Academies

What are academies? Warwick Mansell explains.

The control of thousands of England’s state schools has changed dramatically since the turn of the millennium. But if you haven’t been following education policy closely, you may not know about it.

Before 2002, almost all state-funded schools in England were under the supervision of their local councils. The school’s headteacher and its governing body were responsible for its performance. And its funding was routed via the council – also known as the local authority – which supervised its operations.

Since then, more than half of state schools have become academies. Technically, these are state-funded independent schools. In these cases, while the headteacher continues to be in charge of the school, in most cases the head reports to senior management within a multi-academy trust. Academies’ funding comes directly from the national Department for Education, rather than from the school’s local authority. And their operations are governed by a legal contract between the Department for Education and the academy trust board, the latter overseeing each school within its trust.

Since 2017, Education Uncovered has been investigating and reporting on the implications of this shift.

While advocates of the academies policy allege advantages including the ability of schools to set their own direction of travel on policies including teachers’ pay and conditions and the curriculum, on most measures there is no great difference in the results achieved by academies and local authority schools.

On the downside, Education Uncovered has long reported on problems with the academies policy, including a lack of transparency around decision-making – the public has no right, for example, to attend meetings at which the government decides which academy trust a school is to join – what can be high spending on central management, and the difficulty communities can face in seeking accountability if they have concerns about goings-on in academies. At a philosophical level, the control of schools through largely unelected boards of trustees without formal links to local democracy continues to generate debate.

If you are interested in how schools are now controlled, and the implications of the academies policy and that of local authority oversight for individual schools, pupils, staff, parents, governors and wider communities, Education Uncovered is the place to visit. And if you find this information useful and want to support the work, please do subscribe.