ABSTRACT
Academies were introduced into the English education system in 2000 by Tony Blair’s Labour government as part of its Learning and Skills Act. They were originally called ‘City Academies’ and were designed to tackle social injustice by targeting children in the inner-cities where many schools were perceived to be failing. They were described as ‘a radical approach’ to ‘breaking the cycle of underperformance and low expectations’ and would replace ‘seriously failing schools’ which were perceived to be found in the cities (Blunket 2010). They were trumpeted as a radical innovation but, in practice, there were strong connections to previous initiatives by Conservative governments in the forms of City Technology Colleges and sponsored grant-maintained schools. Similar to City Technology Colleges, City Academies were officially independent schools, but maintained by the state and funded by central government directly rather than through local authorities. This allowed the schools to opt out of the details of the national curriculum and employ teachers on their own salary scales and terms of employment. City Academies also had sponsors who were originally expected to give £2 million towards the capital costs and who would henceforth have a controlling interest in the school. They also followed the CTCs in having a specialism, but they were no longer just restricted to technology, but could specialise in modern foreign languages, visual arts, performing arts or media arts, sport or ‘any subject specified by order of the Secretary of State’.
