Thanks to Leonie Haimson for sending along this paper. The “academy” concept began under a Conservative government that believed private enterprise was infinitely wiser than public anything. Corporations and wealthy individuals were encouraged to “buy” control of schools by putting up a large sum. Things seem to going swimmingly for the idea. This is a small excerpt. When I was part of the Koret Task Force at the rightwing Hoover Institution, we journeyed to England as a group to learn about this example of privatization in action.
The paper contains a valuable review of “related party transactions,” that is, financial self-dealing in the private entities that receive public funding in the U.S. and Great Britain.
Charter Schools, Academy Schools, and Related-Party Transactions: Same Scams, Different Countries
Preston C. Green III and Chelsea E. Connery
Academies were first introduced in 2000 as the City Academy Program. 34 City academies were to
replace locally run schools in urban areas that were deemed to be failing by the school inspection
body Ofsted, or that were underachieving. The Education Act 2002 permitted academies to open
outside of urban areas.
Eight years later, Parliament enacted the Academies Act 2010. This statute extended the academy
option, until then limited to struggling schools, to include successful schools at both the primary
and secondary levels. The government financed conversion costs and provided considerable
financial incentives to encourage schools to convert. The number of academies increased
dramatically as a result of these policy changes. In 2010, there were 203 academies throughout
England, all of them serving secondary schools with high proportions of disadvantaged students.40
As of September 2018, there were 8,177 academies, constituting 36% of England’s state funded
schools. About 66% of England’s secondary schools and 30% of its primary schools have achieved
academy status.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Because our review has found such remarkable similarities between the monitoring systems for charter schools and (British/Wales) academies, it is unsurprising that the recommendations for improving these monitoring systems are so similar.”
This is an amazing report with legal citations and parallels in the absence of oversight of chartering here and across the pond.
Whether managements are CMOs, EMOs, ATs or MATs, all privatization of education demands rules and regulations. Both nations are learning the hard way that the free market cannot monitor its own actions, and it will always put profit as their first priority. Lack of oversight and accountability ultimately leads to corruption and misuse of public funds.
The authors conclude, both the U.S. and Britain have been “bedeviled”.
“Bedeviled!” Perfect description.
I remember when British Primary Schools were good … then Thatcher and Reagan came along.
America and Great Britain haven’t recovered from this “DUO.”
the perfect refrain for describing Before and After: then Thatcher and Reagan came along…
I began designing & teaching an early-lang-learning [Fr & Sp] program to local PreK’s as a free-lance enrichment teacher in 2001. I was spurred by research showing that the 2.5-5yo window is when audio-neural connections are at prime bldg capacity– meaning kids at that age can acquire authentic accent & don’t forget it– as well as other research showing those who begin acquiring a 2nd lang while young [when brain still primed to easily acquire syntax of any lang] will much more easily acquire additional langs at later ages.
Much of this research was developed in Europe during the flowering of the EU community. They had motive and mission to spread multilingualism as a path to multiculturalism. Of the EU communities this mission was most challenging to the UK, which due to geography was less multilingual, but they embraced it in the ’90’s, & were developing innovative ways to teach L2 to youngest schoolers.
Meanwhile back in the USA we were terribly lagging, & tho there was interest in early-lang-learning due to incipient globalism– and even legislative moves to start teaching for-lang at maybe K or at least 2nd-3rd grade in some states (incl mine)– there were no age-approptiate matls available. During those first yrs I depended heavily on the UK’s CILT (natl centre for languages– who knows what CILT even stood for? The site was archived in 2010), which was then a busy hive for bringing monolingual cultures like UK (& US) into the 21stC. I got gobs of free matls & inspired input from UK teachers in early 2000’s.
Sadly, as conservative parties took over UK parliament, all that activity was shut down. UK schools were privatizing, & backlash against EU multiculturalism/ trade was gathering: you could tell. As govt funding for early-language learning was shut down, there was a year or two when the best, previously-free district websites put up paywalls for their [amazing] resources, then went dark. For a while, all the FL teachers [govt funding yanked] tried free-lancing, peddling their lesson-plans/ matls for a pittance– then their govt-funded website was shut down & “archived” (good luck accessing the archive). Today you can’t even find the longtime BBC-funded FL animated games/ lessons– gone.