Academies – where is the tipping point?

With about 3,300 secondary schools in England, and 547 now operating as academies, one has to ask how long local authorities can expect to ‘maintain' (in the archaic language of the 1944 Education Act) secondary schools, and whether we are close to a tipping point, after which the trickle will become a flood? Indeed, are we there already?   

Some local authorities have already taken the view that it would be best for all ‘their' secondary schools to become academies, thus avoiding any thoughts of a two-tier education service. And with national funding for schools on the White Paper table, and no hopes of capital funding unless schools become academies, local authorities might well be asking if there is any point in trying to continue the status quo ante. Add to that the limited ‘control' that local authorities have had over schools since 1988, and the benefits of continuing, Canute-like, to fight the incoming tide seem increasingly marginal. And there are arguments on the other side; if all schools became academies, for example, the role of the local authority as a champion for children and their parents' would become less ambiguous. And if all schools were academies, local authorities could hold them to public account in a robust way that is difficult with maintained schools.