Academies

Failing schools all improved after academisation – despite protests

Academy leaders fear potentially transformative takeovers will be kiboshed by parents and unions

Academy leaders fear potentially transformative takeovers will be kiboshed by parents and unions

31 Jan 2025, 9:00

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Academy leaders fear potentially transformative academisation will be kiboshed by parents and unions emboldened by government proposals to make academisation “discretionary”.

A Schools Week investigation found at least 16 petitions on the Change.org website – some with thousands of signatures – protesting against the academisation of failing schools.

But all 12 that went on to become academies were improved by the trust that took them over. Ten were rated ‘good’ at their next inspection, and one ‘outstanding’.

Currently, local authority-maintained schools are automatically issued with academy orders after ‘inadequate’ judgments. Under the schools bill, this duty would be made ‘discretionary’.


‘There’s a risk we’ll go back to the days when people went to court’

Rob Tarn, the chief executive of the Northern Education Trust, said: “If there’s no longer a known, blanket reality – then parents, other stakeholders and campaigners will want to know why [academy] decisions are taken in some circumstances and not others.

Rob Tarn
Rob Tarn

“There is a risk that, where it’s been determined a school needs to join a strong trust, it will take much longer and we will go back to the early days of academisation when people went to court.”

However, the three schools at the centre of protests that did not academise also improved to ‘good’. Two appeared to have failed on safeguarding measures and had quick revisits from Ofsted.

One school is still waiting for a decision.

One Labour MP, who did not want to be named, said the plan could lead to “campaigns outside every school, parents split, the secretary of state will have correspondence everywhere and a judicial review at every school.

“The lack of clear pathway is a bad idea for children, for parents, and for ministers.”

Protest fuel academy misinformation

Schools Week used “academisation” to word-search examples of academy protests on Change.org

Sixteen related to sponsored academies – where council schools were rated ‘inadequate’ and handed an academy order. Some petitions attracted up to 3,100 signatures.

Many petitioners claimed academisation would harm the school. England’s biggest trust, United Learning, was at the centre of one of the most high-profile campaigns, as it absorbed the John Roan School in Greenwich, south London, five years ago.

The secondary had been rated ‘inadequate’ in 2018.

Opponents claimed there was “no educational evidence that academy status will improve the educational chances of our children… In fact, there is mounting evidence that they are detrimental to the educational opportunity for all.”

The school was rated ‘good’ in 2023. Inspectors found a “very high proportion of parents were positive” about the school, which had a “strong sense of community” and a “culture of high expectations”.

In 2018, locals railed against plans for Springfield Primary in Birmingham to join REAch2.

Their petition claimed academisation was “backdoor privatisation”, adding: “There is no evidence that academies work for our children. However, there IS evidence that the ideology does not include parents and experienced teachers.”

After being rated ‘good’ in 2023, Ofsted said parents were “positive about the quality of education” and “leaders engage well with the wider school community”.

‘The scale of opposition made it difficult’

The campaign against academisation of the Bridge special school in Suffolk, backed by 1,200 people, wanted to give children “a voice as they literally cannot speak for themselves. It is a tragedy to see their lives so disrupted and the effect this is having on not just the children, but the families who care for them.”

After joining Unity Schools Partnership, the school was rated ‘good’ in 2023. Inspectors said “leaders have transformed the school”, which had gone from “strength to strength” since its 2018 ‘inadequate’. “The school is now securely good, with ambitions to be even better.”

Jo Coton
Jo Coton

Jo Coton, the chief executive of NET Academies Trust, which is a different organisation to Northern Education Trust, said it “would have been easier to withdraw” its interest in Waltham Holy Cross Primary School, Essex, in 2018.

NET’s takeover was met with “marches and protests, and strikes by staff”. The “scale of the opposition… made it a very difficult time” for the trust.

“We also understood why some people were against us – they were fed a lot of misinformation, with people telling them we didn’t care about the school and that becoming an academy meant privatisation,” she said.

In March last year, the school was rated ‘good’ with ‘outstanding’ features.

‘Winning hearts and minds’

John Winter, the chief executive of the Weydon trust, said  “misconceptions promoted by union officials” also made teachers “anxious” about joining.

Coton said NET spent a “huge amount” of time talking to parents, “showing them we wanted the same as them and putting in place the good practice that we knew would have a positive impact”.

A Unity trust spokesperson said it “understood the unease of parents” as there was “a substantial delay” at Bridge school after its original inspection.

But the “joined-up efforts of school staff, parents and trust staff have led to the school’s revival”.

A REAch2 spokesperson said a “crucially important part” of its work was to “to win the heart and minds” of the community. Leaders took “huge care to understand and work with parents”.

The government is expected to provide more details of its intervention plans soon. But documents relating to the schools bill state that where academisation “isn’t necessary” and schools are deemed to “have the capacity to improve”, they will instead get support from regional improvement teams (RISE).

Leora Cruddas, the chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, said the current system offered struggling schools “clarity” as they “will join a trust, and that process can begin immediately”.

Turning schools around “can be much tougher with the mixed responsibilities of governing bodies and local authorities. We are not clear on how commissioning part-time support through the RISE arrangements makes that any easier.”

Emboldened anti-academy campaigners

Sir Dan Moynihan, Harris Federation’s chief executive, also warned academy opponents were likely to “go to judicial review” now orders were “discretionary”.

This “could leave children in a situation of failure for months or even more than a year”.

Daniel Kebede
Daniel Kebede

REAch2 called on ministers not to be “tentative” and to “learn from the system that has been in place for a number of years, and to not make it harder for strong trusts to do what they have proven they can do so well”.

The National Education Union has long opposed academisation. It even has a published online toolkit for activists to fight academy orders.

It says petitions were “quick and easy to sign and share on social media” and that strikes were “an important tactic that will need to be deployed”.

Daniel Kebede, the union’s general secretary, said the key to high standards was “a cohesive staff group with high morale, who are well supported by their leadership team”.

“It cannot be claimed that academisation speeds up improvement, but the number of local challenges to conversions shows it is certainly anti-democratic.

“Where NEU members and local parents oppose the academisation of their school, the union will support them.”

Schools do improve without a trust

One of the three schools that avoided a move, King Edward VII School (KES) in Sheffield, had long been considered ‘outstanding’.

But it was issued an academy order following an ‘inadequate’ inspection in September 2022 over ineffective safeguarding.

A follow-up visit eight months later judged the secondary’s arrangements “effective”.

Emma Wilkinson, a parent of a pupil and now one of the school’s governors, said: “By the time parents got the Ofsted report, the school said it had addressed the issues and asked for a revisit.

“This is different to a school that in lots of measures has been shown to be struggling. For some, it [academisation] may be appropriate.”

The right of education secretaries to revoke academy orders was introduced in 2016. But figures obtained through Freedom of Information show only 14 (0.8 per cent) of the 1,690 orders issued between 2019 and 2023 were revoked.

We also looked at 21 voluntary conversions that sparked Change.org campaigns. This is where schools without performance issues choose to academise.

Fourteen ended up in a trust. One improved its Ofsted, six remained the same, two got worse ratings and one is waiting for inspection.

One school of the remaining seven that didn’t convert improved, two received the same rating and four haven’t been inspected.

London head Andrew O’Neill, of the Maintained School Collective, said struggling schools in “strong councils” could receive support through federations.

“Labour’s reforms bring] the flexibility and dynamism to make the choices that are in the best interests of the school.”

Wilkinson also warned against relying on Ofsted reports’ “one-off snapshot” to judge school improvement.

Recent figures also show more schools were now rated ‘good’ or better than ever before (90 per cent).

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One comment

  1. Marcus J

    I can assure you, it won’t have improved for the teaching staff, nor will have helped retention. The only people enjoying the school will be a small cohort of students and all the SLT and Trust staff.