Over the last five years, the academies and free schools programmes have freed thousands of headteachers and leaders to drive improvement in their own schools and across the system. Autonomy and accountability come together in academy trusts, where leaders have more control over budgets and teachers' pay, can take decisions they believe will improve standards and are held to account for the outcomes.
As a school governor in an Academy chain, I have seen first-hand that in the long term it will have a major beneficial result to teachers - particularly headteachers - in reducing their workload and sharing back office functions across schools. Academisation is a process started under the last Labour government and it is something I think this Government should finish off.
2015 results show that primary sponsored academies open for two years have improved their results, on average, by 10 percentage points since opening, more than double the rate of improvement in local authority maintained schools over the same period. 2015 GCSE results show that secondary converter academies are performing 7.2 percentage points above the national average, with 64.3 per cent of pupils achieving five or more good GCSEs, including English and maths.
The Government will not be forcing all schools to become academies. Academies do offer huge benefits for children and I will happily support any school who wishes to make this transition.