Fastest-growing academy trusts over the past year are all controlled by Roman Catholic dioceses, new data analysis reveals

Roman Catholic schools converting to academy status are dominating a list of the fastest-growing trusts over recent months, fresh analysis of official data by this website reveals.

The five trusts with the highest number of newly-converted academies opening over the summer – a period encompassing the start of the academic year last week - are all church-based, with four of them Roman Catholic.

Looking further back, the top nine fastest-growing trusts over the past year are all controlled by Roman Catholic dioceses. More than one in four academies created in the past year are Catholic schools, which is far higher than their proportion among English state schools as a whole.

The conversions helped make the overall number of academies newly-created this month higher than the corresponding figure for last year, although this September 2021 number is still well down on pre-covid times, with as yet little evidence of any general fresh rush towards academy status, despite the fresh promotional boost the government sought to give to the policy in the spring.

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