Revealed: how privatised academies dominate government’s new childcare places scheme

Pupils in publicly-owned education discriminated against in new disbursements as Starmer govt stuffs cash into private pockets again

Education Uncovered last week revealed analysis by Public Childcare Now (PCN) activists showing that so-called ‘multi-academy trusts’ (MATs) disproportionately profit from the Starmer government’s new childcare places scheme, with two thirds of the schools awarded funding in the scheme belonging to MATs to the huge detriment of local authority schools:

nearly 200 of the 300 schools awarded funding are part of multi academy trusts (MATs)… By contrast, the local authority school sector had only half the number of projects approved that would be expected, given the proportion of non-academy primaries.

The report was accompanied by ‘Nurseries in schools – Academisation of Early Years’, an article by PCN campaigners discussing in detail the report’s findings and concerns regarding the scheme. Investigative reporter Warwick Mansell explained:

Louise O’Hare and Jo Henley of the Public Childcare Now campaign, who carried out the analysis, said the revelations raised questions about the extent to which the new childcare places, which were a pledge in the Labour Party’s manifesto, would be public, rather than private, provision.

O’Hare and Henley (a maintained nursery school teacher and National Education Union member), raise in their article that more than two thirds of successful applicants were academices and that the government had banned state-maintained nurseries from even applying:

just 20 per cent of the nurseries supported will be in community schools. Meanwhile academies were two thirds (68 per cent) of successful applicants, despite representing 47 per cent of primary schools nationally (and 59 per cent of applications)… Worse still – the scheme excluded maintained nursery schools, from applying for the first phase of funding.

The campaigners went on:

At the same time as gifting two thirds of the funding to MATs, the DfE (Department of Education) excluded Maintained Nursery Schools from applying in the first round.

These remaining public nurseries have early years specialist head teachers, and have been evidenced to provide the highest quality play-based early years education and care, and support the highest proportion of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND.) They are fully integrated with wider local early years services and support – something we fear new nurseries hitched to academies running with centralised top-down management and independent from local authorities, will not be fully set up for.

Dr O’Hare added that the scheme is embedding the privatised academy programme even more deeply into education:

…the detail of the plans show that it will expand the fragmentation of early years education and care services, and perhaps education more broadly – further embedding the dominance of academies – as providing nursery places is a way to get children into schools (applying for reception), amid falling rolls.

Multiple paydays for academy chains

The new analysis also finds many academy chains, even some with controversial records, received funding more than once:

… 90 of the grant recipients were part of a MAT that had been successful more than once, with REAch2 Academy Trust awarded capital funding for five of its 62 primary schools. St Cuthbert’s Roman Catholic Academy Trust, Lift Schools, Leo Academy Trust, and The Thinking Schools Academy Trust each got funding for four schools in their chain. […] Gorse Academies Trust which has been covered several times by Education Uncovered through reports of high teacher turnover rates, employment of family members, and in one case the alleged negative impact of “positive discipline” on an autistic child, will run three.

National Education Union (NEU) Policy

The findings follow two motions passed at NEU Annual Conference in Harrogate this April 2025 – one calling for the “defence of early years”, agreeing that remaining Maintained Nursery Schools must be saved. Another called for an “end to academisation” and “all schools to be under local, democratic control”. In response to this motion, on 14 April 2025, NEU general secetary Daniel Kebede noted how MATs are used to award huge salaries for top executives and bureaucrats at the expense of pupils:

Academies within MATs are now under more stifling control than ever, and an expensive academy bureaucracy has developed, with bosses at the top receiving eye-watering sums. This is a wildly inefficient system, and one that promotes empire building and competition between schools, rather than collaboration. At the same time, the safety net has been cut away, making it even harder to meet the needs of all pupils, particularly those with SEND. The result is a less equal and less inclusive education system.

Please remember to support Skwawkbox if you can, to help ensure it can keep running. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (Skwawkbox will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount as it has to be entered by us). Alternatively, if you prefer to make a one-off or recurring donation by simple card payment, please use the form below:

Thanks for your solidarity so Skwawkbox can keep doing its job of inconveniencing the right and helping to build the left!

If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so, but please include the donor information above – see here for more.