Academy (England)
Since 2000, "Academy" in England can mean a type of secondary school which is independent but publicly funded and publicly run. As such, Academies are outside the control of the Local Authorities in which they are situated. This type of school was known as a City Academy for the first few years but the term was changed to "Academy" by an amendment in the Education Act 2002 [1].

City Academies were legally created by the Learning and Skills Act 2000 [2], which amended the section of the Education Act 1996 relating to City Technology Colleges [3]. They were first announced in a speech by David Blunkett, then Secretary of State for Education and Skills, in 2000 [4]. One of the major architects of the policy was Andrew Adonis in his capacity as education advisor to the Prime Minister (now Lord Adonis, a junior Minister at the Department for Education and Skills) in the late 1990s.

Academies are intended as a method of dealing with the problem of historic and entrenched failure of schools in England that do not achieve academically (or in areas of little educational aspiration). Whilst still in the fairly early stage of development (with 46 Academies open and only three for more than four years) the emerging evidence so far is positive with substantial rises in attainment results at KS3 and GCSE occurring each year. Academies are currently subject to an independent five-year evaluation by the consultancy PriceWaterhouseCoopers who have to date published three annual reports consisting of both 'hard' and 'soft' data concerning the open Academies. In the Department for Education and Skill's Five Year Strategy (published in 2004) the Government committed to there being 200 Academies open or in development by 2010.[5] At September 2006, 46 academies were open with another 48 planned to open in 2007.