Nicky Morgan faces her first big blob battle with new academies bill

The march of academies takes a step forward today. The government will publish the  Education and Adoption Bill, which will make it a legal requirement for failing schools to convert to academies. There are currently 235 schools deemed to be failing by Ofsted and the Department for Education estimates that 1,000 schools will convert to academies over the next five years as a result of this new agenda.

The education secretary Nicky Morgan is fulfilling a manifesto commitment with this bill, but also seizing on the momentum of a new parliament to ensure it passes quickly — as happened in 2010 with the original Academies Act. On the Today programme, Morgan said the new bill is to empower parents who want a better education for their children:

‘We want everybody to have a say but there comes a point at which a children’s education has to be absolutely paramount. These are schools that have not just been failing for not just months but often years and they’ve been in special measures for quite some time.