by political editor Paul Francis

pfrancis@thekmgroup.co.uk

The leader of Kent County Council has suggested all secondary schools in the county should consider becoming academies.

Cllr Paul Carter said it could end concerns over whether schools which chose not to pursue academy status might lose out.

It would also make it easier for the council to provide support services in the face of fears that the academy programme will take money away from education authorities.

The government announced this week it intends to make it easier for schools to become independently-funded academies by allowing more better-performing schools to automatically qualify.

Alongside outstanding schools, schools ranked by Ofsted as good with outstanding features will now be automatically eligible to apply.

Nine Kent secondary schools will be academies by the end of this year, but many more are expected to apply to join the scheme.

Cllr Carter said: "I have always suggested that funding of all our schools, whether they are grammar schools, foundation schools or high schools, should be fair across them all. The new academies are getting preferential funding.

"If all schools were to become academies, they would have the same funding regime. It is good to have competition between schools but you cannot give one school and advantage over another."

Schools that become academies are funded directly by the government and as part of their budgets, receive money the council would previously have held back to provide support services, such as help with special needs pupils and dealing with admissions.

This could represent be as much as ten per cent of how much a school gets and in the case of large secondaries, could be worth as much as £300,000.

At the moment, schools receive support services worth nearly £8m from KCC.

Cllr Carter said: "If every school became an academy, we would have fairness in the funding and it would enable us to restructure the support network around 100 schools."

The county council is already weighing up ways in which it could continue to sell support services to schools. Education officials have warned that if more schools become academies, KCC will reach a tipping point where it will no longer be able to sustain the same range of services.

Cllr Carter said the idea of a wholesale move to academies was considered an "attractive option" by many secondaries but primaries were less likely to be interested because many were too small.