London councils demand power to intervene in academies and free schools

Local authorities should have the power to intervene to intervene early in academies and free schools that are failing, London Councils has argued.

The group, which represents all 33 councils in London, said: “If the Department for Education was to try and oversee all 24,000 schools in the country, they would find it impossible to spot early warning signs of failure. Councils are best placed to intervene before it is too late.”

London Councils also said that:

• new free schools and academies “must be accountable to local communities and local authorities”;
• priority should be given to areas with the most acute shortage of places; and
• free schools and academies were publicly funded and so should be required to provide parents “with full information about how they are performing, rather than continue to be allowed to conceal data that other schools have to make public”.

London Councils warned that the Government was “slowly removing the role of councils in education and failing to provide enough money to meet the need for school places, and space is running out”.

It claimed that by 2015, one in ten – or 90,000 – children would not have a permanent school place. 

Cllr Steve Reed, London Councils’ Executive Member for Children and Young People, said: “Excellent schools are vital to keeping London competitive and London’s councils have already overseen a huge transformation in the capital’s educational standards over the last ten years.

"We want to make sure that local schools continue to improve and that every child is able to find a good quality school place near to where they live. This will not happen if the Secretary of State bypasses local democracy by centralising control of schools in his own hands, and it will not happen if he funds new schools in areas where they are not needed while denying new schools to children in areas where the shortage of places is most severe.”