Consultation outcome

Changes to the system of school organisation

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government
This consultation has concluded

Read the full outcome

Consultation response

Detail of outcome

DfE received 102 written responses to the consultation, and held discussions with interested groups. The proposals were broadly welcomed as an improvement on the current system.

Following this consultation, new School Organisation Regulations came into force on 28 January 2014. The related statutory guidance ‘School organisation (maintained schools)’ including links to the regulations is available on GOV.UK.


Original consultation

Summary

DfE proposals to amend the existing legislative and policy requirements for making significant changes to schools and academies.

This consultation ran from
to

Consultation description

The aim is for schools to be more in charge of their own decisions about size and composition and to be able to respond to what parents want locally, without being unduly restricted by process. In practice, this means that:

  • individual maintained schools would have the freedom to make certain changes (eg enlargement of premises) without following a statutory process
  • the statutory processes would be slimmed down for certain other changes to maintained schools (eg a single-sex school becoming co-educational) by reducing the length of the process and the level of prescription
  • the requirement for academies to apply to the department for permission to make similar changes would be removed

This consultation seeks views on the implementation of these aims.

Documents

Updates to this page

Published 12 September 2013
Last updated 18 December 2013 + show all updates
  1. Consultation response added.

  2. First published.

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