Somewhat similar to Charter Schools, the academies get a flat rate per student, and run themselves. Britain modeled these after the Swedish system which offers an abundance of choices free from the governmental and union system.
Free choice is always a good idea. Here's another good idea: Schools That Work, Literally. Jobs in the real world.
When I was in boarding school, all students were assigned to work crews all year long. That was good, but the above is even better.
What work crews were we assigned to at school? Leaf raking and landscape clean-up, kitchen duty (dishwashing mostly), prep and maintenance of the outdoor hockey rinks, preparing and serving faculty teas and faculty meetings, working in the printing shop and the mail room, cleaning the chapel after Sunday service (we had daily chapel) and waxing the chapel floor, working in the gym's laundry room (gross), shelving books in the library, snow-shoveling, early morning newspaper delivery to faculty, preparing the skeet and rifle ranges, raising and feeding the pheasants for the shooting club, and so forth. Work crew averaged out to around 7 hrs/week. Most of the work was under the supervision of rough-edged townies who didn't mind calling us spoiled brats and sissies who didn't want to get our hands dirty. They did not give a damn about how you felt, and rightly so. That attitude was motivational and, I believe, endorsed by the administration.
Looking back, the work crews did us all a lot of good. Bear in mind, we had plenty of rich kids from NYC who had never seen the inside of a kitchen or touched a rake, much less a snow shovel. Education takes many non-formal forms.
