Academies

[KatharineH]

''The education secretary, Nicky Morgan, has vowed to “sweep away bureaucratic and legal loopholes” obstructing the takeover of as many as 1,000 struggling local authority schools in England and their rapid conversion into academies.''

''Today’s landmark bill will allow the best education experts to intervene in poor schools from the first day we spot failure. It will sweep away the bureaucratic and legal loopholes previously exploited by those who put ideological objections above the best interests of children,” Morgan said.''
As well as 'failing' schools, it would be for 'coasting' schools, I suppose those who are 'in need of improvement'.

I think that it is for ideological reasons that this government is seeking to take out every school from local authority control.

What do others think? Has your school been improved by being an academy? Or have you had other experiences?

You obviously haven't seen the EYFS profile throckenholt

Actually, resilience (also called "grit") is a huge topic in schools at the moment, with posters in classrooms, discussions about how to promote it etc. The problem is, saying these things should be promoted is often easier than working out how to do so. Some of them seem to be to some degree personality characteristics, and psychologists aren't even sure to what extent they can be "developed". Furthermore, if the way to develop them turns out to be to expose children to difficulty and struggle (which some have suggested is the case) you will get people arguing that this is wrong, because learning should be enjoyable and fun. So I think the issue is really quite complex and difficult.

Katherine - Schools ask for more money because employing extra teachers is easier than teaching well

Hmm - I think you'll find, caroldecker, that some schools ask for more money so that they can keep the better teachers, rather than stuffing the school full of NQTs with no experienced people to support them.

kestrel - yes, I'm sure resilience is a huge topic in schools at the moment. It doesn't feature in league tables, though, or discussion papers on whether increases of funding make any difference to schools! As to how much it can be affected by environment versus genetics (ie whether or not it is an inbuilt personality characteristic that is immutable): you could say exactly the same about IQ and anything else that is relevant to attainment in school and life in general. Yet we seem to be quite happy to weigh and measure some things and to judge schools by them, and not others.

"As to how much it can be affected by environment versus genetics (ie whether or not it is an inbuilt personality characteristic that is immutable): you could say exactly the same about IQ"

Actually, we know quite a lot about IQ, the extent to which education increases it, and (broadly speaking) how to increase it through education.

And we also do at least have some idea of how to measure the success of education in teaching children to read, write, do maths, and know something about the world around them. We can also compare schools that are similar and determine whether they are achieving broadly similar results in the above areas, or not. I suspect that is why "we seem to be quite happy to weigh and measure [these] things and to judge schools by them". But as I pointed out above, this is not the case with things like resilience. Even if everyone was keen to do so, we don't know how.

We never used to know how to measure IQ, either... And now that we do, I don't think skewing assessments by only paying attention to what you can put a number to is necessarily the way to create a successful, prosperous nation, which is what government is hoping to do when it creates league tables and exam expectations.

Or do you think the sole point of school is to get children to pass exams???

IMHO the point of state education is to produce the maximum number of economically active adults for the least money.

State funded education is brought in because its cheaper than dealing with the indigent poor.

The grammar / selective system is geared up to an employment situation that ceased to exist 30 years ago

All current politicians have diddly squat understanding of trades people : which is the correct outcome for 60% of GCSE students

I find it DEEPLY galling that 6th form colleges like Peter Symonds get 20% less funding per pupil than schools do.

But 6th forms generally only teach three subjects per pupil and do not offer PE and extra curricular activities and do not have to monitor playground behaviour etc.

I think TalkinPeace may mean that sixth form colleges get less per pupil than school sixth forms get per pupil because sixth form colleges need to pay VAT.

The school sixth forms will not be teaching and managing the the 16-19yo students differently to the sixth form colleges.

I never said studies show money makes no difference, twas soemone else but they all do show little difference in outcome.

There was an article in yesterday's TES ( saw paper copy so don't know if available on line, where it was saying that smaller 6th forms (eg like those in Richmond that have just opened up with small numbers) will no longer be viable unless subsidised by the funds form KS3-4

If they can make economies of scale, that has to be a good thing. And the gvt does have responsibility, via the DfE.
In Richmond, where there used to be an economy of scale by having a single 6th form college, school were all given vast amounts of money to build new 6th form units, which opened last year in a ablaze of publicity. Predictably, some were very undersubscribed, and most people expected that there would be a survival of the fittest ie very shortly there will be a flight to quality with just two or three schools (eg Waldegrave, Orleans, Grey Court) attracting enough applicants to be viable and offer a range of subjects, and the rest withering away.

camel see here

Throckenholt - of course that's how teachers teach in secondary schools! Try relating our subjects to things which interest kids? What an amazing idea! Why have we never thought of that before?

I'm an MFL teacher. Practically every teaching resource you ever see is in some way related to sleb culture, football, films, current bands, etc etc.
Faced with poor behaviour and apathetic or unmotivated kids, teachers are always trying to find ways to make learning more relevant and accessible to them. It's what we do. Well - it's what we try to do in between jumping through government hoops anyway.

caroldecker
But 6th forms generally only teach three subjects per pupil and do not offer PE and extra curricular activities and do not have to monitor playground behaviour etc.
What utter tosh.
6th form colleges offer sports and music and drama and arts and DofE
and many of the kids do 5 subjects plus general studies
and of course they have to monitor behaviour.

6th Form colleges get less money per student than schools do, and then have to pay VAT as well
to teach exactly the same as a school does.

Academy chains are opaque, unaccountable and are breaking the law by handing contracts to their chums.
But its bloody hard for anybody to complain about them because they have no transparency rules on them like LA schools do.
They pick tame auditors who will not ask nasty questions.