Goodbye and good riddance to (most of) the Schools Bill

It’s official: the Schools Bill is no more. Just eight months after being launched amid the customary blaze of over-hyped rhetoric its demise was confirmed this week by Education Secretary Gillian Keegan.

It is unlikely to be lamented. Its central aim was to underpin a move to full academisation with every school in a trust by 2030. Complicated organisational changes are hardly likely to inspire the public, and can prove a wearisome distraction for school leaders who are trying to cope with funding and teacher shortages. 

To make matters worse, the measures first proposed in the Bill over the running of academies appeared to be a Whitehall power grab, undermining the promise of more autonomy which was the founding principle of academisation, and instead piling up extraordinary new potential powers to the Secretary of State. These proposals were swiftly and rightly jettisoned after meeting fierce criticism in the House of Lords – especially by some former education ministers.