Starting with a Schools White Paper: The Importance of Teaching (November 2010), the UK government has transformed and is transforming its system to diminish unnecessary regulations and policies, uniform funding, stimulating local authority schools to become (the newly installed) Academy status which are centrally funded, introduce end assessment in order to decrease/diminish teaching to the test and give free schools easier access and equal funding. For independent schools their seems to be no big changes.

Results in between:
* The change has received lots of attention. For the open consultation about the National Curriculum about 4000 contributions where received.
* Although more then 300 schools applied for a Free School status, 41 are granted now to open up september 2011.
* 357 schools have converted into Academies since Sep 2011. 473 have applied and are watiing to convert. 547 schools are now Academies, 16,5% of all secondary schools, 162 schools have become Academies in April.
* An open Consultation has be published april to come to a fair funding of pupils with different needs, transparant with a right balance between simplicity and complexity.

Michael Cove, present UK minister of Education, has formerly expressed his appreciation of the Swedish style education space for independent schools.

original press release

Find out about how schools are benefitting from academy status and how they’ve managed the conversion process in our new Heads of converted schools talk about how they made the change booklet. Schools wanting to become an academy will need to follow the steps outlined in the guidance document, which is available to download in the How to become an academy page.