All schools to become academies

The Chancellor is expected to announce that all state schools in England will be required to become academies, meaning that they will no longer be under local authority control. Draft legislation could be laid before parliament as early as this week.

Instead of being under local authority control, schools will be run by academy trusts. The move will mean the end of the national curriculum and national pay scales and will give academies the opportunity to introduce new terms and conditions for new staff. Schools will be required to comply with the TUPE regulations when converting to academy status, which will include obligations to inform and consult. Failure to do so could lead to awards of up to 13 weeks’ pay for each employee affected.

The majority of state secondary schools (2075 out of 3381) have already converted to academy status, but the take up has been much slower in primary schools, where cash incentives to convert were not as great. Only 2,440 out of 16,766 primary schools have converted. Primary schools will be encouraged to join existing academy chains by 2020.