ABSTRACT
Academy status can create the opportunity to free the best heads and teachers to innovate, to raise the bar and to do what it takes to compete with the best schools, not just in England, but across the world. For the leaders and teachers in academies across England, this is an opportunity to improve standards and improve the life chances of our most vulnerable learners. The core rationale for the education reform agenda in England since the 1980s has depended on an ongoing rhetoric of crisis – falling standards and overseas comparisons. Academies and free schools are regulated through three mechanisms – the Education Funding Agency, an executive agency of the Department for Education, the activities of Ofsted, the inspectorate, and Department for Education appointed Regional Schools Commissioners. Scholars generally agree that the prevailing educational policy approach in the UK, as in other locations, has swung to see education as a private benefit not a public good.
