Could academies spell the end of state-provided education?

[Cloudminnow]

This is what the NUT says ... Would it matter if this was the case? Do pupils benefit or suffer if their school converts to an academy? If it makes no difference, who benefits from the change, if anyone?

Who benefits from the change? Companies who can sell their products to individual schools at an increased price now that they no longer have to go through the LA.

I understand a few Tories might profit.

Gove also wants to allow schools to be run for a profit, essentially selling our children to whatever businesses bid most for them.

Academies were set up by Labour - this is a policy that is not a Tory plot!

I'll see if I can find anything giving Ed Balls (was it him in education when New Labour did this?) explaining why it's a good thing.

How would the profit work Noble? Surely the Academies would still want to buy from reasonably priced suppliers? Would the actual school make a profit or just their suppliers? How would tories benefit in particular? (sorry lots of questions...)

Academies end the employment rights that teachers have enjoyed for years. It is much harder to organise strikes and equal pay disputes. Unions don't like academies as academies often don't recongise unions.

"Companies who can sell their products to individual schools at an increased price now that they no longer have to go through the LA."

School have always had the freedom to buy direct from companies rather than county. When I worked as an ICT technician it was invariably cheaper and quicker to buy stuff from MISCO or DABS than county supplies. The sheer number of companies help to keep costs down and schools often band together to buy computer equipment. (Ie. 3 special schools band together to put in an order for 50 PCs/ laptops) Procurement by county is slow and bureaucratic in comparision.

Academies were a labour policy, but making all schools academies and closing down the LAs is a Tory plot.

The LAs currently provide lots of useful services. When they are gone, you can bet big business will be circling.

And schools aren't always the best at pricing up services from private companies and getting good deals. Look at how many of them got shafted with ridiculous IT purchases, tied into long contracts etc.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16441186

If the LEA is providing good services, then schools will choose them as the supplier, and the LA will continue tomsupplynas it will be cost-neutral or profitable.. If the LEA is providing good schools, they won't be compelled to push through conversions.

Brown described academisation as tool for achieving social justice,mwhich presumably is a benefit for all children.

How businesses can profit from running schools:

"Gove stated before the last election that he was in favour of for-profit companies running schools and the Independent reported in July that “academies and free schools should become profit-making businesses using hedge funds and venture capitalists to raise money, according to private plans being drawn up by the Education Secretary, Michael Gove.”

Several Conservative think tanks have advocated privatising schools. BrightBlue advocated for-profit schools in Tory Modernisation 2.0, Policy Exchange has argued that for-profit companies should run “failing schools” and the Adam Smith Institute published a report arguing for “Profit Making Free Schools“. Sam Freedman, then Research Director at Policy Exchange and later Policy Adviser at the Department for Education, held no illusions about the motives of private companies: ”They are not interested for altruistic reasons. It’s an investment.”

At the moment the groups that run chains of academies and free schools in the UK cannot be directly run for profit. However they can currently purchase services, including management of the school, from for-profit companies that they are lined to and are free to pay their Chief Executives salaries of £300,000 or more."

www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2013/09/vote-tory-if-you-want-schools-run-for-profit

Tory links to fraudulent free school
www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/10794728.MP_calls_on_police_to_look_at_Tory_links_with_Bradford_academy/

Not saying Alan Lewis has anything to do with the financial mismanagement, but his company owning the land which is being rented to the free school is one area where businesses can profit from schools.

Companies who can sell their products to individual schools at an increased price now that they no longer have to go through the LA

They don't go through the LA now. Schools have handled their own purchasing for many years.

"The spread of academy chains brings another problem. Some have big ambitions. The charity E-ACT, for example, wants 250 academies. Others, such as ARK and Oasis, plan chains running well into double figures and the Harris Federation already has a powerful concentration of schools in south-east London.

The big question is this: what happens when one academy chain runs the majority of schools in an area? At what point does this become a monopoly undermining the intended market reforms?

So, now policy advisers are privately mulling the tricky question of whether central government should impose a limit on the percentage of schools one academy chain is allowed to run in any locality.

The rise of school brands also raises awkward questions about the much-vaunted autonomy of individual schools. I'm beginning to hear complaints from headteachers that their academy's "head office" is interfering in the day-to-day management of their school, for example telling them which curriculum consultants they must employ, or imposing senior staff appointments. This sounds like the very thing local authorities were criticised for: heavy-handed, top-down, monopolistic diktats."

www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/17/local-education-authorities

Isn't insurance no longer provided by the LA if you are an academy? Who is profiting from that?

Isn't insurance no longer provided by the LA if you are an academy

Academies have to insure the premises themselves, as do VA schools. Community schools generally buy other forms of insurance from the LA. Many LAs will also provide insurance for academies on the same basis.

scaevola - the notion that if LAs are providing good services, schools will choose them as the supplier is false in our LA. Instead, the LA has made the announcement that it wishes to support the government's stated intention that all schools should ultimately become academies and has therefore made most staff redundant, so going out of its way to ensure it cannot be the provider of choice for much longer. As a result, schools deemed good or outstanding several years ago have had a nice break from Ofsted, which no longer regularly inspects good or outstanding schools, and virtually no attention from the LA, either. The only schools the LA is capable of supporting, now, are those it is supporting in the process of academisation.

I think that LEA will come back in a different form in a few years time. It simply is not practical for goverment to monitor every school in the land from whitehall.

Some LEAs are excellent where as some are rubbish.

And some used to be excellent and are now virtually non-existent. All that built up knowledge and expertise thrown to the four winds...

LEAs do what Councillors direct. If a council is abolishing its LEA, that's because it's what the local electorate voted for.

As far as I know no LEA have been abolished by any councillors. LEAs are being starved gradually out of existance and some just exist as a skeleton of the support they once provided.

Where's the money going to come from to get the LEAs back? And who is going to pay off the private providers who currently have lengthy contracts to do most of the LAs' work for them? Or are we going to have LAs run entirely by private companies, where you vote for people who do nothing but contract all services out to private multinationals in deals that last longer than the people you voted for actually remain in power?

No, no LAs have been abolished by any councillors - as you say, they've just been starved out of true existence. Not much difference, if you ask me. And not, people did not vote for that - you aren't allowed to pick and choose which policies you approve of when you vote. You have to accept one party, hideously disgusting warts and all. That is not democracy and a load of old bollocks to say half of what you get is remotely what you wanted.

Apologies, I must have over-interpreted a bit from the wind down to the cessation. Either way, it is the result of local voting showing what is most wanted of what is on offer.

It really is enough to make you go all Russell Brand, to hear people having the cheek to say people actually voted for half of the things that are done by national and local government. It's not as if you are asked to vote on every proposed policy a la, "I'll go for Labour on this issue, Tory on that one, I would go for Lib Dem on that but they'll go back on it anyway so I'll leave that one blank..."

Depends on the academy involved. From experience our sponsor academy is employing the cheapest teachers, making the majority of support staff redundant therefore forcing teaching staff to spend precious time producing displays, copying resources etc, not employing SEN TAs, using non-teaching staff for 1to1 and mentoring, the list of negatives is endless. The hard sell to parents and the LEA is an increase in achievement but in reality it seems that what we have is an increase in very highly paid senior staff, a disregard for professional and legal obligations and importantly to them PROFIT.

and importantly to them PROFIT

Any academy trust or academy sponsor must, by law, be a charity.

BT sponsors academies

There's a charity in law and a charity in mentality and, in this case, never the twain shall meet...