To ask why so many people are against schools turning into academies?

[rainydaysarebad]

Realised DD is starting school in September and I have NO IDEA about the schooling system or how a school is run.

Why are people against academies? Aren't they like private schools? (Realises this may be a stupid question).

What about grammar schools that have turned into academies? Are they still good schools?

One more question not related to thread title: Can a child from another county apply to a grammar school by sitting their 11 plus exam? Do grammar schools take children from other local counties?

They're less accountable than LEA schools - for instance, not subject to FOI Act, don't publish exclusion rates, don't need to stick to healthy meals guidelines.

Schools commission their own services sounds good in theory, but means that those requiring more specialist services (eg translation, anything SEN related) have to fork out of their own budget which is same as schools with fewer pupils needing their services. Thus schools which need more support get progressively worse off. This may have been countered by the pupil premium, but don't know to what extent.

On a similar note, lots of schools commissioning same services means no possibility of economies of scale - eg paying consultant rates to a specialist to come in an advise on aspect of the curriculum whereas LEA would have someone in-house or be able to broker a borough-wide deal.

Sponsors get to run a school, including deciding large chunks of the curriculum, for next to nothing - when they first started, it was something like £4m, which is peanuts compared to the actual cost of running a school.

The large building projects are often funded by expensive PFI deals.

As others have mentioned, the staff often get shafted.

So basically, it might be good for your individual school, but has the potential to bugger up the system overall.

Yes. They do. And more. They consult the children on the subjects they want to learn for gcse and provide them. Even if that means sending them offsite to do that subject. Class sizes are the same as they were.

They're also introducing a post 16 unit for those with sn.

The school was a good school with staff who care. Becoming an academy didn't change that. They put the kids first before and they put them first now.

If they were a crap school before, then they would use academy status to screw everyone over! But simply being an academy doesn't make you a bad school that doesn't want to do the best for the children. That's the management team and filters down to the staff and becomes the culture of a school, academy or not.

Oh my, the fights I have had with schools in the past! And lea. Having the law is not enough. If schools don't want to comply, it is hell, even if you have the law on your side you are fighting them all the way. Finding a school that cares is the only way.

Can't really answer your questions, but my DS's secondary school became an academy last year. I was a bit concerned because it's a church organisation that runs it - and according to their website they like to encourage "spirituality".

But, I have not noticed the slightest difference in anything. It's no better & no worse - just the same.

What worries me is the lack of accountability, both to parents and to the wider public (who are paying for it). And the extortionate salaries some academy headteachers can command.

It's all about enforcing the Tory philosophy of privatisation/'small state'. I wish they would be honest about that instead of pretending it's about raising standards.

Gove recently slagged off school governors - no doubt because he wants rid of them so he can force all schools to become academies. Cheeky git - how much voluntary work does HE do, exactly? Apparently we are all in it for some imaginary 'status' - I wish he'd tell me where I get that from! My experience is governors and staff, parents and the PTA, work extremely hard to make insufficient budgets stretch and provide as good an education as we possibly can. I'd like to see Gove working as hard as we do for no effing money - most governors don't claim expenses so are actually paying for the privilege.

However, no doubt we will have to do it at some point - the LEA services are being cut to the bone so we don't have a schools music service any more, or a schools library service, or much of an SEN service - the money has allegedly been 'devolved' to schools. No doubt our school improvement partners will be taken away as well. As a primary school with 365 children it will be hideously expensive to try and buy those services in. The sheer transaction costs of researching, sourcing, contracting our own services will be difficult to cover, let alone the drain on staff time when they could be actually running the school.

Becoming an academy doesn't mean that a school will necessarily become any better or worse.

My specific concern (from what I have seen, and I am in a position to have seen a lot) is that the extra freedom isn't exactly bringing out the most inclusive side of Headteachers, put it like that. There are now significant numbers of pupils with a range of SEN who are in effect being excluded by schools who are much more upfront now in making it clear that they do not wish to take them in. School SENCos have often lost any control over their SEN budget, as all decisions are made by the Head who does not wish to use money to buy in advice/support. Some academy SENCos are struggling terribly, I've had people on the phone in floods of tears.

This runs alongside the LA having no 'teeth' to get the schools to take pupils, and the LA themselves have dwindling resources to meet the needs of pupils because of money now going directly to schools so that LA's 'topslice' of budgets (for SEN services etc) is shrinking rapidly, some authorities have just got rid of most of their support services so lots of job losses of highly qualified and experienced staff.

It's not just pupils with Statements, increasing numbers of pupils with SEBD are just school-less now, nowhere can be forced to take them in as all local schools are academies (the 'good practice for inclusion' protocol is widely ignored). Money for alternative provisions is inadequate, as is the provision.

I feel that it is the dismantling of the state sector, and I am deeply saddened by it.

My take is that in the short term it probably won't make much difference, but in the long term it will.

The key thing that's different is that they are funded by central government, not the local authority. This has been pitched as giving schools more freedom, but of course another way of looking at it is that they will in the long run be more tightly controlled from the centre. A friend of mine who's a primary headteacher has turned his school into an academy because it means far more money initially - they will no longer have to pay the local authority a standard fee for behavioural support, for example, which is good because they don't need much behavioural support compared to a secondary.

What happens, though, is that they lose the kind of support they had from the local authority for things like HR advice, legal advice, accountancy support, training etc. Of course they can still buy those services in if they want.

There is also an obvious problem, in my view, with giving heads too much power, which they may abuse by giving pay increases to the senior management team, engage in corrupt employment practices etc.

I think the potential problem from a parent's point of view is that they don't have anywhere obvious to go if there's a problem with the school: they can't turn to the local authority, so who do they complain to? The Department of Education, which is already overseeing thousands of other academies?

I think it will all end in tears.

they dont "have " to have libraries, this in itself is shocking.

they do not have to answer to local gov and still use gov funding!

Sovery, I think you've made quite a few worrying points there. So really it depends who runs the school.

Leonie - that was a terrible first article. That's discriminating just because of a physical disability, what horrible horrible people to deny a place to that little boy who would bring so much to the school. I'm sickened by that.

crescentmoon: even academies have to abide by the schools admissions code so I'd be v surprised indeed if they have selective criteria.(Exception: even comps now are allowed to select 10% by aptitude in a particular subject area, like music.) What are the names of the schools?

Our Academy have cut a lot of the experienced teachers hours and have them covered with subs in order to employ and finance more admin staff

My DS's school has academy status. Was oversubscribed beforehand & still oversubscribed due to reputation and results. Has no trouble recruiting or retaining excellent staff so I assume the salary packages are as attractive or more than elsewhere. The head has just secured a huge amount of money for extra facilities from central government which is possibly an advantage of being an academy, I don't know. SN provision I'm told by friends is very good. I think a lot of the fears of people who are anti are just that. Fears.

I can see the WHOLE academy thing going pear shaped in a year or two
because schools do not magically stay excellent
several heads are getting delusions of grandeur
sponsors are hiding their heads in the sand when Ofsted complain
and the Dfes does not have a tested method for turning round failed academies.

or in my case facts based on working in all of the local schools - all but one have become academies - one along time ago - once about 4 years ago and the rest just recently - the one from 5 years is now struggling financially but for us the biggest effect has been the rise in exclusions - which has meant the LEA has had to build and resource a brand new PRU to cover just one part of the borough

Also not allowing students access to information about post 16 alternatives to their own 6th form ...one even makes students sign an agreement to stay until they are 18 ... it's not all been brilliant

Charter Schools : www.economist.com/node/21558255 : Read - VERY VERY interesting.

If they were so prestigious they would not be needing to take taxpayer money to keep their doors open ......

they are not accountable to parents, but to Sec of State - gove
no collective provision eg sen, ewo, translation
can exclude - no appeal
it's pre-privatising, like nhs - services bought in from any qualifiedprovider etc

If ever you want proof that privatisation does not drive efficiency it's here
www.economist.com/node/21557793
the US government spends a similar proportion of its GDP on health as the UK
and its citizens spend the same amount again plugging the gaps!!

go over to the teachers' forum at TES and read there.

I'm seeing things start at DD1's school, which converted to Academy status last year without a sponsor. I suspect they did it for the extra money, which has now run out. The first sign of this has been bringing in a lot of final year teachers to teach classes - under supervision, but overall fewer qualified teachers because of classes mixing in big groups in a big open plan classroom. The part of me that is nice wants to believe that this is about giving teachers in training opportunities, but the cynic in me says this is about cost-cutting.

Then there's the school dinners - the school has started sending home a menu each week from which the child must choose what they want each day. Previously, they could choose on the day. The options are also fewer. Obviously this strategy will reduce food waste, but again - cost-cutting.

So far the school is still very good, but on the whole I think that having schools directly responsible to the Secretary of State for Education gives them less freedom, not more freedom.