- The growth of academies and multi-academy trusts has changed
the face of English schools for the better
- From only 203 in May 2010, academies now make
up more than 10,000 of the country’s 22,000 state schools
- The growth in ‘multi-academy trusts’ (MATs)
has allowed leaders to push up quality and standards for children
across multiple schools at once, by allowing resources and
expertise to be pooled
- Last year, the Government said they wanted all
state schools to be in a strong academy trust by 2030. But this
has since been watered down to an ambition ‘over time’.
- A new report from the Centre for Policy
Studies argues that there is still scope in this parliament to
boost the number of schools in strong trusts, particularly faith
schools, and bring the benefits of academisation to thousands of
extra pupils
The Department for Education should speed up the conversion of
maintained schools into academies, for example by allowing groups
of schools to join multi-academy trusts (MATs).
‘Passing the Test: The
Future of the Academies Programme’, the first paper from CPS
Head of Education , sets out the benefits of
academisation and MATs, including effective governance and
leadership that makes an impact across a whole group of schools.
The report also makes a series of recommendations to smooth the
transition to academies and facilitate batch academisation. The
moves would mean more schools, teachers, parents and children
will benefit from a system which has been proved to benefit
pupils.
The report’s recommendations are tied to three key principles:
- Smoothing the conversion process
- The Government should conduct a ‘Domesday
Book’ exercise across the state sector to provide clarity on
schools’ assets and legal position
- The system should allow and promote a new
process for batch academisation of schools, to make it easier
and cheaper for schools to work in partnership and join
trusts together
- Ministers must support the sector to
develop and publish interoperability standards for school
information and pupil data systems, to enable more efficient
and secure data sharing and transfers
- Better and easier MATchmaking
- Ministers should define a common set of
information and metrics that all trusts must publish, to
enable schools to better choose which trust to join.
- Ministers should increase the funding
available to support schools joining or forming strong
trusts, and promote merger activity between trusts.
- The Department for Education should fund
an independent MATchmaking service to help school-to-MAT and
MAT-to-MAT tie-ups.
- Working with willing participants
- The Church of England and Catholic Church
both plan to academise their remaining maintained schools.
This should be supported and encouraged by ministers.
- The Government should choose a small
number of local authorities to be pilots for full
academisation and take on the new role this entails. This
would reduce costs for those ‘orphan councils’ who only have
a handful of non-academy schools, and have to spend a
disproportionate amount of time and money maintaining the
associated bureaucracy.
