20th century Prior to the assent of the
Education Act 1980 it was common for schools across the United Kingdom to share one governing body. This practice was prohibited by the act, although
local education authorities were still able to unify two primary schools under one governing body as long as one of these schools were
voluntary aided or
controlled. This was done to support the
Thatcher government's goal of giving all
state schools a unique identity. The practice of schools sharing governing bodies was modified further in the
Education Act 1986, which legally extended to
England and Wales. The act restricted the primary schools automatically eligible to share a governing body to those located in the same local area; attempts by a local education authority to establish a shared governing body for schools outside this criterion now required consent from the
Education Secretary. The Education Secretary could now also dissolve these governing bodies at will. These modifications were slightly altered in the
Education Act 1996, however the
Blair government's
School Standards and Frameworks Act 1998 repealed its provisions and all shared governing bodies between schools were dissolved on the day of its assent.
21st century England The
3E's Enterprises "federation" of schools was launched in 2001 under the leadership of
Kinghurst City Technology College. The federation's other members were
King's College and
Kings International College and three companies from the
private sector. This federation aimed to spread Kinghurst CTC's success to failing schools and lacked the centralised legal framework seen in later federations, with it instead operating as a loose alliance of schools. It was
non-profit as any profit made went back into the federation. Plans to introduce more federations were announced by Education Secretary
Estelle Morris in December 2001, a move that had the backing of Prime Minister
Tony Blair. Failing schools and their successful counterparts would federate under the orders of
Ofsted, the
non-ministerial government department responsible for overseeing standards in the English education system, and privately funded
executive headteachers would lead them through a shared governing body. Her successor
Charles Clarke enabled the legal implementation of these federations through the
Education Act 2002, The first federations were often established through a brokered agreement with local authorities. Local authorities did this to improve their schools and find ways around a lack of recruitable headteachers. This was the same reason for creating school federations in the
Netherlands. Early federations focussed on improving school standards and could have five or six schools within them. The
Labour government had previously hoped that all secondary schools would federate by this time, however this goal was never realised. Prime Minister
Gordon Brown pledged a large expansion of federations across the country in his
Labour Party manifesto for the
2010 general election, with a goal of increasing the amount of federated schools from 500 to 1,000 by 2015 if his government was re-elected. Labour lost the election and the
Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government entered office. The coalition realigned the government's education policy towards academy schools and multi-academy trusts.
Wales The ability for schools to federate in Wales was introduced by The Federation of Maintained Schools and Miscellaneous Amendment (Wales) Regulations 2010. The
Welsh Government's policy was to increase collaboration between schools and federations were one of its main programmes for implementing this policy. At this time, federations were also used to combat the shortage of Welsh headteachers, with almost 40 headteachers having taken leadership of the new federations. The Welsh Government also planned to give local authorities and governing bodies the ability to create federations, which were successfully implemented by The Federation of Maintained Schools (Wales) Regulations 2014. These regulations introduced a limit of six schools per federation in Wales in accordance with the Review of the Future Delivery of Education Services in Wales. == Federation process ==