Good news on academies. Thanks to the programme started by Tony Blair when Prime Minister - and now completed by Michael Gove - fifty-percent of our secondary schools will be academies by early 2012. According to the Times Educational Supplement, that amounts to 1,463 schools, up from just 407 in 2010 - meaning that 1,000 schools have become academies over the past year.
The Academy Programme is of huge benefit. Establishing a network of independent state schools, the academies are free from local bureaucracy and are much freer to set their own syllabus and methods of teaching. Most significantly the schools have full control over their own budget and become a direct employer of staff. They receive the same funding as Local Authority Schools, and extra for services the schools would have originally received from the LEA.
Alongside the Academies, the Government have passed legislation allowing 'Free Schools'. These are not for profit state schools, set up by parents, charities and other not-for-profit organisations. Eighty-eight Free Schools will have been established by the end of 2012. Special assistance is being given to setting up free schools in deprived areas of the country, with a £250,000 development fund for legal and business expertise.
by Robert Halfon - www.roberthalfon.blogspot.com
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