Academies were first established by the Labour government led by Tony Blair, way back in 2000. Since then, successive governments have enthusiastically encouraged academisation, and Labour are now inheriting a very different landscape to that when they were last in power.
So this seems like an opportune moment to asia rcs data take stock of the current state of play for academisation and multi-academy trusts. We’ll take a look at how things lay now as the new government comes into place, and attempt a bit of speculation over what the future might look like.
Data
We’ll be using publicly available data from Get Information about Schools from 2019-24. We will exclude any schools that were recorded as being closed in January of the relevant year, as well as any MATs that did not have any open schools.
Current state of play
According to government figures, there were just 203 academies open in 2010, when a Labour government was last in power.[1] The latest data shows that there are now over 10,000, amounting to 50% of all open schools.
And the vast majority of these academies are part of a multi-academy trust: 89%, at the latest count, with the remaining 11% operating as single-academy trusts (SATs).