Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many cluster academies there are in (a) Northamptonshire, (b) the Borough of Kettering and (c) England.

There are 124 academies and free schools in Northamptonshire of which 74% are in formal chain arrangements. Across the country, 57% of all academies and free schools are in a formal chain of 2 or more schools and new academies are increasingly choosing to join a chain.

Research shows that 87% of academies support other schools through formal and informal partnerships and 72% support schools they did not before conversion.