To not really understand academies and what effects tomorrow's budget will have?

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It is suspected that the budget will announce all schools are to become academies..

Can someone explain in very basic terms

1. What is an academy?
2. What are the pros/cons?
3. What is stealth privatisation?
4. Do they really use 'teachers' with no qualifications?
5. What will this mean to parents and children?

Thanks

Parent governor role to be scrapped in favour of professionals with "right" qualifications.

That'll be consultants and accountants then..

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/17/parent-governor-role-scrapped-schools-teacher-qualifications

Privatisation by the back door

That'll be consultants and accountants then..

Possibly but they will be unpaid.

Typically the media ignored what's going to happen to our education system and concentrated on the sugar tax story.

Good move there Mr Osbourne!

As an experienced and still very enthusiastic primary school teacher I am terrified about what is going to happen to our schools. I teach in a wonderful village school that has a great community feel. We have a real mix of children, able and not so able but we all work together to ensure every child makes progress. It's such a fantastic place to work that staff rarely leave. We are Good according to our latest Ofsted. It's a happy, thriving school.

Why should we become an academy? Why fix it when it ain't broken?

"Possibly but they will be unpaid."

Directly yes, but to pay their own firms to do jobs, or outsource to companies that offer favourable terms for themsevles?

Did you know the word gullible had been taken out of the dictionary?

Directly yes, but to pay their own firms to do jobs, or outsource to companies that offer favourable terms for themselves?

As if governors of LA-controlled schools never do this...

There are legal restrictions on charities paying firms connected with trustees for goods or services and a company offering favourable terms to trustees to secure a contract with the charity is committing a criminal offence. I am not saying it doesn't happen, just setting out the legal position.

No, I am not gullible. However, I do look at the evidence. There is certainly some corruption at academies just as there is with LA-controlled schools. However, when I read a story that Anytown Academy paid £80,000 to a company controlled by one of its trustees, my first reaction is to check the facts.

The first question I would ask is whether or not it was true. I have come across a couple of cases where anti-academy campaigners have failed to read the accounts correctly and have claimed large payments from academies to companies associated with trustees when in fact the money flowed in the opposite direction - the companies associated with trustees made large grants to the academy.

The second question is what is missing from this story. The answer is obvious. It doesn't tell us what the academy got for its money. That may be because the person publicising doesn't know. But it may be because they do know and are leaving the information out deliberately because including it makes it into a non-story. To take one example I looked into, the story becomes a lot less interesting when you find that Anytown Academy paid £80,000 to a company controlled by one of its trustees in return for which that company upgraded the school's aging IT infrastructure, providing equipment with a retail value of over £100,000 which was then installed and configured by company staff.

There have, of course, been cases of corruption at academies. There have also been cases of corruption at LA-controlled schools. There is no form of school organisation that is immune from corruption.

But with LA schools they are answerable to the council and our elected representatives , who will act for the community.

Who stops in happening at academies which are part of chains?

Why do academy chains needs heads of trusts that pay £350,000 salaries?

But with LA schools they are answerable to the council and our elected representatives , who will act for the community

LA schools are not answerable to the council in any meaningful way. The LA does not control the school. The governors do. The LA can only intervene if standards are unacceptably low, there has been a serious breakdown in the way the school is managed which will prejudice standards, or the safety of pupils or staff is threatened. They do not have any power to intervene over financial mismanagement.

Who stops in happening at academies which are part of chains

Academy trusts are overseen by Ofsted (who do look at the school's financial management) and the Education Funding Agency supported by the Charity Commission.

Why do academy chains needs heads of trusts that pay £350,000 salaries

I would agree that this appears to be excessive given that the person to whom you refer is paid around £150k more than the next highest paid CEO of an academy chain. Having said that, the academy chain concerned has significantly raised the standards of the failing schools it took over so I can understand the NAHT union arguing that this is good value for money although I don't think I agree.

I also find it hard to justify the head of a community (i.e. nominally LA controlled) primary school receiving a salary in excess of £200k.

My DC attend a secondary academy. The teaching staff are excellent and approachable and their lessons are interesting from what I have seen. Pastoral care is brilliant and any incidents are swiftly and fairly dealt with.
Children with additional needs are very well cared for with extra facilities and equipment. It has acres of sporting facilities including a pool. The building is only a couple of years old, has brand new up to date facilities, theatre, cafe style dining room, lovely outside areas.

They do follow the curriculum and GSCE grades are very good. They have loads of clubs and extra curricular activities going on, school trips etc. I think it's a fantastic school and so do DC and knocks the socks off the local comprehensive in every way. DC are lucky to go there and they know it.

I've never heard of a head of a primary school getting £200 k, where was that? If it exists.

Oh and your point about Ark is incorrect, if you look at their schools in South London they have improved because they cherry pick students from primaries, they don't take who they have to like others.

Also your Ark salary accounts for £13,500 for each school in the chain, thats a lot of textbooks

Oh and councils can sack school governors so they are democractically accountable.

I've never heard of a head of a primary school getting £200 k, where was that? If it exists

Bandon Hill primary school in south west London. The head concerned has since had her pay reduced to £109k.

if you look at their schools in South London they have improved because they cherry pick students from primaries, they don't take who they have to like others

The CEO concerned is with Harris Federation, not ARK. The CEO of ARK earns much less than that.

I am aware of the allegation that Harris cherry pick students from primaries. It used to be true when they were CTCs. At that time they were exempt from the Admissions Code. This led to Harris Academy Crystal Palace showing that 70% of pupils taking GCSEs in 2011 were high attainers, a figure that has been picked up by anti-academy campaigners. This would therefore have been the 2006 intake. Since 2007 HACP has had to comply with the Admissions Code. The proportion of high attainers at HACP immediately dropped to a level that is broadly consistent with the output of local primary schools.

So fundamentally the allegation is rubbish. Harris cannot cherry pick students from primaries. They do have to take who they have to like others. If they have a place available it must be offered to anyone who applies. And in the normal admissions round fair banding ensures they get students from across the entire ability range.

www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/11041672.Croydon_academies__weeding_out__GCSE_students_to_improve_grades/

Your Harris claims are easily rebutted.

Badon Hill... well she was executive head of 3 schools, and supporting 3 others, not exactly normal, also very much a one off which is why it made the news.

we have a state education system that we should be saving, something which we should be proud of. Without a democratic process, by following a business model this goes.

I am a HT. I do have safe guards in place to ensure best value when spending. I do have elected governors who also check spending. I lead a small primary in a rural county where the LA supports small schools to continue. Providing a funding formula that keeps schools in their villages. At the very centre of village life. A purely business model would close many schools as they are not financially viable. They do however provide a service to the community

My LA top slices 1.5% of the schools budget to provide for school improvement and support to schools across a large rural county. The lead staff member for school improvement earn just over £60,000 per year for the responsibility and accountability for over 300 schools. Financial accounts for one academy trust, within the same authority show that the executive head, with responsibility and accountability for 8 schools earns £120,000 per year. How can this be?

What will happen to small schools in rural parts of the country. Up to now schools have had to go through a process of 'due dilligence' where the DfE assess if a school can become an academy. Small schools don't pass this process and so far have been denied academy status. Even failing schools where academy status is supposed to be forced. In the past and prior to my headship this had happened to my school. We weren't able to become an academy we are not financially stable.

Our only hope in a rural county is that the LA becomes an academy trust itself But what is the point of that, how does that change anything?. Why should the LA go through a legal process costing money, for all schools to go through a legal process costing money (each school is given £25,000 by the DfE for this process, all paid to solicitors to handle the legality) to then work with the same staff under the same school improvement.

What a huge mess this is set to be. So many issues. Perhaps the only way for small schools to survive is to follow academy prerogative and employ non qualified teachers. Standards? No choice.

Your Harris claims are easily rebutted

By making a totally different allegation which does not in any way rebut my comments.

Your original allegation was that Harris cherry pick students from local primaries. They don't. The article to which you link makes no such claim.

You have now moved on to an allegation that they are removing underperforming pupils. But I'm afraid that allegation still fails to hold water. If Harris academies were weeding out underperforming pupils as alleged one would expect the profile of students taking GCSEs to be skewed towards high achievers. It isn't. It broadly matches the profile of students leaving local primary schools.

The numbers leaving are a concern, although I note that campaigners are focussing on the cohort that sat GCSEs in 2012. Subsequent cohorts have had much lower numbers of leavers.

Thats not the data from the report I read, leavers being put out early, and taking only the better pupils from local primaries. OI'll have to go look up the study but it showed that Harris were selecting students, and that the pupil data didn't match the make up of the local primaries.

I'll have a look, its on a PDF here somewhere.

I smell a vested interest with you though.

Most parents woudl love non performing and disruptive chidlren to be removed from state schools. If academies do that more than other state schools then well done the Labour party for bringing in academies is what most of us would say.

I do not have any vested interest. I am not involved with Harris or any other academy chain in any way. Indeed, I have advised a couple of campaigns against forced academy conversion.

I am aware of the report to which you refer. It relates to the cohort taking GCSEs at Harris Academy Crystal Palace in 2011. A very high proportion of this cohort (around 70%) were classed as high attainers based on their performance at KS2. This cohort was admitted in 2006 when the school was a CTC and was exempt from the Admissions Code. Other Harris schools were not as far adrift from the local school population but anti-academy campaigners naturally latched onto HACP's pupil profile.

HACP became an academy in 2007 and therefore became subject to the Admissions Code. The data on the GCSE cohorts for subsequent years shows that in terms of the proportions of high, middle and low attainers they broadly match the output of local primary schools.

In terms of the performance of Harris schools as academies those pushing the advantages of academies tend to look at the data since the schools became part of the Harris federation. This is misleading since they only became academies in 2007. The first year for which their results can sensibly be compared with their predecessor schools is therefore 2012 since that is the first cohort recruited under Admission Code, i.e. the first cohort where Harris could not cherry pick.

The report I read discussed post conversion admissions...

This school has converted twice. It converted from an LA school to a Harris-sponsored CTC in 1990. It then converted to academy status in 2007. Campaigners, both pro and anti, tend to conflate these two conversions.

I would be very interested to see any report suggesting that the school has cherry picked students post 2007. However, I cannot see a credible mechanism for them doing so. Yes, they are their own admission authority but that does not mean they get to decide who to admit. In the normal admissions round they play a part in the process but it is the LA that decides who will be offered places at the school. Given the way the process works cherry picking students would require major collusion by the LA with both the academy and the LA breaking the law. Given that the relationship between Harris and the LA appears to be somewhat antagonistic this seems very unlikely.

One method of academies pushing up results is via fixed term exclusions of undesirable pupils. We could call this adverse selection. Here is an example of what happened in Croydon in relation to Harris.

www.croydon.gov.uk/sites/default/files/articles/downloads/soc20110114attendance.pdf

Just so you know I am not cherry-picking data, here is a Government report comparing pupil exclusions in different types of school. It says that academies have the highest rate of permanent exclusions on page ii.

A Profile of Pupils Exclusions in England

Agreed that certainly has happened in the past although both the reports to which you link are quite old (2010/11). The practice is now much less prevalent. In 2012/13 (the most recent statistics available) fixed term exclusions were 6.62% of the secondary school population. For secondary academies the figure was also 6.62%. Of course, what that doesn't tell us is whether academies are more likely to give fixed term exclusions around exam time. I don't know of any statistics on that.