ABSTRACT
Academies Raise Standards is a direct offshoot of the myth about the merits of competition in a schools market. According to one of the key architects of New Labour's academies programme, Andrew Adonis, academies are all about giving children an equal start in life. Sponsors were encouraged to support the school both financially and by taking control of governance. The sponsored academies programme has been a huge success in transforming the fortunes of the weakest, most challenging schools. Even in the early days, the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DfCSF) talked up academy success. But the Commons Education Committee was not convinced. The Committee said: The first assessment of academies by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in the same year also presented a mixed picture of their success. To evaluate whether being an academy increases results it is necessary to compare them to schools with similar prior GCSE results. It made little difference whether the school was an academy or not.
