Kentish Express Ashford & District
Government U-turn on academies welcomed
County education chiefs have welcomed confirmation that the government is to drop controversial plans to force all schools to become academies.
The U-turn over what was dubbed “forced academisation” had been signalled earlier this year but has now been officially dropped with the cancellation of a Bill.
Education secretary Justine Greening announced in a written statement: “Our ambition remains that all schools should benefit from the freedom and autonomy that academy status brings. Our focus, however, is on building capacity in the system and encouraging schools to convert voluntarily.”
“No changes to legislation are required for these purposes and therefore we do not require wider education legislation in this session to make progress on our ambitious education agenda.”
The proposals caused a rift between councils and the government, with Kent County Council being one of the more vocal critics.
It retains 378 schools that have opted not to take the academy route, including 27 secondaries and 322 primaries. At the same time, Kent now has 27 secondary schools that have become academies, which lie outside the control of councils.
Cllr Roger Gough (Con) KCC education cabinet member, said the news was welcome but left a question mark over other legislative plans for school funding.
“We are pleased the government has decided to step back from this. It is good to see that the forcing of schools to become academies has faded away,” he said.
At the same time, he said the dropping of the Bill left open the Education secretary Justine Greening announced the change in focus issue of plans for a new national funding formula to determine how much money schools would receive.
Cllr Gough had levelled a series of criticisms at the government over the plans and at the time KCC called for a rethink.
He said there was no evidence that making every school an academy would improve standards.
In an article for Conservative Home in March this year, he wrote: “The logic of insistence on compulsion must be a belief that academisation is the only route to becoming a good or outstanding school, or at the very least that there is a demonstrable, systemic difference between
‘Our focus, however, is on building capacity in the system and encouraging schools to convert voluntarily’
the performance of academies and that of maintained schools. Yet the evidence simply does not support this.”