According to emerging reports, the UK government is due to announce legislation which will see every school in England turned into an academy regardless of opposition.
The plan, which is due to be announced by George Osborne during Wednesday's Budget, will see the realisation of the Prime Minister's vision to turn every school in England into an academy by the year 2020 - a proposal David Cameron mooted last summer.
According to The Guardian, work on the legislation will go into action before the purdah period for May’s local and regional elections and the EU referendum.
Outlining the motivation behind his plans last August, Prime Minister Cameron explained: "Those schools that are sponsored by academies, you can see the improvement in their results since they were taken over and given that extra independence and that extra assistance."
The plans, which began under New Labour but ultimately expanded under the Coalition, saw new schools established as academies, with developments allowing former education secretary Michael Goves to give all schools the ability to convert to an academy.
According to a report in The Independent, supporters insists the change will allow schools more power over their budgets, curriculum, staff, term times, and the length of school day - something which is doing little to sway critics who argue that academies do not perform any better than authority-run schools.
With a PTA UK poll conducted last September indicating that a whopping 97% of parents would like to be asked before their child's school is turned into an academy, Wednesday's announcement is bound to ignite considerable debate.
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