The implications of academisation for English Sixth Form Colleges – an exploratory case study

ABSTRACT

This article examines the impact of academisation on English Sixth Form Colleges through the lens of the Principals and Governors who lead such organisations – those who have decided to opt for academisation, and those who have not. A comprehensive survey of the Principals or Chairs of 35 Sixth Form Colleges, representing all regions of England, supplemented by a small number of follow-up interviews, generated five distinct but overlapping themes that seemed to resonate with the majority of respondents: Autonomy, Funding, Local Circumstances, Strategy and Quality. Unpacking these themes and identifying their inter-relationships could be helpful to those leading Sixth Form Colleges considering academisation, as well as providing a research framework for future work and a distinctive contribution to the theoretical literature. We believe we demonstrate that academisation can be seen as a significant example of how the marketisation of education has created an illusory set of market freedoms commonly held to be achievable through academisation, that are in fact highly constrained by government policy and accountability mechanisms. The article concludes by considering some implications of the data and our analysis for policy and practice in the Sixth Form College sector, and some suggestions of where further research is urgently needed.

KEYWORDS:

• Sixth Form College
• multi academy trust
• academisation
• marketisation
• leadership

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Sixth Form Colleges Association for supporting distribution of the survey which contributed to the initial report, ‘A Study of the Sixth Form College Sector’s Response to Academisation’ (Godfrey 2018), on which this article is based.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The authors have agreed to make available their survey and interview data, suitably anonymised.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Godfrey

Jonathan Godfrey was the Principal of Hereford Sixth Form college for 20 years, having previously worked in colleges in Henley on Thames, Huddersfield and Worcester. In 2016, Hereford Sixth Form College was the inaugural winner of the TES Sixth Form College of the Year award. He has been Chair of the Sixth form Colleges Association and regularly represented the sector in discussions with education officials and Ministers, including giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee in 2011 on value for money in post-16 education. Jonathan is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Worcester.

Geoffrey Elliott

Geoffrey Elliott has taught in comprehensive schools, further, adult and higher education, and has undertaken a range of leadership roles during his career. He is President of the Association for Research in Post-Compulsory Education, and serves on the Board of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education. Geoffrey edits the international peer reviewed journal Research in Post-Compulsory Education, and is currently Professor of Post-Compulsory Education at the University of Worcester specialising in education policy, leadership and lifelong learning.