Academies, charter and free schools: do new school types deliver better outcomes?

Abstract

SUMMARY School reforms featuring the introduction of new types of schools have occurred in the education systems of a number of countries. The most well-known of these new school types to be recently introduced are charter schools in the United States, free schools in Sweden and academy schools in England. We review the evidence on the impact of the introduction of these new schools on pupil outcomes and present new evidence for the case of England, whose introduction of academy schools has been one of the most radical changes in the school landscape of the recent past. The analysis of academies, charter and free schools concludes that, in certain settings, they can improve pupil performance.