School federation (England and Wales)
[16] Prior to the assent of the Education Act 1980 it was common for schools across the United Kingdom to share one governing body.
This was done to support the Thatcher government's goal of giving all state schools a unique identity.
[17] The practice of schools sharing governing bodies was modified further in the Education Act 1986, which legally extended to England and Wales.
The act restricted the primary schools automatically eligible to share a governing body to those located in the same local area; attempts by a local education authority to establish a shared governing body for schools outside this criterion now required consent from the Education Secretary.
[22] Plans to introduce more federations were announced by Education Secretary Estelle Morris in December 2001,[23][24] a move that had the backing of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
[25] Failing schools and their successful counterparts would federate under the orders of Ofsted, the non-ministerial government department responsible for overseeing standards in the English education system, and privately funded executive headteachers would lead them through a shared governing body.
[26] Her successor Charles Clarke enabled the legal implementation of these federations through the Education Act 2002,[24] with the first being introduced in September 2003.
Local authorities did this to improve their schools and find ways around a lack of recruitable headteachers.
[28] The Labour government had previously hoped that all secondary schools would federate by this time, however this goal was never realised.
The coalition realigned the government's education policy towards academy schools and multi-academy trusts.
[9] Non-academy federations have since been considered to be the "second best model" to academisation[29] and are seen as an acceptable alternative for schools choosing to remain under local authority control.
From this point, schools planning to federate with each other must jointly publish their proposals and send them to key stakeholders, including parents.
[9] The procedure is largely the same in Wales, although local authorities have a higher level of involvement in the process in comparison to their English counterparts.
One reason was to protect educational prospects in the local community in the case that the school was in danger of closure or had failed to recruit enough high-performing staff.
Unlike in England, economic reasons for federating often took a back seat to educational provision and employing headteachers.
