Abstract
In the past few decades, several countries have introduced reforms aimed at increasing school autonomy. We evaluate the effect of the introduction of autonomous academies in England on the educational trajectories of children with special educational needs. This has been done using longitudinal data on all schoolchildren in state schools in England, from the National Pupil Database. The results show that the effects of school autonomy on educational inclusion are not uniform and depend on schools’ previous performance and socio‐economic composition. Schools that obtained autonomy under the control of an external sponsor (sponsored academies) were more likely to decrease the proportion of pupils with special needs and remove additional support for them. We do not observe these effects in the schools that voluntarily applied for the more autonomous status (converter academies).
Highlights
This article focuses on school changes in England that have involved the introduction of more autonomous state-funded schools
Note that in the tables we only report the coefficients for the academisation variable (d); we control for all other variables as described above, but do not report the coefficients
This article focuses on a novel aspect of the introduction of more autonomous statefunded schools in England, which is the impact of the introduction of academy schools on the intake, labelling and exit of pupils with special educational needs (SEN)
Summary
This article focuses on school changes in England that have involved the introduction of more autonomous state-funded schools (academies) These changes were influenced by reforms in other countries; examples include free schools (friskolor) in Sweden and charter schools in the USA. The influence of school autonomy is best seen in terms of how schools attempt to meet their goals and values within the contemporary systems of school performance rankings, competition and accountability The influence of these trends in school change on the provision for children with learning difficulties and disabilities, has been less studied. The contribution of this article is that it examines the impact of increased school autonomy in England on the education of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) within the context of the commitment to inclusive education
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