Free schools - still too early to say if they're better or worse than the rest

The Mirror and Independent yesterday reported on new figures compiled by the Labour party, which the Mirror claimed show free schools to be "an expensive flop".

Labour's analysis looks at two sets of data: performance in Ofsted inspections and performance in the three Rs (reading, writing and maths) by key stage 2 pupils (primary years 3 to 6) in free schools compared to state-funded mainstream schools.

But making such comparisons - as both the government and the opposition have done - is problematic, since there are relatively few free schools with evidence available and the schools we have data for may not be fully representative of all free schools.

Labour found that free schools had fewer key stage 2 pupils scoring at level 4 or above, and that these schools were also improving more slowly than any other type of state-funded school. But there is only official primary level results for just 14 free schools so far, compared to data for 13,000 local authority maintained schools.

The latest release makes clear that:

"The number of free schools with pupils at the end of key stage 2 is still too small to allow robust conclusions to be drawn about their performance at the end of key stage 2".

The Department also told us that some of the free schools for which results were published may not be typical: for example, some are independent schools which have become free schools rather than being newly opened schools.

For Ofsted judgements, Labour found 30% of the 79 free schools included in the analysis had been judged inadequate or requires improvement, while 20% of all state-funded schools had been.

The same sort of problems apply to this comparison. The Department for Education outlined the difficulties of comparing the Ofsted performance of free schools to all other schools last month, after we raised concerns about its claim that free schools were twice as likely to be outstanding. This included problems like different pupil populations: free schools often start from scratch with just one year's intake in their first year then a two year intake in their second year and so on. That means they may not have any older pupils yet - while the schools to which they were being compared do.

With the topicality of free schools there's clearly a desire for evidence on both sides of the debate. While we wait for more solid evidence to become available, it's important that the limitations of any comparisons are acknowledged.

Image credits: Kathy Cassidy on Flickr.