Two hundred primary schools in England are to be taken out of local authority control and converted into academies in 2012/13, the education secretary announced today.
Setting out details of a huge expansion of the academy programme, Michael Gove said the government would open more sponsored academies this year than the last government did over eight years. A total of 88 are scheduled to open at the start of the next academic year in September.
Gove also said councils with large numbers of struggling primary schools will be indentified and required to work urgently with the Department for Education. This is intended to help improve the performance of a further 500 primary schools.
According to the DfE, around 1,400 primary schools are below the ‘minimum floor’ standard. This is where children make below-average progress between the ages of 7 and 11 and fewer than 60% reach a basic level in English and maths by the age of 11.
The 200 of these schools that have been below minimum floor level for the past five years are the ones that have been identified for academy status.
Gove said the school system needed to adapt to the challenges of the modern world.
‘The education debate in this country has not confronted reality,’ he said.
‘Education systems across the world are improving faster than in England. We have set our sights higher. We should no longer tolerate a system in which so many pupils leave primary school without a good grasp of English and maths, and leave secondary school without five good GCSEs.’
He added: ‘Evidence shows that the academy programme has had a good effect on school standards. Heads and teachers should run schools and they should be more accountable to parents instead of politicians.
‘We must go faster and further in using the programme to deal with underperfoming schools.’
But teaching unions were sceptical. Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: ‘It is with breathtaking ignorance that Michael Gove believes compelling primary schools to convert to academies status will improve standards. The evidence does not support this.
‘This is a totally unacceptable experiment to undertake with
our primary school children.’
