Boris Johnson to return to compulsory mass academisation? If he remembers what happened last time, he ought to be aware it would be highly unpopular

Is Boris Johnson’s government about to use its fresh electoral mandate to return to its campaign –launched but then discarded nearly four years ago –to academise all state-funded schools in England?

My question was prompted by a piece in the Guardian’s education pages yesterday. This was not the first I have read in recent weeks to have raised the idea of a renewed move on mass academisation now that the Tories have an 80-seat majority.

“Tory insiders…believe there is the appetite to complete the structural revolution that began in 2010, reflecting a long-held feeling in rightwing circles that no education secretary has been sufficiently radical since [the former education secretary Michael] Gove,” wrote Melissa Benn.

“More free schools have been promised and there will be a concerted push to convert all schools to academies over the next five years, mostly by herding schools into larger multi-academy trusts.”

It seems logical that some in “rightwing circles” would be keen on using Johnson’s new mandate to end local democratic oversight of schools once and for all.

Still, will this push really happen, given the experience the last time it was tried?

Looking back

For it was not the ideologically-minded Gove who had sought to implement academisation for all, but his successor, Nicky Morgan, during the last days of David Cameron as Prime Minister. Yet the plan, which if implemented would have seen all schools in the process of academising by this year (2020), had to be abandoned after an uprising in particular from Conservative councils, and from some Tory backbenchers.

In particular, the idea of forcing time-consuming and costly structural reform on primary schools in cases when they were faring well without such change may not have been welcomed by parents.  

Reporting in April 2016 on Morgan’s impending climbdown on the issue, an article in the The Times (£) observed that: “Opposition [to the plan] has grown rapidly as Tories questioned why good and outstanding council-run schools should be subject to a costly upheaval.”

One source was quoted in colourful terms about reaction to the policy at ground level, the 2016 article adding: “One rebel last night described the policy as a ‘f***ing poison’ that could lead to parents camping outside popular council-run schools in protest, while Tory councils have described the policy as wrong and bonkers.”

If parents have not quite pitched their tents in this fashion yet in the face of forced academisation of individual schools, in several cases that scenario has not seemed far away. And the policy has retained the ability to generate energetic campaigns in opposition at local level.

So it seems likely that compulsory mass academisation would prove highly controversial if there were to be an attempt to re-introduce it. As Melissa Benn writes, this is in the wider context that Gove himself, who introduced academisation on a wide – if not fully national – scale in 2010, was eventually removed from the Department for Education after being found to be “toxic” with teachers.

Dominic Cummings, now of course steering government policy as Boris Johnson’s right-hand-man, was keen on academies during his time advising Gove. He is not known for a softly-softly approach in the face of opposition, and reportedly warned in 2014 that Cameron had surrendered to the education “establishment” by sacking Gove.

So it may be that the plan is to return to the idea. Alternatively, perhaps ministers will want to step up the behind-the-scenes efforts of the government to encourage more academy conversions, though these seem to have slowed since Morgan’s plan was ditched.

In any case, this seems an interesting test of whether Johnson’s government sees its majority as a green light to press on with policies which may not be popular, or whether it will adopt a more cautious approach, as it seeks to defend its electoral dominance.

Interestingly, there was little indication of a fresh push on academisation in a Commons written answer published yesterday.

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, had been asked “what his policy is on the academies programme for the next five years”.

Responding for Williamson, Nick Gibb, the schools minister, had the chance to indicate an intensification of the process. Instead, though, he merely said that “the Government wants to ensure that the opportunities afforded by the academies programme are spread to those areas that are not currently benefiting”.

Whatever the approach, the detail of this policy – and its implications for local communities - will continue to be explored, of course, on this website.

Future Academies’ governance structures fail to stop its expansion move

In recent years, your correspondent has followed the governance arrangements at London-based Future Academies with a strange sense of weary disbelief. That is, my jaw drops but this is tempered by knowing that there is a perpetual could-not-make-it-up aspect to the detail of the academies policy.

So, as mentioned several times on this website, remarkably the chain set up and overseen by Lord Nash, the former academies minister, appears to have failed to follow guidance on how governance should be structured despite he himself having written a foreword to the government’s Academies Financial Handbook stating that this should happen across England.

Last month, I wrote how Future appeared to be one of nearly 40 trusts which was failing to follow government “recommendations” on the separation of governance powers.

In recent years the Academies Financial Handbook, including when fronted by Lord Nash himself, has said that there should be “separation” between the members, who get to appoint the trustees, and the trustees themselves, in order to avoid concentrations of power. In other words, they should be different people.

Yet in recent years, and as confirmed in recently-published latest accounts, three of Future’s four members – including Lord and Lady Nash – have also been trustees.

The Academies Financial Handbook seems only to be guidance, in the end. But observers might logically assume that the DfE would have the power to insist on compliance with it in order for a trust to be allowed to expand, given that which organisation gets which school is in the government’s gift.

However, recently-published minutes of the government’s regional “Headteacher Board” covering North-West London offer an insight into how important this guidance is.

The usual super-brief minutes of the HTB’s discussion of the planned takeover of another chain sponsored by a Conservative Party donor and former DfE non-executive director, the Meller Educational Trust, state that “HTB discussed the governance structure at Futures [sic] Academies”.

This indicates, perhaps, that the way governance is set up within this chain was at least deemed worthy of discussion. But, with the HTB “acknowledg[ing] the good track record of Futures [sic] Academies,” governance was not deemed sufficiently important to stop the transfer.

It may be, of course, that some governance changes will happen at, as the DfE calls it, “Futures Academies” as a condition of this expansion. But there was no indication of any such change in the aforementioned 2018-19 accounts, which were signed off by Lord Nash six weeks after the HTB meeting.

Academy regulation, looked at in detail, continues to be something of a joke.