How the Holland Park legal case gives the lie to the “better jump before we’re pushed” argument for academisation

Over recent years, it has been an argument I’ve heard relatively frequently in relation to the academies policy, as schools contemplate alternative possible versions of their futures.

“We’d better jump before we’re pushed,” has been the view put forward as some local authority maintained schools have contemplated, and ended up arguing for, taking on academy status.

Despite the respect I often have for those making this argument, I have never been fully convinced by it. And a sense of scepticism was underlined, for me, on listening to the most high-profile academy control case currently ongoing in England, as it found itself in court the other day.

The judicial review case involving Holland Park School in Kensington, West London, centres on whether or not the community was subject to any “consultation” by the government on the latter’s plans to transfer this school, currently run by a single-academy trust, into the control of England’s largest chain, United Learning.  

Interestingly, both sides agree that, legally, there was no requirement for the Department for Education to have consulted the community at all. Instead, parents who are challenging the DfE’s handling of the case are arguing that, having embarked on consultation, the government had a legal duty to have done it properly. The DfE disputes this, saying this was not a consultation, in any strict legal sense, at all, but only an “engagement” with the community.