Extra £1bn cost of Gove’s academy expansion plan
The National Audit Office (NAO) said the Department for Education (DfE) was “unprepared” for the financial impact of rapidly expanding the programme.
In a new report, the NAO said the department had initially failed to anticipate the scale of interest from schools who would want to take on academy status.
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Soon after the 2010 general election, Education Secretary Michael Gove announced he was opening up the programme to allow all schools in England to apply for academy status.
But a new NAO report concluded that while this expansion was a “significant achievement”, the DfE was not ready for it. It found that between April 2010 and March 2012, the DfE had to find an estimated £1 billion of additional costs.