Leader: Schools out – for ever

Anyone who has recently bought a house next to a good school — they typically command a £20,000 premium — has good reason to loathe Michael Gove.

Anyone who has recently bought a house next to a good school — they typically command a £20,000 premium — has good reason to loathe Michael Gove. The Education Secretary may well be about to bring the whole catchment area game to an end. Quietly, but at a surprising rate, schools are fleeing the control of local councils and becoming academies: independent, but within the state sector. What was a trickle under the Labour years is turning into a flood. This time last year, just one in 16 state secondaries had this ‘academy’ status. Now, it is one in eight. By Christmas, it should be one in four. And by the next election, most state secondary schools in Britain — about 1,600 — should be free to run their own affairs.