PRESS RELEASE : More than one million children now taught in academies [October 2011]

The press release issued by the Department for Education on 4 October 2011.

1000th school converts to academy status

Nearly 1.2 million children in England now attend academies – schools with the freedom to meet the needs of their pupils, rather than answering to local or national politicians and bureaucrats. This means one in three secondary pupils are taught in academies.

Today, Schools Minister Lord Hill opens the 1,000th school to choose academy status. Smarden Primary School in Ashford, Kent, is becoming part of the Kemnal Academies Trust and joins more than 1,300 academies already open across the country.

The Academies programme has expanded rapidly in the last twelve months. In July 2010 the Academies Act made it possible for any good school to apply to become an academy. Since then more than 1500 have applied with 1031 set to be open by the end of this week.

In addition, there are 319 sponsored academies, turning around schools that were previously underperforming. The Government is increasing the number of sponsored academies with 116 opening since the election. More will open this year than ever before.

More than 40 per cent of all secondary schools are now open or in the process of opening as academies.

Education Secretary Michael Gove said:

There are now more than 1,300 academies open. One thousand have opened in the last year. One million children are now educated in academies.

They benefit from longer school days, smaller class sizes, better paid teachers, more personalised learning, improved discipline and higher standards all round.

Sheila Todd, Headteacher of Smarden Primary School, said:

Smarden Primary School has converted to academy status to further improve our children’s progress, attainment and achievement.

We have taken advantage of the freedoms and opportunities given to academy schools by working in close partnership with both primary and secondary schools to make a difference to pupils across The Kemnal Academies Trust.

Academies benefit from greater freedoms to innovate and raise standards. These include:

• freedom from local and central government control
• the ability to set their own pay and conditions for staff
• freedoms around the delivery of the curriculum
• freedom to change the lengths of terms and school days.

As of today:

• 1,350 schools are now academies across England. By the end of this week 1,031 schools will have converted from local authority control since the new Government. 319 are sponsored academies – of which 116 have opened since May 2010 and 45 more are expected to open later this academic year.
• There are 101 chains of converter academies with a total of 289 schools. On average there are around three schools working together to improve education for their pupils making up these chains.
• Nearly 1.2 million pupils are now attending academies – this means around one in seven pupils in state maintained schools are now attending Academies and one in three pupils in secondary schools.

Strong schools that convert to academy status are expected to support other local schools that could benefit from improvement and the Government is targeting the 200 worst primary schools in the country and turning them into academies next year. The government is also seeing a range of other academy models coming through – including schools that converted at the start of the programme who are now becoming academy sponsors and running a chain of schools. These schools recognise that, by working in partnership with good or outstanding schools, they will be able to gain the knowledge, teaching and leadership expertise they need to raise standards faster.