Andy Burnham has repeatedly pledged to reverse the past 40 years of neoliberal ‘wrong turns’. But on school education the Labour Party conference in September confirmed the opposite: this Labour government will continue the policy of replacing state schools as part of elected Local Education Authorities with Academies run by private Trusts, with the aim of moving to a wholly trust-led system.
As of 2025, around 46% of England’s 22,000 state-funded schools were Academies, with a much higher percentage in the secondary sector (83%) than the primary (46%). 8,600 primary schools and nearly 600 secondaries across England which have so far stood steadfast against academy conversion.
At a well-attended fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference in September titled Building a Trust-led system that works for all: what is needed from schools’ policy? Darren Paffey, Labour MP for Southampton Itchen and a current member of the Education Select Committee, confirmed that it remains the government’s ‘ambition’ to move to a wholly trust-led system, and all the other platform speakers, including a representative of the National Governors’ Association, accepted it.
Dave Robertson MP’s Bill proposes some reforms to address the dominant power of Academies, but first I want to set the context of opposition to Academies.
The Socialist Education Alliance and Academies
The SEA has long campaigned for a reversal of academisation as a policy. “Labour Confirms The End of Public Control of Schools” is the title of a report on the SEA substack on 4 October by Jane Coles, SEA Co-Chair, on contradictions between Andy Burnham’s stated aims and the drive to a wholly trust based service. She makes the point that the push for the removal of extractive private interests from rail, mail and all utilities by Unison and other trade unions, along with campaigning groups such as We Own It, offers an opening for those of us who continue to voice our demands for schools to be returned to some form of local democratic accountability. We should also make contact with the significant number of Labour councillors who must have their doubts about the benefits of mass academisation.
The Give Us Back Our Schools (GUBOS) campaign
This campaign was launched in 2020 by the Socialist Educational Association (SEA). (Link 1 below)
Core Aims & Philosophy
- Opposition to Academisation: GUBOS campaigns against the growth of academies and Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs), arguing that schools should be removed from independent trust control and returned to public and democratic oversight. [1, 2]
- Reversing Structural Changes: It seeks to reverse structural changes in education made since 1988. [1]
- Democratic Accountability: It advocates for schools, colleges, and universities to be directly accountable to local communities, with parents, staff, students, and local councils having a voice in how they are run. [1, 2]
- Integrated System: It calls for a locally accountable, integrated school system featuring consistent regulations for curriculum, teacher qualifications, and staff pay and conditions, alongside transparent local decision-making for admissions, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and school place planning. [1]
- Political Pressure: The campaign works to push the Labour Party to commit to its past conference policies regarding education services and local democracy. [1]
Get Involved & Resources
- Motions and Publications: Supporters can access model motions for union branches and read campaign literature via the Socialist Educational Association Campaign Page.
- Social Media: You can follow updates via @GUBOS_SEA on X (Twitter) or the GUBOS Public Facebook Group.
- Contact: Inquiries can be directed to the SEA General Secretary, James Whiting, at secretary@socialisteducationalassociation.org. [1, 2, 3]
A New Manifesto for Education
This is a 27 page report published by the SEA in September this year.. The extract below comes from pages 10-11. (Link 2)
Ending academisation, selection and returning schools to local democratic oversight
Labour should:
- Hand power back to communities as envisaged by Andy Burnham’s devolution reforms, including by giving communities oversight over their schools and colleges and a voice in how they might best serve their locality.
- Acknowledge that there is no evidence that academisation and multi-academy trusts lead to improved outcomes for learners. Labour must end this experiment and return schools to local democratic oversight.
- Abolish the Regional School Commissioners.
- Restore governing bodies with delegated powers to all schools and colleges. These should contain elected staff, parent/carer and student members. (NB: students would not be present for discussion of confidential items.)
- Give local authorities control over school admissions, including in-year or casual admissions. Enable them to plan overall provision in their areas, intervene with struggling schools, oversee SEND provision, and provide central services, such as – but not exclusively – supply staff, HR, and legal services for schools, as well as coordinating professional development programmes. This should be done in partnership with local FE colleges and other relevant stakeholders.
- Require LAs to widen the representation on school forums to include education trade unions, local employers, as well as parents/carers, ensuring more marginalised groups in the community are represented.
- Forums should have a voice on curriculum matters, school planning, SEND provision and equalities.
- Establish local forums for students, too, to discuss local education issues.
- Include the voices of parents and carers of children with SEND in formal, mandatory governance structures in schools and local authorities.
Dave Robertson MP’s motion to Parliament on Academies
Dave Robertson is the Labour MP for Lichfield, Burntwood and the Villages in Staffordshire. Before he was elected to parliament, he worked as a teacher in the West Midlands for almost a decade before working for the NASUWT. On 21 October he submitted to Parliament a motion on Academies, referring specifically to the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership (ATLP). (Link 3)
“Multi-academy trust governance needs urgent reform to protect pupils and staff”
This is the title of an article by Dave Robertson published on 30 October on the Politics.co.uk website. (Link 4) Here are some extracts:
When parents up and down the country think about their child’s education – their hopes and fears – few will think about multi-academy trust (MAT) governance. Until, that is, things go wrong – and teachers and pupils pay the price.
Half of all schools in England are now part of a MAT.
Lichfield is home to six schools in the Arthur Terry Learning Partnership (ATLP), a MAT with 24 schools across the West Midlands. In 2024 ATLP asked the Department for Education (DfE) for a loan to cover a £4 million hole in its budget. By the following year the deficit had doubled to £8 million – one of the largest in the country.
ATLP blamed its deficit on an “accounting error” – a worrying admission.
ATLP announced that it would cut jobs in an attempt to balance its books. Up to 100 were put at risk – with frontline school staff bearing the brunt of the proposed redundancies.
Before I was elected to parliament, I worked as a teacher for almost a decade, then for a teaching union. I know that teachers only strike reluctantly. But NEU members at ATLP schools knew that they had to act – and families were behind them.
By February ATLP’s chief executive and chief financial officer had resigned. In May the DfE announced that the trust would be broken up – a recognition of the breakdown in trust between staff and families on the one hand, and the leadership of the MAT on the other.
ATLP is far from alone. Up and down the country, there are trusts with swelling deficits. We must act to make sure this stops.
This Labour government has already started to right some of the wrongs we saw under the Conservatives. For the first time, MATs themselves – not just the schools within them – will be subject to Ofsted inspections. It is staggering that for a decade and a half that has not been the case.
But we have an opportunity to go further – and last week, I presented a bill to parliament that shows how we could fix gaps in governance.
Start with financial transparency. […] Under my bill, MATs would have to publish details of the funds they divert to their central teams – and why. They’d also have to publish details of their reserves. All this would go on the MAT website and on the website of every school in the trust – so the figures would be easy to find.
As well as being open about their spending, trusts need stronger challenge on the decisions they take. My bill would compel the secretary of state to publish statutory guidance making local governance boards mandatory for MATs. That guidance would also set out the competencies boards would need.
And, perhaps most importantly, the bill would compel MATs to listen. Representation for families, teachers and non-teaching staff on MAT boards would be mandatory.
Dave Robertson MP
How should we respond?
Dave Robertson’s Bill contains two proposals that are potentially very significant: to make local governance boards mandatory for MATs, and for the boards to include representatives of families, teachers and non-teaching staff. Robertson’s Bill opens up an opportunity to re-energise the campaign to not just reform but abolish the Academy policy and system, nationally and locally, in the Labour Party, in the unions, in the schools and in the communities they are supposed to serve. We should make the most of this opportunity to publicly campaign for an end to Academies and for all publicly-funded schools to be integrated into democratised local education authorities as part of elected local Councils – beginning with focusing on the Bill’s Second Reading on Friday 15 January 2027.
3 November 2026
LINKS
Link 1: https://socialisteducationalassociation.org/sea-documents/