Every week, one of our reporters will take a look at one of their specialist topics and offer their unique insight. This week, Martin George reflects on a huge drop in applications to become academy sponsors, and the impact that this will have on the government’s academisation programme
The number of applications to become academy sponsors has dropped by 40 per cent in just two years, Tes revealed exclusively this week.
The Department for Education’s response to this news was - on the face of it - the verbal equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders.
It said that more sponsors are needed only when Ofsted rates a school “inadequate”, and because school standards are rising, this doesn’t happen so often.
There are, it says, more than 1,100 sponsors that it can call upon.
The tone of this response was in contrast to concerns raised by Ofsted itself, which last December said that efforts to turn around failing schools would not succeed without more good sponsors.
Just a month earlier, the DfE described sponsor quality as a “high priority”. The same document revealed that the DfE has been encouraging more “good” and “outstanding” schools to become sponsors.
So despite the public showing of indifference over the fall in sponsor applications, it is safe to say that ministers and civil servants are probably less relaxed behind the scenes.
Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said this drop in new sponsors was “catastrophic”.
Where, then, does this leave the government?
If fewer potential new sponsors are coming forward, but the DfE wants more schools to become academies, many of the small trusts will have to grow.
Whether they choose to do so, or can be persuaded to, remains to be seen.
Most will currently be clusters of local schools, with pre-existing ties and links. Many will have been formed during the pre-Justine Greening era, when the DfE was aggressively pursuing mass academisation and schools decided to convert on their own terms rather than risk being pushed later.
For them, forming a multi-academy trust was about self-preservation, rather than an ambition to build an empire.
To many of these trusts, expanding beyond a handful of schools would feel like transforming themselves from family into a corporation.
They will look carefully before they leap, and the DfE shouldn’t take it for granted that enough will take the plunge.
Martin George is a reporter at Tes
