Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of academies and free schools have chosen to use the national curriculum or to use it as a basis for their teaching.

Our online surveys of academies and free schools asked the extent to which (if at all) they intended to follow the new national curriculum in September 2014, for a number of subjects.

Figure 13 of the report called “Do academies make use of their autonomy?” provides the data for academies. The overall conclusion of the research was that the a large majority of academies are planning to follow the national curriculum to some extent or a great extent in all subjects and particularly in English and mathematics where only 1 per cent do not plan to do so. The report is published online at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/do-academies-make-use-of-their-autonomy

Figure 3 of the report called “Are free schools using innovative approaches?” provides the data for free schools. The overall conclusion is similar to that for academies with a large majority of free schools planning to follow the national curriculum in all the subjects that they offer and all planning to do so in English and mathematics. The report is published online at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/innovative-thinking-within-free-schools