A New Wave of Academy Schools

LONDON—The wholesale promotion of academies and free schools is a flagship policy of the new coalition government.

Michael Gove at the Department for Education (DfE) intends that the Academies Bill be made law before Parliament’s summer recess so that a possible 2,000 more schools can morph into academies by September 2010.
It is obvious he believes this new model will benefit the English school system, but it is not yet obvious to many what exactly this new status will bring to pupils.

There have been academies in England through the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major and the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. (Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland have separate systems with only Scotland so far having academies.) At present there are 203 in England.

Until now, academies have been secondary schools which needed independence from the State regiment in order to improve their performance. They were considered to be failing and in need of a fresh start.

The new proposal is upending this view, with those schools measured as "outstanding" by Ofsted being fast-tracked to the starting line. These two thousand or so could take on their new independence at the beginning of the new school year in September.

The scheme is also widening the scope of academies by allowing primary and special schools to take on the new free status.

In his letter to outstanding schools, Mr Gove encouraged heads and governing bodies to consider acquiring academy freedoms, which he says include freedom from local authority control; the ability to set your own pay and conditions for staff; freedom from following the national curriculum; the ability to change the length of terms and school days; greater control over school budgets; and the freedom to wrest the purse strings firmly from the local authority.