Documents leaked from a Department for Education (DfE) board meeting show that Michael Gove’s massive expansion of the academies programme, and the creation of free schools, is only part of his grand plan.
The end game is to create a system where state schools are run by private companies, for profit.
Mr Gove is finding, to his cost, that running the education system centrally, from Whitehall, is an expensive business. As the leaked DfE document acknowledges: “It is difficult to see how we could manage expansion of the academies and free schools programme much beyond 5,000 without increasing central resource.”
The DfE has already overspent on the academies programme to the tune of £1 billion. It will be increasingly difficult for the government to keep subsidising academies and free schools programme to this extent – which is why the private sector is being promoted as a state school provider by right wing commentators and think-tanks.
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