Jo Churchill MP has expressed her delight over the Government’s announcement to rescind plans to transition every school into an academy school by 2020. Jo Churchill MP said: “I met with Nicky Morgan, Secretary of State for Education on a number of occasions over the past few weeks to raise my objections to the academy schools programme. I also met with Tim Coulson, Regional Schools Commissioner and discussed the impact of the proposals on rural schools and a fairer funding formula. I am really pleased that this government is a listening government. I was concerned that this programme, which had the potential to be overly prescriptive in one model of schooling, would disregard the variety of student talent whether in the academic or vocational sphere. Furthermore, rural schools would have been unfairly disadvantaged with plans to create Multi Academy Trusts (MATs), in comparison to urban schools which tend to have a higher uptake, be closer together and find funding from sponsors more easily. Whilst I applaud the focus of delivering educational excellence, I seriously doubted the efficacy of this programme. Many schools, whether an academy or not, already deliver an excellent education and offer choice within the system. Plans to impose the measure on all schools, in my mind, were not the right thing to do.” The Government’s intention to deliver academy status to all schools was announced during the March 2016 Budget, with the proposal presented in the White Paper titled, ‘Educational Excellence Everywhere’. In a letter sent out to MPs this afternoon, Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan said: “Over the course of the last few weeks, I have spoken to many of you, as well as to stakeholders from across local government and the education sector. What is clear from these conversations is that the strength and importance of academies is widely accepted, as is the case for putting greater responsibility for the school system in the hands of school leaders. I recognise the concerns about the compulsion element of the proposals, especially when it comes to schools that are performing well. Having considered these representations we have decided it is not necessary to take powers to force good schools in strong local authorities to become an academy at this time. To be clear - our goal to achieve a school system where every school is an academy by 2022 remains. This is because the case for academisation is so strong that, provided we demonstrate its impact and communicate the benefits effectively, we expect good or outstanding schools will make their own choices to become an academy by 2020.”
