The issue of schools becoming academies, which takes them out of direct local authority control and partners them with outside funding bodies, is often a controversial one.

It has certainly divided opinion with regard to the latest Government study which identifies nine schools in the Bradford district which, according to the official report, have been turned around from their under-performing status since being given the designation.

Naturally, the Government is pointing to this as a success of their academy programme. The councillor responsible for education at Labour-run Bradford Council says the improvement in the schools would have happened anyway without Government intervention.

Bradford’s schools have not had a very good overall performance in recent years, so when schools do seem to be on the up it is a shame that their achievements are overshadowed by political point-scoring.

It may well be that the schools in question would have improved under their own steam, and equally it might be that academy status has given them the boost needed to turn their fortunes around.

It’s probably more likely that there is no “one size fits all” explanation or solution to these schools’ successes, and the improved performance is down to one or the other reason, or perhaps a combination of both, depending on the individual school.

Certainly the academy system seems to yield more positive results than the Government’s other major controversial school project of the last couple of years, the free school programme, and academies should not be immediately discounted as an idea purely on political grounds.

These arguments should be secondary to the main point here, that several schools in Bradford are doing better than they were, whatever the reasons behind it.