Campaigns: For Transparency in Academies and Free Schools

Free schools and academies should be subject to the same public scrutiny as maintained schools.

The Department for Education publishes budgets for all maintained schools; their governing bodies’ minutes and papers, including budget figures, are all publicly available; staff appointments in these schools are a matter of public record, as are any contracts that the schools may have with private companies.

Worryingly, this is simply not the case for academies and free schools: their budgets are not made public as a matter of course; recruitment and the contracting of services are often not “transparent”; and nor are issues connected with the curriculum a matter of public record. This lack of transparency has a number of worrying implications, and we’d like to see free schools and academies follow the same standards of openness and accountability set out for maintained schools.