“Inevitable” mass academisation fails to materialise

A government drive for all schools to be in multi-academy trusts by 2030 appears to have failed to prompt any large movement towards the non-local-authority sector, exclusive new analysis by Education Uncovered has revealed.

There has been no great rush towards academy status this year, following only modest numbers of conversions last year – despite a major push by the government 18 months ago, pledging that all schools would be run in chains within eight years.

In fact, at the current rate, with more than half of state-funded schools in England still resolutely unacademised, it would be another 31 years before we reach an all-academy set-up, with new academisations still running below the numbers they were before the pandemic.

The detail

Tracking new academy numbers has been slightly trickier than usual in recent months, as the Department for Education, which had been publishing monthly data on this since 2010, for an unexplained reason has not disclosed any such statistics since early May.

However, it is still possible to dig out figures on this. This is via spreadsheets relating to all schools, and which thus will disclose the creation of any new academies, which are published on the DfE’S “Get Information about Schools” website.