ACADEMIES - the truth

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I am a PT teacher and parent of four kids aged from 2-11, so I have more than a vested interest in education! I am not sure how many people are aware of the implications of the academy policy being pursued by the government right now. Regardless of the politics of what it will mean to have a privatised education system, I am also curious about the following :-

a) Is it true that academies are discriminating against children who have SEN, either explicitly or implicitly?

b) Are complaints about academies being handled well? Rather than going to the Local Authority, any difficulties that parents cannot resolve with the academy are being sorted by the civil service in Whitehall.

c) I am interested to hear from teachers and parents as to how the process of conversion was undertaken, and what academy life is like. Has the ethos in the academy changed? Is it true that more untrained teachers are being used?

consultants and expertise that they would have got for free from the LA - that also depends on the LA.

We don't get almost anything for free form the LA, we have to 'buy back' almost every single thing, including 'experts' like literacy consultants. (As well as mundane stuff like HR and payroll)

It doesn't matter how good the head is, it's always more efficient to buy in bulk. And Heads have a background in teaching, they are not financial managers. Even things as simple as sorting out payroll which is usually done by the LA will have to be done at cost by the school. They lose out on all the advisors etc from the LA too. It's generally accepted that after the startup money, schools will end up worse off than they would be in the LA.

It doesn't matter how good the head is, it's always more efficient to buy in bulk. - not true. It is not always more efficient to buy in bulk.

It is far cheaper for us to get a broken window fixed with a local chap, then with the approved supplier we have to use as a maintained school.

But the little local chap will never be an approved supplier. To be one of them you have to have lots of overhead (like sales consultants) and therefore cost more.

In fact it's not at all about buying in bulk.

There's not much buying of stuff that the LA does. It's much more about hiring services. HR, Payroll, Literacy Consultants, People to check your fire extinguishers, ICT services, etc, etc.

Services normally don't scale well, and the big names are normally not the best nor the cheapest.

Is there actually any difference between the LA level of control for an academy, and the over a free school?

For some reason, I though free schools had additional freedoms. Is it just that they are new schools which therefore have never been under LA control?

AFAIK academies and free schools have identical rules, laws, freedoms and regulations.

It is like you say, just that they are a new school instead of a converted school.

My kids school buys back some of these services from the LA. Eg. school lunches are still provided by the LA. Also schools can form purchasing groups to get bulk discounts.
Schools around here aren't bitter rivals, so actually work together a lot.
But my kids primary is also likely to become an academy and I'm sure that will be slightly different again (although it will still be great for SEN provision, as that is central to the school's ethos).

because of DHs work, he sees how schools operate in LEAs all over the country

sponsored academies
grammar
secondary modern
converter academies
public schools
prep schools
middle schools
infant
primary
6th form college
11-16
11-18
sen day
sen boarding
state boarding

and his considered view is
It depends
BUT the Head is the dominant factor on the effectiveness of the school
and take what Ofsted say with a large pinch of salt

ipsea survey here

Read the article by ACE here first word article at the top of the page. According to that academies be be exempt from the freedom of information act and disability equality duty. Scary stuff.

taken from a different ACE article here:
As mainstream inclusive schools academies, through
their funding agreement, must adhere to SEN law and
guidance. Since they are tied into admission law and
guidance by their funding agreement they are expected
to admit pupils with SEN and disabilities as
appropriate. A parent can make representations for an
academy to be named in a Statement of special
educational needs (Section 9 EA 1996 and Inclusive
Schooling ? Children with Special Educational Needs,
para 31 DfES/0774/2001). If one is named then, unlike
other independent schools, no consent by the Secretary
of State is required, so long as the pupil falls within the
terms generally approved for the school (para. 8.66 ,
Special Educational Needs Code of Practice
DfES/581/2001). However, an academy can refuse to
admit a child with a Statement even if the LEA judges it
to be the most suitable. The final decision rests with the
Secretary of State, although parents do have the right of
appeal to SENDIST. Academies are subject to the
Disability Discrimination Act 1995 as amended by the
Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 and
any code of practice issued by the Disability Rights
Commission.

It looks to me like the law for academies and maintained schools are identical:

www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/sen/sen/faqs/a0013086/academies-children-statements/

Do academies have to take children with statements?

Yes, where they are appropriately named on the child's statement.

Parents of a child with SEN who wish their child to attend an academy can make representations to the LA within the usual time frame. The LA is obliged to consider these representations, and should it follow the LA proposes to name an academy in a statement of SEN, the Department would expect the academy be consulted and respond within 15 days (as per the SEN Code of Practice). The large majority of academy funding agreements require they must consent to be named and admit the child unless to do so would be 'incompatible with the provision of efficient education for other children and no reasonable steps may be made to secure compatibility'. This position tracks the requirement on maintained schools set out in sections 316/316A of the 1996 Education Act.

If the academy believes that to admit the child would be incompatible with the provision of efficient education for other children, it should make this clear to the LA and submit evidence to this effect during the consultation period. In such an instance, a LA may disagree with the academy's contention.

Maintained schools don't have to accept students who name them on their statement either. The wording of the law looks identical.

The appeal route is slightly different in that for maintained schools it goes to the Schools Adjudicator but the effect is the same. When academies were first introduced the then Secretary of State got it wrong on an SEN case and was overruled by the courts.

Academies were exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, but I did read somewhere that they come under its remit from October of this year.

I disagree profoundly with academies.

All academies have been subject to the Freedom of Information Act since 1st January.

Why do you disagree with academies?

Academies were mentioned in Nick Clegg's speech of the 5/6th Jan 2011 where he announced there would be forthcoming govt legislation to include academies under the FoI Act. If govt websites state (as they do) that the FoI Act was to be applied to academies from Jan 2011, why was Clegg then mentioning academies as needing to be included in new, as yet incomplete, legislation? At that point in time, academies were not subject and the legislation still had to be passed.

Anyway...

No local accountability other than to the Secretary of State.
No elections for governors and the potential to only have 2 parent governors.
Ability to change pay and conditions down the line.
Undemocratic

The Academies Act 2010 brought all academies within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. That Act came into force for existing academies on 1st January this year having been in force for new academies since 1st September 2010.

The Daily Mail reported in January that Clegg had pledged to extend the FoI Act in an interview. The article had a list of affected organisations which included academy school trusts along with ACPO and a pile of other bodies. It is not clear if Nick Clegg was the source of the list or it was invented by the journalist. It is, in any case, quite common for politicians including government ministers to promise legislation when the requisite legislation is already in place.

To respond to your points:

• The idea of making them accountable to the Secretary of State is to make them more accountable to parents and the local community rather than the beuraucrats at the LA. If they become centrally controlled that will have failed. It remains to be seen whether or not this will work. I have no idea whether or not it will.

• I don't know where your "no elections for governors" comes from. The new academies are required to agree the process for governor elections as part of the conversion process.

• It is true that there is a minimum of 2 parent governors but most of the new academies will have more than that. The lower limit of parent governors is set at 2 to cater for academies which have sponsors who therefore want to appoint governors. A community school converting to academy status must reduce the number of LA governors to 1 or 0. Unless there are sponsors this is likely to mean that either the number of parent governors will increase or the number of community governors will increase.

• Personally I am in favour of allowing schools to set pay and conditions that are appropriate to local circumstances but you are entitled to a different opinion.

• Whether or not they are democratic is a matter of opinion.

Whilst academies have not been universally successful, the evidence available suggests those set up under the last government generally produce far better results for their pupils than the schools they replaced. Whether that record will continue as the number of academies expands dramatically remains to be seen. It may, for example, turn out that much of the improvement is down to the involvement of external sponsors, whereas most of the new academies do not have sponsors.

I currently work in an academy and feel I should speak out about what is going on. The academy is rumoured to be taking a 10% consultancy fee from whatever the government pays. Also several key contracts have been given to companies with direct links to the academy. Many new roles have been created for those that the 'face fits' what the old guard have been moved out. The 'academy' is now an unpleasant place to work with a huge staff turnover and massive disharmony within the ranks. Progress?

Gosh! I've noticed that when the subject of academies is raised I have to check its not scientology we are discussing! Very odd.

I'm not a fan of them.

I think a child with SEN would do better elsewhere and I think that's what academies think too

My son went to one and quite frankly it was weird

Lots of them (in my area anyway) have a strong religious theme which is what you expect at a catholic or CofE school.

Don't think I ever got past the new and shiney foyer which always rings alarm bells for me.

I don't understand the story of the Girls and Kings Schools in Grantham basing their decision on whether to academise on whether they wish to stay selective?

I thought that academies were not allowed to become 'more' selective after conversion but were allowed to stay 'as' selective as they are at the moment, eg 10% for specialisms in some comps and 100% in grammars.

Plenty of other grammars in the county have converted to academy status and are still selective...

As to qualified teachers - teaching something like phycology to sixth form may well be better done by someone with a good phycology degree than a Geography teacher.

DD1 is getting ICT lessons off a very good fully qualified MFL teacher. He is a brilliant linguist and a shit computer teacher.

I suspect they have sixth formers who could do a better job.

No I don't believe teaching is easy, but for some minority subjects, real subject knowledge is essential to hold the pupils attention.

I've only ever had one PHSE type lesson that was worth going to and that was run by a brilliant outside group. I don't know if they were teachers or youth councillors of some kind, but they really got our group to open up an talk.