Education ministers are expected to announce in today’s (16 March 2016) Budget that every school in England will be required to convert to academy status, effectively taking all schools out of local authority control and moving them into the hands of central government.Academy schools receive their funding directly from the government and are free to set their own curriculum, school hours and teaching requirements. The academy and Free School programme has been a central part of the government’s drive to improve standards in education.Until today, only failing schools were required to become academies and were often taken over by sponsored academy trusts or academy chains which were tasked with turning the school around and improving performance.  The remainder were top performing schools that were allowed to become ‘academy converters’ taking advantage of the different funding and operational model.Although the Department for Education has declined to comment, it is no secret that David Cameron’s ambitions are to turn every school in England into an academy and to encourage the creation of more Free Schools.At the Conservative party conference in Manchester last year, David Cameron announced his next ambition to have, “five hundred new Free Schools, every school an academy, and yes – local authorities running schools a thing of the past.”There are approximately 3,300 state-funded secondary schools in England and just over 2,000 of these are already academies. Of the 16,500 (approx.) primary schools, nearly 2,500 have converted to academy status.Responding to reports of the government announcement Lucy Powell MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Education said, “there is no evidence to suggest that academisation in and of itself leads to school improvement. Only last week the Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, wrote to the Secretary of State for Education highlighting ‘serious weaknesses’ in academy chains.”But, said George Osborne ahead of today's announcement, "It is simply unacceptable that Britain continues to sit too low down the global league tables for education. So I’m going to get on with finishing the job we started five years ago, to drive up standards and set schools free from the shackles of local bureaucracy. I also want to support secondary schools that want to offer their pupils longer school days with more extracurricular activities like sport and art. So we’ll fund longer school days for at least 25 per cent of all secondary schools."Now is the time for us to make the bold decisions and the big investments that will help the next generation, and that is what my Budget will do."

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