Government quietly scraps plans to force schools run by ‘underperforming’ councils to become academies

The Government has scrapped its plan to force all schools in underperforming local authority areas to become academies.

The announcement that the Education For All Bill would be scrapped was buried in a written ministerial statement published by the Department for Education on Thursday afternoon.

That statement, which announced a new Technical and Further Education Bill, quietly dropped the academisation policy – and said the focus would be on encouraging schools to convert “voluntarily”.

“Our ambition remains that all schools should benefit from the freedom and autonomy that academy status brings,” the statement from Education Secretary Justine Greening said.

“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 Government had originally said in the Budget that it wanted to force all schools to become academies by 2022, but in May this year it changed the policy to only academisation schools that did not meet a “minimum performance threshold”.

Richard Watts, chair of the Local Government Association’s Children and Young People Board, welcomed the policy change.

“We are pleased that the Secretary of State is acting on the strong concerns from councils about the Government’s planned education reforms. Today’s announcement is the right decision and shows the Government has been listening to our concerns, which have been echoed by MPs, teachers and parents," he said.

“Councils have been clear from the outset that the proposals within the bill focussed too heavily on structures, when our shared ambition is on improving education for all children.

“In particular, both the forced academisation of schools in areas considered to be ‘unviable’, and the removal of the council role in school improvement, went against evidence that council-maintained schools perform more highly than academies and free schools in Ofsted inspections, and that conversion to academies did not in itself lead to better results.

“In our submission to the Treasury ahead of the Autumn Statement, we have called on the Government to take advantage of councils’ unique position in the community and give them a clear and strategic role in overseeing local schools systems, accompanied by appropriate resources, powers and flexibilities, so that they can support local school improvement and hold schools to account for education standards.”

Russell Hobby, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said the move bode well for relations between the Government and the union.

“We welcome the demise of this legislation. It was, and remains, inappropriate to force good schools to convert when the evidence of any benefit is so dubious," he said.

“As we have always said, tinkering with structures is a distraction from the real needs of schools – developing great teaching and great leadership. We will encourage all our members to keep making choices for the future based on the best interests of the pupils they serve, rather than fear or threat. For some this will lead to conversion to academy status; others will make different plans.

“It is good to see that the Secretary of State is listening carefully to the profession on this and other topics. This bodes well for our ability to work together to tackle other challenges.”