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Dozens of schools rated inadequate by Ofsted have faced waits of more than a year before reopening, amid accusations from Labour that they were “left to fester” by the former Conservative government.
The state of schools and the future of academies has become the subject of an increasingly fraught political row. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, accused Keir Starmer last week of “an act of vandalism” in new laws restricting freedoms enjoyed by academies.
However, insiders pointed to data showing that in the existing system, some underperforming schools had been left to wait for more than two years to be overhauled and reopened with new management.
From 2022 to January 2025, 100 schools were converted into academies after being found to be inadequate by inspectors.
Of those, 41 had to wait more than a year to reopen, while 10 schools waited at least two years. There are a further 54 inadequate schools awaiting conversion, of which 39 have been in this process for more than a year.
New teams will now be used to help these “stuck” schools – including some that are already academies – under plans by the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.
“Too many schools have been left to fester by the Tories for too long, including many hundreds of academies,” said a government source.
“The Tories’ criticism has nothing to do with improving the schools they let fail and everything to do with defending their dismal record.”
Several Labour figures are concerned about the party’s plans to restrict some of the powers academies have, but a rebellion is not expected over the legislation.
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Badenoch has been focusing on the issue, arguing the reforms will take schools back decades. However, this weekend, headteachers of both council-run and academy schools hit back.
Speaking to the Observer, Andrew O’Neill, headteacher of All Saints Catholic college, a secondary school near west London’s Grenfell Tower, and a member of the influential Headteachers’ Roundtable, said: “The edu-oligarchs don’t speak for the sector as a whole, even though they think they do.
The voices of those running the most challenging schools and academies have been suppressed and they agree with the [schools] bill.”
Jonny Uttley, chief executive of the Education Alliance academy trust, said: which runs 12 primary and secondary schools in the north-east across the Humber region, said: “There is such a mismatch between the level of hyperbole and what is actually in this modest bill.”
The bill will ensure that all state schools follow the same pay and conditions framework, and an amendment has been tabled to make clear there will be “no ceiling” on pay for schools. Uttley said that, as well as following the national curriculum, “the vast majority of academies follow national terms and conditions anyway”. He also insisted that the idea that the bill would stop academies innovating or turning around failing schools was “just not true.”
