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Michael Jopling, Professor in Education,��Department of
Social Work, Education & Community Wellbeing��at 51����, discusses academies for The Conversation.

These are testing times for the government’s education policy. The����to force all schools in England to become academies by 2022, outlined in a��, may or may not come to pass. Either way, the current furore about the plans among Conservative supporters and party members is likely to have long-lasting repercussions.

Despite politicians’ claims to the contrary, education policy has rarely been based or even informed by evidence. Many have expressed concerns about the����that forcing schools, especially primaries, to become academies will have a positive impact on children’s learning.

suggested that many local authority schools outperform academies. This prompted a remarkably ill-tempered response��, which suggested that they are feeling the pressure.

Others have����with such an unpopular and controversial policy.

Unprecedented criticism from within

Conservative school policies since the Thatcher administrations of the 1980s have had a number of familiar strands.����have been increasing competition between schools, increasing choice for parents and students, and decreasing the power of local authorities, even in the face of popular opposition.

But it is difficult to think of education policies which have engendered the kind of grassroots revolt among Conservative supporters that the forced academisation plan has brought about.

John Patten, John Major’s education secretary between 1992 and 1994, described himself as “having tried to restore power to the centre, wresting it back from Local Education Authorities and redistributing it to schools”. He did this through the grant-maintained school policy, which was in many ways��.

That government did not come anywhere near meeting his target of making all schools grant-maintained by 1997. The introduction of a voucher scheme, which the Conservative party had regarded as unworkable in the 1980s, suffered a similar fate when it was����in 1996 in the form of vouchers for parents of four-year-olds to use in providers of their choice.

Although some councils rebelled against the voucher scheme, both policies largely retained party support even as the Major government declined. The election of the New Labour government in 1997��.

Implications for Tory education policy

Conservative education policies since 2010 have explicitly shifted power from local authorities to the political centre while at the same time portraying this as supporting localism and increasing school autonomy. This has been��.

The difference now is that for the first time it is Conservative MPs and councillors who are finding it����with the rhetoric of increased choice and what Nick Gibb, the schools minister, has called “”.

When Nicky Morgan replaced Michael Gove as secretary of state for education in 2014, it was widely reported that her task was to��. At the same time, she continued to implement and extend key policies such as converting schools to academies and tackling so-called “coasting schools”.

Now, her less confrontational approach seems to have become less effective.

The current crisis over academies is taking place against a backdrop of the government’s scrapping of����for reception children and the National Audit Office’s criticism of the Department for Education’s “”.

Amid����that some local authorities may be allowed to get involved in running multi-academy trusts – Morgan����on April 25 that it would be “talented officers” rather than authorities themselves that are involved. But this is unlikely to prevent the same Conservative councillors and supporters from questioning why lots of government money is being spent on complex structural alterations which result in little change.

Academisation has been the central tenet of recent Conservative school policy. Once it begins to be questioned, the foundations of Conservative education policy for over 30 years may start to crumble. In February 2015, David Cameron spoke characteristically intemperately of “” in schools. As the policy failures mount up, he may now be regretting his choice of language.

This article was originally published on��.��