Plans to convert schools to academies have cost an estimated £745m so far but have stalled in many regions because of a lack of sponsors, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has warned.
The National Audit Office has found that the Department for Education has hit a number of problems in the programme, including a failure to check that all academy leaders are “fit and proper” as the number of academies has grown to almost 7,000 this year.
In a report released on Thursday, auditors said it was unclear how feasible it was for the government to continue to convert large numbers of schools into academies – state schools that receive their funding directly from central government.
The report argues that in many cases, it is taking longer than expected to turn under-performing schools into academies.
It also discloses that civil servants do not carry out checks to ensure that all academy trustees and senior leaders are fit and proper people.
Meg Hillier, the chair of the public accounts committee, said: “Given the serious shortcomings in the way some academies have been managed, I am concerned that the NAO says the department isn’t checking all academy leaders are fit and proper persons.
“According to the government, converting schools to academies is about raising standards. But it is mostly good schools that have converted. Conversion of under-performing maintained schools has been slow.”
Converting local authority schools into academies is a central plan of the government’s education policy, with all schools since 2010 allowed to apply for academy status with more freedom over areas such as the curriculum and staff pay.
By January, 6,996 schools had become academies, the report said, and converting them has cost the DfE £745m since 2010/11.
This is equivalent to just over £106,000 per school. In 2016/17 alone, £81m was spent on school conversion, the NAO said, adding that this did not represent the full amount spent by all bodies involved.
More secondaries than primaries are now academies and the proportion of schools that have academy status varies by local authority across England.
Schools rated as inadequate by Ofsted are obliged to become academies, with the aim of this happening within nine months, the NAO said, but almost two-thirds of these schools take longer to open as academies.
“We estimate that, at January 2018, approximately 37,000 children were being taught in maintained schools that Ofsted had rated as inadequate more than nine months before,” the report said.
The watchdog also warned there was “considerable variation” in the availability of sponsors in different parts of the country, noting “there appears to be a shortage of sponsors and multi-academy trusts with the capacity to support new academies”.
A DfE spokeswoman said: “As the report acknowledges, we have improved the process for converting schools to academies and increased the standards of governance we expect from multi-academy trusts.”
She said the department has introduced more regular monitoring and reporting of the conversion process, adding: “We are investing more than £30m in academy trusts in areas facing the greatest challenges across England to boost their ability to improve other schools.”
