Portsmouth council changes make-up of Schools Forum

The group will now have 10 members from academies and six from schools, mirroring how academies now teach 63 per cent of city pupils.

The decision came following a schools forum meeting.

This has changed from the previous membership of seven academy and nine schools representatives.

The 2017 census revealed 15,982 pupils in Portsmouth attended academies, compared to 9,439 in other schools.

It is thought that since those figures were released in October the number of academy students will have increased due to further school-to-academy conversions.

Academies and schools are both paid for publicly. However, academies operate outside of local authority control and funded directly from central government.

Through bypassing local authorities some money is retained by the academies.

There are currently 37 academies in Portsmouth and approximately 3,300 across the country. That figure is almost 15 times the 2010 figure which was just 203.

Other changes to the schools forum mean it will now include four councillors, down from five, after Ukip lost all its seats.

The forum acts as a consultative body on issues such as changes to local funding and a decision-making body on areas such as spending the designated schools grant.