The Academies programme was introduced in March 2000, and the first Academy projects were announced in September the same year, with a target of 200 Academies open or in the pipeline by 2010. In March 2006 ministers announced that  PfS would assist in the delivery of the Academy programme through BSF. In March 2007, the Government announced an increase in the target to 400.

Academies are publicly-funded, independently managed, schools that provide a first-class free education to local pupils of all abilities. They bring a distinctive approach to school leadership drawing on the skills of sponsors from a wide range of backgrounds and other supporters.  They provide head teachers and staff with new opportunities to develop educational strategies to raise standards and contribute to diversity in areas of disadvantage.

Academies are all-ability schools established by sponsors from business, faith, voluntary groups or other education establishments working in highly innovative partnerships with central Government and local education partners. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) meet the capital and running costs for the Academy in full and they are funded at a level comparable to other schools.

Academies and BSF

In 2006, the responsibility for delivering the Academies building  programme was transferred from the DCSF to Partnerships for Schools (PfS), and in doing so, was integrated into the wider Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. As with BSF, policy ownership remains with the DCSF, who also continue to be responsible for sponsor relations in the Academies programme.

The integration of Academy delivery into BSF allows PfS to harness the same economies of scale for the Academies programme that possible through BSF. The procurement model – the Local Education Partnership (LEP) – specifically developed for BSF, will deliver significant savings to the Academy programme. In areas not enveloped by the LEP a national Academies framework was procured in order to offer similar efficiencies. The national framework became operational in January 2007.

Another advantage is that local authorities now integrate Academies into their education vision (known as the Strategy for Change) that they must produce before receiving BSF funding. This will help local authorities to evaluate and implement a cohesive plan for the future of secondary education in their area, and will enable campus-style, cross-school working. Moving away from piecemeal, school-by-school planning to a far more strategic and holistic approach to an area’s needs, by ensuring that BSF and Academies programmes dovetail is key to the success of both programmes.

Academy sponsors also benefit from the involvement of PfS, as they will no longer have day-to-day responsibility for the timing, cost and quality of schools’ design and construction, and they will gain from the more integrated local authority support.

Programme reviews

In 2003, the DCSF commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to undertake a five-year longitudinal evaluation of the Academies Programme. The annual reports from PwC and the Department's responses to these reports can be read and downloaded from the publications section of The Standards Site.