Just one year ago Caistor Yarborough School in Lincolnshire was found to be a good school with outstanding features. Then in August last year it converted to academy status. Now, as Caistor Yarborough Academy, it has just been put on ‘notice to improve’. The academy is disputing OFSTED’s judgement – you can read the story here.

What I suspect we are seeing here is not the rapid decline of a good school following academy conversion, it is simply the next step in Michael Gove’s plan for privatising education; stand-alone converter academies will be handed over to the big academy chains. Chains like Harris or Ark. These chains present as ‘charities’ but they all have profit-making arms. Even without the go-ahead yet to run their schools for profit (this will be the next step), there are plenty of opportunities for these organisations to benefit from ‘efficiencies’ they make in their…