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Abstract

The Academies Act 2010 saw a significant shift in how schools under Local Authority (LA) control could become independent state-funded schools. Academies have freedoms over such areas as curriculum design (moving away from the national curriculum), terms of employment, length of the school day and school term times and, to a lesser extent, admissions criteria (Machin & Sandi, 2020; Machin & Vernoit, 2011; McNally & London School of Economics, 2015). The reported successes of the academy programme up to 2010 in schools to raise standards, increase parental appeal and promote excellence were just several reasons for extending academy status from under-performing schools to schools who could opt to become converter academies on the basis of their existing good or outstanding Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education - the national school inspectorate for England) rating (Bertoni et al., 2021). It is not unreasonable to state that a significant proportion of English schools seized the opportunity presented by the Academies Act 2010 to both move away from LA control and, significantly, exercise greater control over their administrative, organisational and financial procedures (Eyles et al., 2016; McNally & London School of Economics, 2015). 

However, this picture of a surge in academisation (an increase of 54% to 80.4% of secondary, and 11% to 40.4% of primary schools, being academies between 2014 and 2023 (Boyask, 2018; Department for Education, 2023)) is not reflected in one LA in southern England. Data here indicate only 49% of secondary, and a mere 7% of primary, schools were academies in 2022 (Hampshire County Council, n.d.). This means that just 0.46% of England's primary school academies are to be found in this LA (Local Government Association, 2022). Within this LA data, the ontology of the district used for this research is that just 5.4% of its 37 primary age schools (infant, junior and all-through primary) are academies (Hampshire County Council, n.d.). 

Course: Educational Leadership and Management - MSc

Date Deposited: 2024-01-18

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14296.html