While the Tories have always been keen advocates of expanding academy schools, the Liberal Democrats wanted to keep schools within local authorities.
The Cascadia clubs and perhaps most pertinently, the small market success story of Sporting KC (another former Hunt family club, and one-time also-ran franchise) have revised expectations of what a well-run MLS club can function as, while on the playing side several teams have begun to see early returns on an expanding academy system.
For China's expanding academy, the potential to contribute to global knowledge is curtailed by a cost structure that discourages utilization of global resources; some university libraries even classify research databases and websites by whether or not the services are subject to the international data download fee.
I know some people, for instance, are worried about our plans for expanding Academies, as we heard this morning.
A DfE spokesman said: "The report rightly acknowledges the overwhelming success of the expanding academies programme in driving up standards for hundreds of thousands more pupils.
His criticisms will raise eyebrows, coming from an organisation that through its founder – Philip Harris, has close links to the Conservative party and has been an enthusiastic supporter of policies expanding academies and free schools.
The academies policy was always a political and not an educational one, and the Department for Education's response suggests it is in no mood to listen, even to closely argued and evidence-based proposals: "The report rightly acknowledges the overwhelming success of the expanding academies programme in driving up standards for hundreds of thousands more pupils.
Mr Gove's priority, however, is to expand the academy revolution to primary schools.Until recently the clearest failure seemed to be health care.
It will open up the system to new providers and new partners, allow greater parental choice, expand foundation, academy and extended schools.
