This article is about education in Birmingham, England. Primary and secondary education State schools As in the rest of England and Wales, education is compulsory in Birmingham between the ages of 5 and 16. The majority of children are educated in state schools. Schools generally follow the National Curriculum although this is not legally compulsory for some types of schools, such as academies. These schools are mostly divided into primary schools for children from Reception to Year 6 (5 to 11) and secondary schools for children from Year 7 to Year 11 (11 to 16). Most secondary schools in Birmingham also have a sixth form (Years 12 and 13), but sixth form education is also provided in a number of sixth form colleges and further education colleges. There are a small number of "all-through" schools, a number of special schools and some alternative provision schools. The majority of Birmingham's primary schools are maintained schools under the control of the local education authority (LEA). However, 48 of Birmingham's 79 secondary state schools are now academies. There are a large number of voluntary aided schools within the state system, primarily Roman Catholic schools, but also schools whose religious basis is Anglican, Jewish and Islamic and schools which are non-denominational. Some have become part of multi-academy trusts. There are also approximately 31 free schools in the Birmingham area. Most state secondary schools in Birmingham are comprehensive, but a number of historic grammar schools, among them Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, Handsworth Grammar School and Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls and the grammar schools of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI, survived the policy of moving to a comprehensive system in the 1960s and 1970s - mostly due to the historical accident of their exact legal relationship with the LEA. Private schools A minority of Birmingham's children attend private schools which range from small institutions to historic schools of national prestige such as King Edward's School. Academies Forty-eight secondary schools in the Birmingham Local Authority are open academies as of August 2017. These are 29 MATs (multi-academy trusts) and 19 SATs (single academy trusts). A further six schools are in the pipeline to become converter academies and three are in the pipeline to become sponsored academies. 109 Primary schools are open academies as of August 2017 with three in the converter pipeline and two in the sponsored academy pipelines. There are