Academy Conversion Consultation: How to Run It Well

The statutory consultation is the point at which conversion stops being a governing body discussion and becomes a public one. It is also the stage that most often goes wrong, not legally, but in terms of the confidence and goodwill a school needs to carry into the change.

Done well, a consultation gives people a genuine hearing, surfaces concerns you can address, and leaves staff and parents feeling informed rather than managed. Done as a formality, it is transparent to everybody and costs trust at exactly the wrong moment.

This article covers what the law requires, what good practice looks like, and how to handle the hard questions.

What the Law Actually Requires

The Academies Act 2010 requires the governing body to consult such persons as they think appropriate on whether the school should become an academy.

Three things follow.

The consultation is on the principle. The question is whether the school should convert. It is not a consultation on which trust to join, though most schools cover that too, and it is not a consultation on the terms.

The law does not set a length. You must be able to show that interested parties had a genuine opportunity to respond. Four to eight weeks is common and defensible.

It must be complete before the funding agreement is signed. That is the only fixed timing requirement. You can start whenever you like, and starting early is sensible because it removes a bottleneck. Our guide to the conversion timeline covers where this sits in the sequence.

It is worth being clear that this is a consultation, not a ballot. The governing body is not bound by the numerical outcome. But a governing body that consults and then visibly ignores what it hears has damaged something it will need later.

Who to Consult

The Act leaves this to your judgement. In practice you should include:

• Parents and carers, current and where practical prospective.
• All staff, teaching and support, including part time and casual.
• Recognised trade unions.
• Pupils, in an age appropriate way.
• The local authority.
• Any diocese or foundation, where relevant.
• Neighbouring schools and local partners.
• The wider local community.
• Any nursery, children's centre or provision sharing your site.

If your school has a resourced provision, a SEN unit or alternative provision attached, consult them specifically. Those families often have particular concerns about continuity of support, and they are easily overlooked in a general parent communication.

Running It Properly

Publish clear information. A consultation document on your website setting out what an academy is, why the governing body is considering conversion, which trust is proposed and why, what will change, what will not, and how to respond. Contact details for questions.

Be factually accurate. You may set out what the governing body sees as the advantages. You should not overstate them. A document that reads as advocacy invites a response in kind.

Offer more than a form. An online response form is necessary and not sufficient. Hold meetings. Staff meetings, a parents' evening, a session for the local community. People who will never fill in a form will come to a meeting.

Give staff a separate session. Staff concerns are different from parent concerns and they will not raise them in a room full of parents. Invite the trust to attend, and let staff ask questions directly.

Involve the trade unions early. This is separate from the TUPE process, which comes later and has its own requirements. Our guide to TUPE and academy conversion covers that. Unions engaged early are considerably easier to work with than unions who feel presented with a decision.

Record everything. Responses, meeting notes, attendance, questions raised. You will need to report to the governing body, and you may need to demonstrate the process was genuine.

Report back. After the consultation closes, publish a summary of what was raised and how the governing body has responded. This single step does more for confidence than anything else, and it is the one most often skipped.

The Difficult Questions, and Honest Answers

These come up every time. Prepare for them.

"Will my child's education change?" On day one, essentially no. Over time, the school may adopt trust approaches to curriculum or assessment. Say that rather than saying nothing will change, because if it does change later you will be reminded of what you said.

"Will staff lose their jobs or their terms?" Staff transfer under TUPE on their existing terms and conditions. Conversion itself is not a redundancy exercise. Do not promise that nothing will ever change, because you cannot.

"Is this privatisation?" No. Academy trusts are charities and cannot distribute profit. The school remains free, state funded and subject to inspection.

"What happens to my child's EHCP?" The local authority retains responsibility for education, health and care plans, and the SEND Code of Practice continues to apply.

"Why are you really doing this?" Answer honestly. If the driver is financial pressure or the need for improvement support, say so. Parents generally respond better to a candid reason than a polished one.

"Can we stop it?" The governing body decides whether to proceed and the regional director decides whether to grant an academy order. Consultation informs the decision but does not determine it. Say this plainly rather than implying more influence than exists.

From Our Experience

Many leaders tell us the consultation was quieter than they feared, and the ones that were not were usually the ones where people found out late.

We often see a school run a technically faultless consultation that generates real anger, and the cause is almost always the same. Staff heard about it from a parent. Or the local authority was told after the application went in. Or a union representative learned of it from a member. The consultation was fine. The sequence was not.

Schools that come through this well tend to tell people before they have to. A short, honest note to staff saying the governing body is exploring conversion, no decision has been made, and there will be a full consultation, costs nothing and prevents almost all of the difficulty.

We also see governing bodies become defensive when responses are critical. That instinct is understandable and unhelpful. A consultation that produces challenge is working. The most useful thing a board can do is take two or three of the strongest points, address them properly in the report back, and change something if the point was good. That single act converts opposition into a sense of having been heard.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long should the consultation last?

The law does not specify. Four to eight weeks is common and gives a defensible basis for saying people had a genuine opportunity to respond.

Can we start the consultation before we get an academy order?

Yes. Many schools begin earlier. The only requirement is that it concludes before the funding agreement is signed.

Do parents get a vote?

No. This is a consultation, not a ballot. The governing body decides whether to proceed.

What if the majority of responses oppose conversion?

The governing body must consider the responses genuinely and should record how it did so. It is not bound by the outcome, but proceeding against clear opposition without addressing the substance of it is unwise.

Do we have to consult separately on which trust to join?

The statutory requirement relates to whether the school should convert. In practice most schools consult on both together, since people will ask regardless.

Is the TUPE consultation the same thing?

No. The TUPE process is separate, has its own legal requirements and timescales, and concerns the transfer of staff rather than the principle of conversion.

A Common Misconception

The misconception we meet most often is that a quiet consultation is a successful one.

Silence usually means people did not know, did not understand what was proposed, or did not believe responding would make any difference. None of those is good, and all of them tend to surface later, often after conversion, when the goodwill you needed is not there.

A consultation that generates questions, some of them uncomfortable, is a consultation that reached people. That is what you want. The measure of success is not the absence of objection but whether people felt properly informed and genuinely heard.

Questions for Leaders

• Have we told staff before we are legally required to?
• Does our consultation document read as information or as persuasion?
• Have we arranged a staff session with the trust present?
• Have we specifically consulted families of pupils with SEND?
• Are we recording responses in a way we could produce if asked?
• What will we publish afterwards, and when?

Our Perspective

The consultation is often treated as a hurdle between a decision and its implementation. It is more useful than that.

It is the moment a governing body finds out what its community actually thinks, and frequently surfaces practical concerns that nobody on the board had considered. A parent who asks what happens to the after school club run by a local charity, or a teaching assistant who asks about their term time only contract, is doing the board a favour.

Schools that treat consultation as genuine listening usually enter conversion with their community alongside them. That matters, because the years after conversion are when a school most needs its staff and parents to be with it.

How Can Jarvis Education Help?

Jarvis Education supports schools through academy conversion, including the consultation stage.

We help draft consultation documentation that is accurate and readable, plan and facilitate meetings, prepare governing bodies for the difficult questions, analyse responses and draft the report back. Where a consultation looks likely to be contentious, we can provide independent facilitation.

Our consultants have led schools and trusts, inspected schools, and supported MATs through growth, merger and rebrokering.

Explore our academy conversion and MAT growth support, or get in touch to talk it through.