oh dear, another v embarrassing free school débâcle

[edam]

This time involving the Tory party deputy chairman. Serious financial mismanagement to the tune of £90k. Can't link as on tablet but see BBC news, king's science academy Bradford.

Tory bigwig Alan Lewis's company trousers £300k a year in rent for the site. And the Tories have the cheek to call the unemployed scroungers!

I can't, off-hand, think of a duff NAO report. Which were you thinking of?

And of course, school based-fraud is neither new nor restricted to non-LEA schools. One case that stuck in my mind was from 2009 (?) when a head was found guilty of misappropriating £2.9m from his school. And there are dozens of cases of LEA fraud every year.

Does anyone know if the fraud rate in non-LEA schools is actually worse than those still under council oversight?

I can't, off-hand, think of a duff NAO report. Which were you thinking of?
All the ones that got pulled because Sir John Bourne was too busy schmoozing
see Private Eye passim ad nauseam
and several of the ones on VFM that missed the point completely
let alone all the ones that said PFI was a good idea (because the accountants doing the work had been seconded from the firms who stood to make money on PFI)

Thanks!

PS fraud LEA schools / academies/free schools
I suspect will be remarkably similar because fraud tends to be perpetrated by heads and SMT and they are the same personalities regardless of the school sector

Michael Wilshaw wants academy chains to be inspected - 'proper monitoring of the chains was “essential” and revealed that each of Ofsted’s eight new regional directors had been allocated an academy chain to oversee'. There'll be data on chains released too.

Still over 300 hundred LEA schools failing and in 'special needs'. For balance, it would be nice to see equal outrage at this sort of statistic.

oddsins
No school can be in special needs they can be in "special measures" often for as little as two terms

and bearing in mind that there are 24,328 schools in england alone
www.education.gov.uk/popularquestions/a005553/how-many-schools-are-there-in-england?
300 at any time is not really an issue
because in LEA schools special measures is often the trigger needed to make significant improvements.

Just checked - 3% of all schools judged inadequate according to dataview, 3% LA maintained. 9% of all sponsored academies inadequate. Of converters, a bigger proportion of which were outstanding to start with, some selective, 1%. But when converter academies go from outstanding to special measures in just two years it's worrying because the LA can't even step in with an action plan.

straggle, of course it's a worry when a school goes from Outstanding to Special Measures in 2 years. However, the starting point is to look at what went wrong in that case, rather than using it as evidence that the entire academy system is flawed.

I don't think academisation is a magic formula for success. However, I do know that some LAs are pretty bad at supporting their schools to improve. Some council officers are lagging behind parents in their aspirations for local children; thinking it's ok to provide "satisfactory" schools because anyone who isn't happy with that can go private, saving the council money in the process. Academies (including Free Schools) are a catalyst for change. There will be some disasters, and some successes, but only time and lots of rigorous analysis will be able to judge the success of the policy overall. Interesting times!

You sound like you have a particular interest in a particular school.

The evidence regarding free schools being a 'catalyst for change' is thin (e.g. US modest gains in reading, worse at maths although they appeared to be at the bottom of the PISA skills survey). but it has proved to lead to increased segregation - some schools may be better because they are popular but others are impacted by falling rolls and increased inequality.

Lots of interesting reports coming up, like the next PISA study. As I posted on another thread the Economist suggests Sweden, also falling down the tables, has seen more inequality and teachers paid more poorly than ever before despite among the highest spending in the world on education.

You could look at the evidence and consider the expense and risks of these policies, or just hope for the best.

Travelling - if a significantly greater proportion of free schools are failing than LEA schools, it does suggest the academy system is worse than the LEA system.

straggle, as a parent I have a particular interest in all of the schools in a particular borough. I also watch the national picture with interest and see how all boroughs have their own unique circumstances. I can see that the policies are more controversial in some circumstances than others, and more successful in some circumstances than others.

As far as I know, when it comes to either renting or buying properties, free schools hand over authority to a government department (the EFA). The people setting up a free school can search for and recommend premises to the EFA, but the EFA approve them and, ultimately, pay the rent. If you make a budget for a free school (and I have) rent or purchase cost is not included.

Clearly, what has happened here sounds disgraceful and should be fully investigated but I imagine it could happen with any new school. Public tenders, especially where they are involved with property, often seem to draw dubious people, like bees to honey.

There's little info on capital costs although see here and start-up costs here. The Discovery New School has had over £2.4 million spent on it but is now in special measures. I'd suggest that it was a waste of money and, considering it was proposed by a husband and wife team and they used unqualified teachers, the risks were clear from the start.

edam, I don't agree that "if a significantly greater proportion of free schools are failing than LEA schools, it does suggest the academy system is worse than the LEA system" because the picture behind those figures is much more complex than that, and different for the various types of academy:

• Transformational academies were poor performers to start with. That is why they were transformed. Converting them takes them out of LA control, but I agree that isn't a recipe for success in itself. A lot depends on the quality of the sponsor. Over time some sponsors will be judged better than others, and some will be closed down or consolidated. If, as a group, those schools improve over time then great, we can be happy for them. However, there is no way of knowing what would have happened if they'd stayed within LA control, so it's not exactly a controlled experiment. People will always spin the results in opposite directions depending on their politics.

• Convertor academies were doing well anyway, and probably would have continued to do so. If a statistically significant number of them reduce in quality over time then you might be able to say that proves something. One school isn't enough.

• free schools are too new, and currently too few, to be able to judge their quality as a group with any statistical significance. You hear about the failing ones because they make a splash in the press. You don't hear about the ones that are quietly getting on with doing a good job.

Soz, I meant free schools twice, not free school first and then academy.

Edam, free schools are just new academies. The only difference is that they are starting from a clean slate so have no excuse not to succeed. Some will, some won't. It's up to the people reviewing the applications to make sure only the good ones get through.

I think it's a bit daft to be against all free schools on principle, especially when they're the only way of creating new school places. Many are much wanted, needed schools, set up by experienced professionals, and will be very successful.

I'm glad people are scrutinising the system closely, because that keeps the DfE on its toes. The analysis needs to be fair and objective though.

travellingsouth
The thing is that you used the word "borough" - which implies London - which includes most of the most dysfunctional LEAs in the country because they are tiny and inefficient.
The big county LEAs worked much better (economies of scale for a start)
and it is a great shame that their good work has been undone by politicians who cannot see further from Westminster than the North Circular

'they are the only way of creating new schools' - exactly, that's one of the chief objections. Why are children being forced into free schools, instead of new LEA schools?

LEAs have been blocked from opening new schools

and under Broon and NuLabour were forced to sell off school buildings that were empty in the late 90's when city populations were much lower than they are now

I don't understand how Labour ministers didn't notice that all that immigration they were so keen on would push up the birth rate...

edam
I was heavily involved with the first wave of eastern european migrants
they were young lads who came over, made shed loads of money and went home to buy back the family estates that the communists had nationalised

they were age 23 - 33 bright but ill educated but unbelievably motivated
willing to live seven to a room and eat the leftovers from takeaways
so that they could store every penny

Peter K saved £45k in less than a year
Zippy was here for three years and saved over £100k - and with it bought half a village

their cousins came in the second wave to a country used to dealing with Poles and brought their girlfriends to work as cleaners and waitresses
and multiple young catholic couples = baby boom (and the Mums come over having nowt else to do)

but
before anybody slags off the Poles (and we are knee deep in them here in Southampton) they work hard, they do not claim benefits, they get their kids to school on time and make them work hard
they have actually improved local schools with their work ethic.

edam
Labour ministers did not notice because they were advised by the same public school twerps who advise the current government - and have no knowledge of the real world.

Good point Talkinpeace, some academy chains are now much bigger than London boroughs - which have become even smaller since the majority of secondaries are now academies.

It's convenient to blame LAs for failing schools as OddSinns did, but that's to forget the autonomy English schools have had for the last 20 years. LAs had financial oversight, some control over planning and fair admissions (over community schools) and support when schools need it. In some cases for free schools and converters already in trouble, they have provided advice and training though have no responsibility for this apart from over the detrimental social effects on children whose school is falling apart. The weaker LAs get, the more reduced their capacity to do this. The DfE is clearly not competent enough even to report financial crime let alone support governors with action plans.

'same public school twerps who advise the current government''

true too ...

Straggle/Edam, I do live in a London borough, but the schools here are generally very effective. We need more places, so free schools are being welcomed. The council also needs to make financial savings, so academisation has been used as a means of achieving that without reducing quality. Whether that will be successful in the long term I don't know, but people are accepting the logic of it.

I'm not from London, and I do have visibility of other areas. If your LA has been doing a great job of running schools, and they're all good or outstanding, then lucky you. Hopefully they can keep things ticking over until there's a change in Government, despite budget cuts.