Does outsourcing school systems degrade education workforces? Evidence from 18,000 English state schools

Abstract

Critics claim that outsourcing the running of 7000 state-funded schools under England’s Academies Programme has caused a rapid increase in the number of pupils taught by teachers without Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). However, it is unclear whether Academies are simply more exposed to contexts associated with higher rates of teachers without QTS than schools still controlled by local government. Analysis of a newly compiled dataset reveals that, net of context, the percentage of teachers without QTS is increasing in Academies relative to non-outsourced schools and that business-style governance is associated with greater Academy divergence from non-outsourced schools. Moreover, the Academies programme is widening class-based inequality in pupils’ access to qualified teachers. This research, the first nationally comprehensive assessment of the impact of Academies on school workforces, draws into question the merits of neoliberal policies which outsource public services and undermine systems of professional accreditation.

KEYWORDS:

• Academies
• neoliberalism
• outsourcing
• schools
• teachers

Acknowledgements

The author would particularly like to thank his supervisor Prof. Michael Biggs for all his help and support while this research was carried out. The author would also like to thank Prof. David Kirk, Satoshi Araki, Effrosyni Charitopoulou, Chris Barrie, Arun Frey, Xijing Wu, Adam Brodie and two anonymous reviewers at the British Journal of Sociology of Education for their insightful and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this article. The author is very grateful to Nuffield College, University of Oxford for the generous doctoral funding which has made this research possible.

Notes

1 England only – education is a devolved responsibility in the other countries of the United Kingdom.

2 Accessed 22 June 2017. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-workforce

3 See note 2.

4 Accessed 29 June 2017. https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-and-pupil-numbers

5 Accessed 23 June 2017. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-academies-and-academy-projects-in-development

6 This excludes schools that were already Academies in November 2010 (n = 273) and Academies resulting from the amalgamation of two or more schools (n = 155) as these schools have no single 2010 workforce with which to compare 2016 data.

7 Accessed 18 March 2018. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/monthly-management-information-ofsteds-school-inspections-outcomes

8 Accessed 1 August 2017. http://www.electionscentre.co.uk/?page_id=3802

9 Estimates of additional teachers without QTS are calculated by multiplying the total number of (full-time equivalent) teachers working in the primary Academies in 2016 (46,683) by 0.0169.

10 Sponsored SATs are excluded as not significantly different from LA maintained in either primary or secondary models, likely due to the small number of observations (Table 1).