Revealed: Ark Schools plans to double in size

One of England’s largest and most-praised academy chains has revealed plans to double in size in the coming years.

Ark Schools, the exceedingly well-connected London-based trust whose academies have a very successful Ofsted inspection profile, wants to increase its current roll of 24,000 pupils to around 50,000.

The ambition is set out in Ark’s annual accounts for 2016-17, which were published last week. They state that one of the trust’s three main aims for that year were to “grow capacity in the education system” so that “the Ark Schools network will, when it is at full capacity, provide an education for around 50,000 students”.

The organisation’s reach would also be developed through “developing programmes that deliver elements of our model in non-Ark schools (eg Mathematics Mastery, Ark Teacher Training) and to support Ark’s international programmes. *

In an illustration that the government’s free schools programme may be becoming dominated by established academy chains, Ark has six proposed institutions on the list of free schools in the government’s “pipeline” for creation, official data shows.