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?

My fault for being brief!

A business can sponsor a school but cannot be the proprietor. The proprietor must be a charity. Most sponsors are charities and are also the proprietors of their schools. Where a business wishes to be the lead sponsor it must set up a charity to be the proprietor of the school. This is subject to charity law which prevents the business from profiting directly from its involvement in the school. Of course, some businesses sponsor community schools.

There may be a time in the future when schools are run for profit (as happens in many other countries) but we are not there yet.

And do the proprietors and sponsors act as unpaid volunteers?

The trustees of the charity that is the proprietor cannot be paid for acting as trustees. Charity law details the circumstances under which a trustee (or a business or person connected with a trustee) can receive payment. In broad terms the trustees receiving payment (or connected to someone receiving payment) must be in a minority, the trustee concerned must take no part in the decision and the payment must be reasonable for the goods or services provided. This is similar to the provisions governing payments to governors in other types of school.

A sponsor will appoint one or more trustees. The sponsor is therefore connected with a trustee and covered by the same legal rules. You will often (but not invariably) find that a business acting as sponsor is doing so as part of a corporate responsibility initiative and will provide services and/or goods to the academy free of charge or at a substantial discount.

All systems are open to abuse. There have been cases where governors of maintained schools have abused the system for personal benefit. Alleged abuses in academies and free schools currently receive a lot more publicity than alleged abuses in maintained schools. The test will be how well the rules are policed by the EFA.

Could academies spell the end of state-provided education

It depends what you mean by state-provided education. The NUT mean that all schools must be operated by the state and controlled by the LA. On that basis the answer is clearly yes. My definition of state-provided education is that schools are paid for out of my taxes and I don't have to pay anything to send my children to school. I don't really care who operates the school as long as it doesn't cost me anything and provides a good education for my children. On that definition academies will not lead to the end of state-provided education.

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

My sister works for a charity, one of the most bent organisations you have ever heard of. The directors (Ex cons) help themselves to millions, the police are always investigating something or other. Every crime you can imagine, the charity status is just to throw off investigations, and to help laundering money from all the nefarious activities.

There are endless ways to get the profit, being a charity just means you don't pay tax that's all.

Er, yes, OP, that's kinda the whole idea!

On your definition (2nd) then it has already spelled an end to state funded education in my case.

All of the schools in my area are academies therefore none can offer my child a place. The council say they have met their obligation by offering a school the other side of the county, and if I 'cant be bothered' to make the 6hr round trip to take them to school then I will have to home educate. I guess this is what they mean by 'offering choice in education.'

There are endless ways to get the profit

Not legally. I am unclear why your sister continues to work for what is, according to you, a criminal enterprise. If it is as bad as you claim the authorities should deal with it appropriately.

All of the schools in my area are academies therefore none can offer my child a place

The fact that none of them can offer your child a place is nothing to do with their status as academies. It simply means that you don't come high enough on their admission criteria to qualify for a place.

If the school offered is more than 1 hour each way from home you have good grounds for appeal on the basis that there is no place within a reasonable distance of your home.

The directors (Ex cons) help themselves to millions

You cannot be a trustee of a charity if you have an unspent criminal conviction involving dishonesty or deception or are disqualified from being a company director. And if they are able to help themselves to millions without donors noticing this must be one of the large, well known charities. Most charities don't have that kind of income.

But of course there are occasions where charity trustees act dishonestly, just as school governors, local councillors, company directors, etc. sometimes act dishonestly.

6hr round trip to take them to school

As well as appealing you should ask the LA why your child hasn't been considered under their Fair Access Protocol. If the journey is more than 1 hour each way it is clearly unacceptable and they should be sorting it out, not fobbing you off. And if it is more than 2 or 3 miles (depending on your child's age) they should also be sorting out free transport for your child.

And when sponsors, eg, provide goods or services free of charge or at a discount, is there any tax or accounting benefit to this (eg as there is a tax benefit to wealthy people donating to charity, and ways of viewing transactions which have different impacts on the financial statements of an organisation)?

I'll assume we are talking about a company acting as sponsor. Giving to a charity reduces the company's profits thereby reducing the amount of corporation tax they pay. In effect for a company paying the main rate of corporation tax if they give £1 to a charity (and meet certain conditions, one of which relates to the amount of benefit the company receives in return for the donation) they get 21p back from the taxman.

If a business wants to reduce its tax bill giving to charity helps with that. However, the tax relief it gets will be less than the money it has given so if it wants to maximise profits it is best off hanging onto its money rather than giving to charity.

awishes this sounds terrible.

noblegiraffe
prh has great faith in the "charity" status of the actual academy schools.
I do not share that confidence but have argued it around the houses too many times.
We shall just have to wait for evidence and hope that children's education is not damaged too badly in the process.

I have no faith in the "charity" status of academy schools - they are charities simply because that is the vehicle they have to use, not necessarily because they want to be remotely charitable in the moral sense of the word.

And, obviously, charitable status does not protect anyone from incompetence.

prh has great faith in the "charity" status of the actual academy schools

No I do not and I wish you would stop repeating this falsehood. I simply point out the rules charities are required to follow when others allege that they can do things that are clearly illegal. As I have said on this thread, all systems are open to abuse.

prh47bridge
I simply point out the rules charities are required to follow
yes, but you have faith that they will : and the evidence does not support this

The Charities Commission and Companies House are both utterly and completely incapable of carrying out the "enforcement" functions that polticians pretend they have.

Since Broon brought in the whole "lighter touch" regime 12 years ago, the system has been broken. And as it suits Cameroon and Gideon and Gove to have their chums free to operate, nowt is going to change.

The law is only as strong as the chance of getting caught and punished.

The CEO of Caudrilla did not suffer for past cockups : he is but one of many.

yes, but you have faith that they will

Please read what I say, not what you apparently expect me to say. I have never said that I have faith that all charities will (or do) follow the rules. There will always be some that don't. I repeat, ALL SYSTEMS ARE OPEN TO ABUSE. That clearly means that charitable status is as open to abuse as any other system. My faith is limited to the fact that most charities do follow the rules and most breaches are accidental. However there will always be those that break the rules, just as some school governors, head teachers, local councillors, company directors, MPs, etc. break the rules. In all cases I believe the majority keep to the rules but there are always a few that will try to play the system.

For academies enforcement is down to the EFA. As I said earlier the test will be how well they police the rules.

Crooks are attracted to charities like flies to sh1t. Whatever the rules are they don't apply to crooks, that's why we call them crooks.

When I hear the word charity, the image I have is of Al-Pacino grinning in front of a great tray of cocaine.

Having worked with a lot of charities I disagree. There are some that I wouldn't touch with a bargepole but there are many doing a lot of good work. Overall I don't think charities are any more corrupt than either the private or public sectors. Dishonest people will always find ways of extracting money from any type of enterprise whatever rules are in place.

just to add the concept of profit is just semantics. schools have been making surpluses for years. on conversion to academy they become a charity. There may be a surplus but charities do not and cannot make profits. it's all media hype. I have visited maintained schools and spoken to bursars who carry hundreds of thousands in surpluses which are undeclared and unnoticed because they do not get a statutory year end audit. The shock for some came on conversion when the appointed auditors who made them prepare statutory accounts, declare the funds in all accounts and actually state the surplus or losses.

In a prevous role, I took on a local authority conversion where the school was paying £375k worth of interest on refurbished copiers which would have cost £75k new. The school made a deficit of £500k on average every year. The local authority in question had at least 10 schools in which the senior staff manage to sell themselves inflated contracts including a £2m extension that never happened and no one picked up on it.

Noble may be referring to a time when schools did not have any purchasing powers. I woudl argue that the NUT has little knowledge of teh administration of schools to the extent that they do not represent the bursars or administrators.

While I am an antifan of nepotism, in the period it took me to get an OJEU tender sorted, an nearby independent school had built a new sports faciity and extended classroomsfrom scratch. The supplier is well know to them possibly related) and says to me "I can't afford to get it wrong or let them down. I have an investment in helping them make a name for themselves so i go the extra mile. Also, they know where I live". Maybe it's about getting people you know can do the job to do it. I dont promote this at all but I can see why you want someone you know and trust rather than someone who's paid someone else to write a bid.

In some cases, you may have to choose between having the best brains on the board and working with them. for example, the head of county supplies/a senior manager of a multinational/a renowned lawyer with experience which is valuable to the school or academy may sit on your board but should you stop ordering from them even though they are clearly the cheapest/best quality as a result?

One issue I have with charities running academies is that there are now multiple organisations to keep an eye on. Hasn't the workload involved in keeping an effective eye on them thus massively increased at the same time that money is being cut back and oversight is actually therefore being reduced, instead of stepped up? No more free SIPs for good or outstanding schools, fewer Ofsted inspections for these schools - yet these schools can go from good to awful at a frightening pace, and declining standards can actually be hidden for quite some time - until the relevant children have actually had several years of bad teaching and it's really started to show in the data so that it can no longer be fudged over.

finefatmama - in what LAs do schools not have to declare their surpluses? Our school has to declare any surplus to the LA every year and the surplus is not allowed to go above a certain amount (calculated on the basis of a formula). The final accounts are sent into the LA. Are you saying that lots of schools lie when they aren't audited?

rabbit stew - i mentored a few and visited some on conversion and have seen that firsthand. I didnt say school did not have to. they have seprate accounts like voluntary funds and keep it out of the returns to the LA in order to keep within the range. like academies and freeschools some have trading subs as well.

I attended a CIPFA accounting for academies course and there were many attendees who either had or were about to convert to academies in attendance. The course included a section on the fundamental differences betwenn the two. LA final accounts are different from statutory accounts. not worse just different. I am saying that the bottomline figure changes depending on factors like the basis of accounting and accounting policies used and depreciation method etc. changing from one method to the other will usually result in a change to the bottomline.

I suppose what i am saying is that all schools have their good eggs and their bad eggs whether maintained, independent or academy and being maintained is not a guarantee that it's all good and above board. there are local authorities that fail as a whole when it comed to support the education and wellbieng of their young people.