According to the hype, then yes. However even a cursory examination of the reasons behind this reveals a different picture:
(1) To begin with, many of the schools taken over had previously been experiencing problems that left room for improvement, which could be claimed by the adherents of any scheme consequently carried out.
(2) Many local authorities claim to have tried but failed to obtain improvements & that handing over the school to the creationists was a last resort. This is nothing but nonsense & there are a multitude of possible remedial measures that could have been attempted. For example: a change of management, recruitment of fresh staff, renovation of dilapidated buildings, investment in new equipment, investigative action, improvements in discipline & measures aimed at increasing motivation & moral. Plus any imaginative combination of these & other measures. Yet the “measures”, taken by the authorities (who are ultimately RESPONSIBLE for the failings (you will not see a, “the buck stops here”, sign on any of their desks)), seems to have mostly consisted of just waving a big stick at a demoralised head teacher & publicly denigrating the school; in the process, automatically guaranteeing to make life even harder for it.
(3) The new schools have developed a reputation for excluding troublesome pupils, who coincidentally just happen to be those that are more likely to be academically weak. Other schools then have to take on these children. The result is that the new academies results improve & the results of the school having to teach all their failures decline. See: Academies 'failing to serve most needy children'
(4) Obviously completely replacing a school with a brand spanking new one with lots of new equipment & high tech gadgets, boosts moral & encourages staff & pupils to be enthusiastic & try harder. It also encourages the more motivated parents with abler children to attend. It would therefore be very surprising if the results did anything else but rise. In fact the school would probably show improvements if taken over by the Chinese communist party.
(5) The discipline in the new schools is stricter. But then what is there stopping that being the case in any school?
(6) The improving results have been set against a background of improving results in schools generally. Only recently it was revealed that the A level results in England have risen for something like the 20th time in a row. In other words even if the school had not changed hands, then on average there would have been an improvement in results shown anyway.
But finally, even if you completely ignore the above objections (& those that a more knowledgeable individual could add) it would still not change the fact that no matter how good the results achieved, teaching creationism (which is what they ARE doing) in whatever form to children is simply totally wrong & should not be allowed.
Yet again, when it comes to creationism, we are faced with an absurd situation where reason just seems to be abandoned. For example, would Smith, who has a criminal record as long as your arm, be allowed to work in a school because he is a good teacher? Or would drink that makes you ill be allowed to be sold because it tastes nice? Why then are schoolchildren’s understanding of science being allowed to be undermined by creationists (motivated by their own personal religious & political beliefs), because they can apparently obtain good exam results?
We don’t turn a blind eye to such irrationality in other circumstances & neither should we be doing so with the creationists.