We will free schools from LEA interference to be micromanaged from Whitehall

[TalkinPeace]

All this guff about coasting schools

All the bilge about under-performing schools

So LEAs have been declared unfit to oversee their local schools
but clever people in Whitehall can do the job

and what happens when a sponsored academy starts to coast
or even fail

When will politicians realise that parents' do not give a flying about competition or profit

they want

• results
• accountability
• governance
• transparency

at every school in every town at at every level

if parents could relax thinking that every school was properly governed, life would be better in the UK
but the "consultants" who provide "free advice" to the DFe would lose a fortune ...

What happens? Pretty much the same as when an LEA school coasts or fails.

But centralising academies more directly to Whitehall control is exactly the sort of control thing that i think characterised many actions of the Blair years.

@TalkinPeace while the FORMAL position is indeed micromanagement by Whitehall for Academies and Free Schools, as the FORMAL powers of the Secretary of State much greater than that of a local authority, in PRACTICE the DfE simply does not have the resources to supervise all those hundreds of Academies and Free Schools.

The issue is really that if a school is being run by reasonably competent, well intentioned and basically good people, then any system of supervision will work. Its when things go wrong that the system is tested.

AND , unfortunately, AuntieStella it turns out its not the same as what happens when an LA school coasts or fails, where an LA can (should) take decisive action, and if the do not THEN the Secretary of Stae can step in as back stop, these days with an Academy order (which is a whole different discussion...)

Look at this example

www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2015/02/efa-takes-action-at-high-profile-cuckoo-hall-academies-trust-but-questions-still-remain/

Our LEA has a fantastic record at turning schools around : so much so that the team has been put in charge of sorting out education in other dysfunctional areas.

But the DfE has taken more and more schools out from under their umbrella and left them to coast because they have no oversight or proper governance

as Ofsted start to do their rounds, more and more of the converted academies will be found to be no longer outstanding and most definitely coasting
so will be handed to chains who are even LESS accountable.

I was talking to a colleague who has resigned from the board of an academy chain because he could not cope with their lack of ethics
and he is ex PwC

I completely agree and find it incredibly disturbing. There is no complete vision of the way that the education system will look at the end of these changes and a great deal of political rhetoric as to why these changes will deliver improvement. Meanwhile LA departments are being dismantled and increasing pressure is being applied to schools to convert and revel in their new freedoms. What a crock of shite!

Have a look at this...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-32763335

what happens when a sponsored academy starts to coast or even fail

I've explained the process several times and also pointed to academies that have been through the process. And yet you continue to peddle this line.

There is no complete vision of the way that the education system will look at the end of these changes

There is a very clear vision. You may not agree with it but it is perfectly clear how the government want the education system to look. There is a lot of evidence from other countries that taking schools away from LA control and giving them more freedoms delivers better results for children, particularly for disadvantaged children. That is what the government wants.

"There is a lot of evidence from other countries that taking schools away from LA control and giving them more freedoms delivers better results for children, particularly for disadvantaged children. That is what the government wants."

Which other countries? Sweden is not a very encouraging example, and charter schools in the US have a mixed record. If the LEA is weak and/or the academy leadership team is excellent then yes, academy conversion can be a great thing... but the idea of forced conversion is rather a concerning one.

As a parent I much prefer the maintained schools my dc attend to the academy. There feels more accountability and less going off and doing what they want.

Which other countries

Plenty but I'm not looking out the details right now. There was an OECD study on this not long ago that concluded that schools succeed best if given the freedoms that come with academy status in the UK.

prh
I know you believe but the evidence is crumbling around you.

I know people with Children at St Michaels : it is a situation that a well managed education policy would never have allowed to happen.

The schools that succeed with the freedom to choose are those that have the choice of who they allow in the door.

The profit motive and lack of governance is not compatible with universal access to education.

You know which school my kids have attended : they are now an academy and have just had their worst ever ofsted : they are coasting - but the results are still (on paper) excellent - so the rot will be allowed to set in.

And please explain how an academy chain that extracts profits for shareholders can ever do better for children than a provider that reinvests every penny

No, it is not a case of belief. It is a case of evidence.

There is no profit motive in free schools. And the evidence of other countries is that the profit motive IS compatible with universal access to education however much you may wish it otherwise.

No academy chain extracts profits for shareholders. They are all charities. Every single one of them.

Academy status is not a universal panacea. There will be failing schools whatever the system. But, having initially been sceptical, I am now of the view that the weight of evidence from around the world is too great to be ignored. Yes, you can find examples where this approach is failing just as you can find examples of people who have smoked 40 a day without ever getting cancer. But overall schools perform better if they are given the freedoms that, in the UK, go with academy status.

How much of academys' initial 'better' performance is / was due to the additional funding that they were given - funding that has now dried up?

It will be interesting to see how the situation develops as school budgets are squeezed and academies work on the same budgets as LA-controlled schools, though of course sometimes in much, much better buildings, whose upkeep will not provide such a drain on school resources as is the case for some dilapidated LA schools, who could have done with some of the millions given to build new academy buildings....

academies'

No academy chain extracts profits for shareholders. They are all charities. Every single one of them.
Substance over form.
The charity owns the school but happens to contract all services from companies that are profit making
and controlled by the charity trustees or their affiliates

You are naive and deluded if you think that people are going into running schools with multi million pound budgets out of pure altruism

the fact that academies have been exempted from the LA transparency code speaks volumes - bearing in mind they are 100% funded by taxpayer money

the fact that academy chains manage to have swish head offices and overseas jaunts is "rent seeking" and nothing else

Academy schools are "charities" in the same way that Winchester College is a "charity"
a nice tax free umbrella to extract cash in other ways than direct profits

The charity owns the school but happens to contract all services from companies that are profit making and controlled by the charity trustees or their affiliates

Not true. If that was happening a criminal offence would be committed. It is true that some academies have purchased some services from profit making companies controlled by individual trustees but they get most of their purchased services from companies and individuals who are not associated with the trustees in any way. And of course community schools also pay profit making companies for supplies and services.

You are naive and deluded if you think that people are going into running schools with multi million pound budgets out of pure altruism

Really? Please come and tell the governors of my local community schools that they are not acting out of pure altruism. Even better, try saying that to the governors of the community schools in your area. Are you this cynical about all charities?

academy chains manage to have swish head offices and overseas jaunts

Because, of course, no LA ever spends money on swish head offices or overseas jaunts for councillors. Oh, hang on...

Academy schools are "charities" in the same way that Winchester College is a "charity"

Do please tell us who is illegally extracting money from Winchester College.

You are ideologically opposed to changes to the current system. You therefore passionately defend a system where the most reliable predictor of children's performance is parental income.

I am not interested in ideology. I am interested in what works. I see that giving schools the freedoms that go with academy status in other countries helps to improve performance overall and particularly for the most disadvantaged members of society. For that reason I support academies and free schools, but not uncritically.

Please do cite some of this overwhelming global evidence. I notice that the countries topping the most recent international educational rankings were not those where academy-style 'freedoms' are likely to be given out. It seems to me to be a flawed policy dictated by ideology rather than evidence or indeed experience. How about having an education minister who's actually worked in a school? And in fact I don't really think that the vision was or is coherent. Some of it is about ideology - private enterprise must trump socially funded endeavour - and some seems to be about cost saving (pension liability , LA services)

I notice that the countries topping the most recent international educational rankings were not those where academy-style 'freedoms' are likely to be given out

This just shows your preconceptions. According to the OECD Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Finland, Estonia, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Canada, Poland and the Netherlands all give a high degree of autonomy to their schools. These countries/regions dominate the PISA top ten for Maths, Science and Reading.

private enterprise must trump socially funded endeavour

All academies and free schools are run by charities. That is usually classed as socially funded endeavour.

Financial autonomy is widely practised in those countries? I haven't time to read all the OECD reports but I'm pretty sure that Chinese and Singaporean schools are not all shopping around for services to get best value.

Schools don't need to become financially independent siloes in order to practise autonomy in the classroom. There seems to be a muddling of terms here.

There is a big difference between some of the 'charitable' set ups operating schools currently and a co-ordinated socially cohesive model where every child has an equal opportunity. I certainly know of some academy chains where the proportion of disadvantaged children seems very low when compared with surrounding schools - but I suppose this could become the case when schools can set their own admissions criteria. Even the idea that no academy chain would be allowed to become as big as an LA has gone by the wayside - and there is currently no mechanism for inspecting academy chains, though that may change.

There is limited unbiased data on the efficacy of individual academies vis a vis LA controlled schools. There has been some analysis of the performance of academy chains versus local authorities, and what do you know? There are good chains and bad chains, good LAs and bad LAs.

This link is to an article with a nice scattergraph comparing school improvment in academy chains and LAs: www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32038695

This article about the findings of the Education Select Committee is also interesting reading: www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30983081

And, depending on how much time you've got, this looks at another aspect of the findings of the Education Select Committee concerning control and monitoring of academies and free schools: www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-29219757

Financial autonomy is widely practised in those countries?

In many, yes (and you may be surprised about which ones do practise this). But the basic freedoms that seem to matter are around determining their own curriculum. Competing with other schools in the same area for students also appears to be important. I think the evidence that financial autonomy is important is weaker.

Just for clarity, community schools are also largely autonomous financially and have been for decades. The difference for academies is that the LA is not top slicing their funding for various services.

I certainly know of some academy chains where the proportion of disadvantaged children seems very low when compared with surrounding schools

That is certainly true of some academies (and also, sadly, some community schools). In some cases this is a continuation of the status quo before the school became an academy. In others it is due to policies pursued by the academy. The pupil premium is intended, in part, to address this by making it financially advantageous for schools to take on disadvantaged pupils.

There are good chains and bad chains, good LAs and bad LAs

Of course there are. I have never said otherwise. Whatever system we use there will always be underperforming schools. It would be great if we could get all schools to perform well but no-one has yet invented a system that achieves that goal. What I don't like about the current system is the fact that GCSE performance can be predicted by parental income. That means we are failing the poorest and most disadvantaged children. Somehow that must be fixed.

By the way, in interpreting the scatter graph it is worth remembering that a high proportion of schools in academy chains were underperforming before conversion.

I don't agree with Tony Blair on much but one thing I do agree with is his statement that what matters it what works. I want all children to receive a good education regardless of their background. That must be the goal.

But you don't need a academy programme to allow schools to determine their own curriculum. That is a red herring. And, believe me, I know all about the funding arrangements for community schools. Academy chains also top slice for services as LAs have done. Academy chains in many cases also top slice to pay very high senior salaries. Schools still have to find all the services that the LA was providing out of the top slicing. If they are part of a big academy chain the chain will perform the function of the LA with regard to services but if they are on their own they will have to source them elsewhere.

prh
I believe in governance, oversight, transparency and accountability.

I believe that every parent should be able to choose their local school safe in the knowledge that it is well run and gets good results for its kids.

The Academies programme takes us further from that utopia not nearer to it.

Why are they allowed to not publish full details of what they spend taxpayer money on when LEA schools still have to?

Why are they allowed to produce consolidated accounts that hide the spend per pupil per school?

And please, your faith in the Charity Commission is greater than their own faith in themselves.
They have no resources to oversee anything.
LOTS of charities do LOTS of dodgy things.

In my work I try to shine a light on it.
Most people pretend it does not happen.

But you don't need a academy programme to allow schools to determine their own curriculum

I agree. However, many LAs have historically used control of community schools to restrict the school's autonomy in this regard.

I believe that every parent should be able to choose their local school safe in the knowledge that it is well run and gets good results for its kids

I believe that too. Sadly LA control has failed to deliver that. LA control has delivered a system where parental income is the best predictor of GCSE results. Where the most disadvantaged children get the worst schools. This must change.

Why are they allowed to not publish full details of what they spend taxpayer money on when LEA schools still have to?

Because they are not public sector organisations. They are in effect contractors supplying services to the government (although the treasury has, somewhat perversely, insisted on imposing some controls as if they were public sector organisations). Other contractors providing services to government also are not required to publish full details of how they spend their income even if it is entirely derived from the taxpayer.

Why are they allowed to produce consolidated accounts that hide the spend per pupil per school?

Every set of academy accounts I have seen either states the spend per pupil per school or gives you enough information to derive it. However academies do not have to submit CFR data so it doesn't appear in the performance tables. And I accept that there may be some sets of academy accounts that do not give this information. Again, this is because they are not public sector organisations.

They have no resources to oversee anything

Really? Perhaps you should tell them that. They investigated 1,972 operational compliance cases in 2013/14. And of course academies are also overseen by the EFA and Ofsted. If criminal offences are committed the police can get involved.

I have never (despite your repeated statements to the contrary) claimed that the oversight is perfect. There is no known system for preventing fraud. It happens in all types of school.

prh47bridge, I really admire your patience and logical argument in the face of blatant strawmannery and ad hominems.