Maizie I sort of understand the rationale for the original academies. They were indeed failing schools and a number of interventions had failed to turn them around.
At the time, the heads (and public) blamed an over-prescriptive national curriculum. They claimed that they could put in place local solutions, if only they didn't have to follow national guidelines.
There were trials and a handful of those schools did indeed improve, where innovative heads were allowed to do their own thing. Therefore, it was decided that the model would work for all failing schools. Loads of money was spent on rebranding them - paying for traditional uniforms, rebranding with a new name, new buildings and changing the senior leadership team.
People overlooked that some of these rebranded schools improved at the expense of other local schools, as the new schools became oversubscribed and set admissions criteria which attracted the "easiest" pupils. It was then argued that if all schools had the same freedom as academies that they would all improve. The flaw in this was that the later academies didn't have the same resources as the first one and there's a limit to the number of "easy" pupils. The early results were never repeated for a whole area, although a few local schools continued to cream off the best.
When the Conservatives came to power, Gove spotted that the legislation had been put in place to free all schools from local authority control, which suited his privatisation agenda very well. These new academies were a totally different breed. They were schools which had already been judged as outstanding by Ofsted and were known as converter academies.
Moving forward, the original academies are often still "failing" and are seen as sink schools. The converter academies are often still "outstanding". The rest are still as they have always been - somewhere in between.
Billions has been spent on reorganisation and regulatory bodies, such as Ofsted, but the situation has hardly improved. Meanwhile, problems have been created with schools in competition with each other and being able to set ther own admissions criteria, which has created situations where no school places are available or only in the "sink" schools.
Academy chains have been established with CEOs being paid obscene salaries and opportunities for full privatisation have been created with academies able to outsource to their own advisors or maintenance companies for a profit.
The Conservatives have stopped trying to force academisation, but there is still subtle bribery. Academies have tax advantages (such as not having to pay business rates), so there is a short term and tempting advantage for schools thinking about converting to an academy.
It's disappointing that the Labour Party doesn't appear to have a policy on academies and free schools. They could have decided that full scale reorganisation would be too disruptive.
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