Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi says there has been an “overwhelming” response from council leaders to government plans to allow local authorities to set up multi-academy trusts.
He told the Local Government Association (LGA) annual conference today that council leaders in some parts of the country are now in talks with private schools in their areas about establishing MATs.
During a question and answer session after his speech to the conference, Mr Zahawi said councils could play a role in the government’s ambition to have all schools in a “family of schools in a high-performing multi-academy trust.”
The Department for Education plans to create powers to allow councils to establish academy trusts and to apply to academise maintained schools in their area, as part of the Schools Bill currently progressing through Parliament.
This forms part of the government’s plan for all schools to be in - or moving towards being in - a multi-academy trust by 2030.
Allowing councils to set up multi-academy trusts
Mr Zahawi said today that councils had been invited to establish their own trusts after he had looked at the evidence from previous government attempts to move to a fully academised schools system.
He said: “If local authorities were to establish multi-academy trusts then we will support them, we will back them to develop and grow that MAT where they think it’s needed because I know the people in this room care about outcomes the way that I care.
“And at the moment the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Thank you all. I have had a number of local leaders come to me to say, ‘We are talking to our schools [about this], talking to independent schools’.
“There are parts of the country where they’re talking to independent schools to form a trust to improve outcomes for their children.”
Earlier this year a former DfE adviser predicted that allowing councils to establish their own trusts would lead to a rapid expansion of the academies programme.
And several councils have told Tes that they are already exploring setting up a trust or trusts.
However, there have been concerns raised about the proposal for councils to be able to apply for academy status for some maintained schools in their area without the consent of the governing body.
Emma Knights, the chief executive of the National Governance Association, has accused the government of “riding roughshod over the established system of school governance”.
