire community."

May, who lives in the picturesque Devon village of Lapford, is at the forefront of a dispute which critics say illustrates the power the government has given to academy chains across England to take major decisions over the future of schools, in effect over the heads of local communities.

Parents at Lapford community primary school, which sits in rolling countryside between Exeter and Barnstaple, have been fighting a decision by the multi-academy trust now running it to have its year 6 pupils educated eight miles away at another of its schools.

Long-term future

They worry that, from September, their children will face a lengthy round trip to school every day, that pupils will have to change school twice in two years and thus that the village school may become unpopular with families, putting, they fear, the school's long-term future at risk.

They have collected a 370-signature petition against the plans – quite a feat in a village of 250 homes – and parents also have the parish council firmly behind them. But there seems little they can do, with the trust not even, it seems, legally required to consult them.

It was only in January last year that Lapford opted to join the Chulmleigh Academy Trust, a multi-academy group formed of three other small primaries and the local secondary school, Chulmleigh community college. At the time, May says, parents were enthusiastic, especially as 56-pupil Lapford had faced an uncertain financial future under Devon county council.

But optimism quickly turned to concern as the academy trust, headed by Mike Johnson, who is principal of Chulmleigh community college, came forward with plans last summer to have older pupils at another of the trust's primaries, East Worlington school, taught at Lapford four mornings a week, with Lapford pupils travelling to East Worlington on Fridays from last September.

Parents at both schools were unhappy because of concerns about pupils travelling. In November, the trust came back with a new offer, involving East Worlington year 5 and 6 pupils spending all week at Lapford. Again, this was shelved after East Worlington parents protested.

In January, the current plan emerged. Lapford and East Worlington year 6 pupils would travel to another school in the trust: Chulmleigh primary, which neighbours the community college. It was approved by the trust in March.

May, whose daughter Tiffany, 10, would have to start making the trip to Chulmleigh primary from September, says: "How would anyone feel about a child having to transfer schools twice in two years?"

Lorraine Kigongo, who has two children at Lapford and runs the village's pre-school, says parents are already talking of pulling children out because they do not want them moving schools in both years 6 and 7. She says: "The trust has just not listened to us at all."

The trust has said that both educational and financial considerations lie behind its proposals. But parents say they have been given little detail. The latest consultation document says that the trust is "facing a deficit within two years" and cannot afford the current set-up of three teachers at both Lapford and East Worlington schools, which between them have 101?pupils.

But Johnson says the main reason for the change is the need to raise "educational standards" at Lapford.

The consultation document says: "The children at Lapford … stand to get better Sats results," but does not say why. Johnson says that Lapford is under pressure – both it and East Worlington have satisfactory/requires improvement verdicts from Ofsted – and that the quickest way to "raise standards" would be to have both classes taught at Chulmleigh primary, which was adjudged "outstanding" when last inspected in 2006.

Two weeks ago, the trust decided to press on with its plans, rejecting Lapford parents' alternative for all Lapford pupils to be taught there by two full-time and one half-time teacher, and with parents volunteering to help out.

Although Johnson says the trust has spent many hours responding to parents' concerns and answering questions, it seems that it has no legal responsibility to do so. When parents complained to the Department for Education, they were told: "There is no statutory requirement for the academy trust to carry out consultation on the restructuring".

In this multi-academy trust, there is no individual governing body for each school, and no formal representation for Lapford among the trust's decision-making directors.

The village of Corby Glen, Lincolnshire, faced losing its 50-year-old secondary school earlier this year after an academy trust that took over the running of the school in 2011 told parents it wanted to close it, moving pupils to another of the trust's secondaries, 12 miles away in Grantham, from 2014.

There was outrage from the community. Lincolnshire county council said the West Grantham Academies Trust's plans for the 230-pupil Charles Read high school would be "detrimental" to education in the area, but it has no powers to intervene.

However, campaigners persuaded their local MP, Nick Boles, to lobby the academies minister, Lord Nash, and are hopeful a deal can be done to have the school kept open by transferring it to another academy trust: the David Ross Foundation.

Academy critics say the underlying issue is that trusts are allowed to take major decisions without the checks and balances that would be present in a local authority school set-up – either around statutory public consultation, or through voter anger on closures feeding back to elected councillors. The only politician who can veto plans is not local, but national: the education secretary, Michael Gove.

Private institutions

Alan Parker, a former schools adjudicator – an official who settles disputes between parents, schools and local authorities over school admissions and reorganisations – says that, in academies, unlike in maintained (non-academy) schools, parents have no right of complaint to the adjudicator over school re-organisation. "In the maintained sector, if there is a reorganisation plan, you have to publish in advance what you plan to do, it's quite clear who must be consulted and how those planning any change have to respond," he says. "That's not the case with academies, which are private institutions, getting public money on the basis of a contract with the secretary of state."

Mervyn Benford, information officer of the National Association for Small Schools, says the advent of multi-academy trusts stands to make small schools more vulnerable. He says: "We believe the government should be concerned about giving academy trusts power to allow them to ride roughshod over local parents."

David Wolfe, a barrister at London's Matrix Chambers who has been involved in legal cases against academies, says: "[Multi-academy trusts] reverse a regime whereby schools were run by their local communities through elected organisations and makes them potentially the playthings of the people who set up the trusts, subject to approval by the secretary of state."

The only hope Lapford parents now have is a possible legal challenge, or persuading Gove to reject the trust's plans. May says that a group of parents are also considering home-schooling their children in the village rather than sending them to Chulmleigh.

Johnson says: "There is no contempt for the people of Lapford. I completely understand the opposition, but we believe this is the way to ensure education standards are as high as possible.

"I do believe that a local authority, with a local councillor speaking for a local primary school, could find it significantly more difficult to make the kind of change that schools sometimes need to make to improve standards."

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Star academy group misspent public money on lavish expenses

An official investigation by the government's Education Funding Agency into the E-ACT chain, which runs 35 of the Government's flagship schools, revealed it was also spending hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of taxpayers' money on "procedural irregularities" - including unapproved consultancy fees.?

The chain's director general and head of finance plus two trustees have all quit after concern was first expressed over its finances.

The report's findings - the second time within 18 months that an academy chain has been criticised for extravagant overspending - are an embarrassment for Education Secretary Michael Gove as he seeks to persuade growing numbers of schools to join his academies crusade and adopt their financial model.

In particular, the EFA report is critical of:? *monthly lunches at the prestigious Reform Club - a private club in London.

*first-class rail travel for senior executives in defiance of a rule that employees should go standard class.

*￡16,000 spent on an annual strategy meeting in a hotel - ￡1,000 of which was spent on drinks and paying for the room.

*expenses claims and use of corporate credit cards indicating a cultural of hiring prestigious venues for meetings.

*a "governance workshop" for ten people at London's Bloomsbury Hotel costing ￡5, 406.

*spending ￡393,000 on "procedural irregularities" including paying a significant number of its trustees (E-ACT is a charity) as chairs of governors or trustees in contravention of guidelines by the charity Commission which state that trustees should not have a financial interest in the organisation.

The report goes on to criticise Sir Bruce Liddington, the chain's former director general executive who resigned in April after E-Act was given a "notice to improve" its financial controls, over the lavish expenses claims.? He had been the government's Schools Commissioner - responsible for promoting the academies programme - before taking up the E-ACT post.

It describes E-ACT's systems of internal financial control and controls over expenses for trustees as "weak".

"Expenses claims and use of corporate credit cards indicate a culture involving prestigious venues, large drinks bills, business lunches and first-class travel- all funded from public monies," it adds.

"Whilst we find no evidence of deliberate wrong-doing, we are unable to state that processes are consistently robust or offer good value for money.

"Expenses claims and card payments by senior managers in E-ACT have occasionally stretched the concepts of propriety and value for money."

It added that some payments "have tended to extravagance".

The report comes a year after an academy chain in Lincolnshire was also criticised for spending money on a French chalet which was then used by senior members of it rather than for field trips for pupils - the original intention.

Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers,? said the report posed "serious questions" about the Government's ability to police academy chains and described E-ACT's actions as "immoral".

"It was money that should have been spent on improving the education of our very poor kids," she added.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education said: "Any misuse of public money meant for schools is completely unacceptable.

"Academies cannot hide from their responsibilities - all their accounts must be externally audited and they are held to account by the EFA so any issues of impropriety are immediately investigated.

"That is exactly why the EFA has written to E-ACT requiring them to take swift action to improve financial management.? We are monitoring the situation closely and will take any further action necessary."

Ann Limb, who chairs E-ACT, said:? "We have overhauled both the governance and culture of E-ACT to ensure that this can never happen again.

"As well as the departure of the Director General, the Finance Director and two trustees have also left the organisation.? E-ACT is about educational excellence and the changes we have made will ensure we have operational excellence to support that."

Dr Limb added: "We are implementing a robust action plan which addresses all concerns raised and are working closely with the EFA to ensure these changes are embedded throughout the organisation."

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