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Birmingahm's education chief has hit back at ‘misleading’ Government claims that - pointing out that many had not converted when results started to improve.

Last month the Department for Education published a list of 41 Birmingham academies whose Key Stage 2 exam results, those taken by 10-year-olds had picked up in the last two years.

The figures were used by Education Secretary Michael Gove to vindicate his policy of championing sponsored academies, schools run by outside institutions or companies, and free schools.

But in a scathing rebuke, Birmingham’s Labour cabinet member for education Coun Brigid Jones said Mr Gove and his staff had not ‘got their facts right’.

She said that according to the council’s own analysis that four of the 41 schools have not even converted to academies yet and are still run by the Local Education Authority, while one school converted only last month.

Another 15 only converted after February 2013, meaning that their 2013 key stage two results were not largely affected by academy status, and finally one is an infant school which does not teach children to key stage two.

She added: “Of the 22 academies that became sponsored academies prior to February last year, while 11 have improved results, seven are still below the floor target and four had a dip in results in 2013.”

 

The council’s figures show that only a quarter of the schools can be accurately claim to have improved since becoming academies.