Adacemy - what is the problem?

[Huggybear16]

I'm not clear on how an academy is different to a non-academy secondary school.

I have googled this and have found only descriptions of what academies are. The academy is state-funded but independent of the local authority. That part I understand.

However, why does this make it worse? I attended an academy for all 6 years of secondary school and did well. I wasn't aware of any difference between the schools that had "academy" in the name and those that didn't.

Can someone explain to me why an academy is thought of as worse? What problems does an academy face that others don't?

It is not necessarily worse. There are academies that are deemed to be outstanding by Ofsted but there are also schools that were deemed to be inadequate by Ofsted that have been forced to become academies as part of a multi-academy trust (MAT). I suspect that people that have experience of "forced" academies will tend to think of them as being inferior schools but reality is that you need to look at each school in its own right not make blanket assumptions

The dcs' school became a converter academy i think it was called and then set up a small MAT with a few primary schools i think mainly. The essence of the school hasn't really changed. There's a lot of long standing teachers which might be why?

Thanks @admission @Cordyline1

What is a forced academy? How was it forced? Who by?

What differences would you notice as a teacher going from a non-academy school to an academy school? Or if the school you worked at became an academy?

I'm going into teaching (career change) and am embarrassed by my ignorance of this.

Academies have more freedoms. The main ones I can think of are a) they don't have to follow the National Curriculum and b) they don't have to employ teachers on the school teachers' pay and conditions document.

When schools are inspected by Ofsted and they are rated Inadequate they might be forced to become an academy. They are removed from the Local Authority and given to a Multi Academy Trust to run. The budget goes to the Trust. The school is administered by The Trust. There is a Head and it still has teachers but pay can be determined by the MAT. As can the curriculum. They have greater freedoms.

Academy converters are usually good schools that wish to join a MAT and leave the LA, or be a MAT themselves.

You won’t see differences from the outside and probably not inside! The Academy school might be great. Many academy converters are. It might have continued to struggle and be no further forward. It might have improved out of all recognition.

I think the Trust in an academy is important. There are some set up by the heads of a group of schools - so people who know about education and how schools run. Others are set up by charities and may well have a real dedication to turning schools around or reaching out to deprived areas. Others are set up by business people, some of these are philanthropic - but others have a more business based approach. And some seem to be asset stripping.

A local school was forced into becoming an Academy and the trust was part of a for profit education group. They did some cosmetic stuff (new name, tried a different curriculum) and it seemed to work for a few years. Then it went into special measures, the trust either dropped it or control was taken from them. It is now part of a Trust with other local school, and they are working to turn it around (but it still struggles with the fact that "middle class" parents don't want their children to go there.

No school is good unless the management are good and continue to develop and improve the school. Good teachers need to be recruited and retained. Academies and LA schools need the best teachers but the struggling schools often won’t be able to recruit the best. It’s definitely more of a challenge to turn around a badly struggling school than a merely coasting school, but schools with all backgrounds of pupils can certainly be good and continue to be good regardless of whether they are an academy or not. Two academies who are converters near me are RI again. They managed Good, converted, and slipped back again. Academies are not an answer for every school but some thrive in this model. Again it depends on leadership. The schools I know of had great heads for 5 minutes and then they left.

There are academy chains that are like branded schools (Oasis, Harris, Ark, United Learning and so on) some of whom are better than others (Harris in particular is supposed to be bad to work for).

Then you have multi academy trusts which are also groups of schools run together, they tend to be local to each other and possibly keep their own identities. They’ll share resources like finance and HR departments, and possibly teachers who will teach at more than one school in the trust.

What happens to your school when it becomes an academy depends entirely who takes it over and why.

In some areas, the vast majority of schools are academies and you may have limited choice about where to change. As a trainee teacher, your ITT provider will have some oversight, which should help prevent any problems whilst training. It's unlikely, for example, that you'd be sent into a school where the national curriculum isn't closely followed. Academies can also be very different from each other and some may be more similar to LA controlled state schools than other academies.

In all honesty, during your day to day on ITT it won't impact you that much.

Forced academies are those where they've had previous bad ofsteds and have been forced to convert to an academy. It's very unlikely you'd be training in a school that's recently converted for this reason as schools in special measures can't usually take trainees and many can't recruit Nqts.

Academies are not required to employ teachers. Most do, but some use non-qualified non-professionals and/TAs to ‘teach’ lessons.

Academies are not required to employ teachers. Most do, but some use non-qualified non-professionals and/TAs to ‘teach’ lessons

Really? Is this true?

Yep. Lots of schools near here use hltas to teach. For head of year they get a day's ppa, the class is taught entirely by hltas.

And if a teacher is on training, off sick, long term leave... all hltas.

Lots of English/reading groups taught by hltas.

There’s an ‘unqualified teacher’ pay scale.

Some schools hire in unqualified staff with the promise of them being trained and qualified at some later date.

We have many academies run by Trusty name above. They are run to generate profit, do not have accountable local governance, use non qualified teaching staff (and not necessarily in training) and are known for less able children children to 'disapoear ' during inspections and for children to be prevented from taking qualifications they have a chance of failing so the schools performance in league tables is not affected.

None of the above is in the child's best interests.

I hate them, sadly both primary and secondary schools DC's are at have become academies but both in v local MAT, which I think works better than the 'super' academies.

Yep - academies are free to hire whoever they like, basically.

The idea was sold that if, say, an outstanding professional historian or scientist fancied going into teaching, why should they need to spend a year doing teacher training? If, for example, they were going to teach lovely mature sixth formers?

The reality is that unqualified teachers are cheaper & more easily replaced. So if you're a school that is already...challenging...to work in, & struggles to recruit/retain qualified teachers, it's a cheap fix if you need a warm body ASAP in front of year 9 Maths.

I'm not knocking people who teach without a PGCE - I'm overseas now & we have loads, many of them brilliant. But we can pick & choose (generous expat package, big pool of talented trailing spouses of qualified teachers who are very happy to learn on the job).

We also have a heck of a lot of Harris escapees! Takes awhile before they recover from the PTSD of working for Harris but then they tend to be fearsomely efficient & good at classroom management. If you can survive teaching in some of these MATs, you can probably be pretty impressive anywhere else.

The reason academies do not have to employ qualified teachers is because academies are technically independent schools.

But even in maintained schools, unqualified teachers have been around for years. My mother in law was one in the 1970s. She was originally employed to teach drama, but ended up also teaching English.

They are run to generate profit

No they are not. The body running an academy must, by law, be a charity. A charity cannot be run to generate a profit.

are known for less able children to 'disappear ' during inspections and for children to be prevented from taking qualifications they have a chance of failing so the schools performance in league tables is not affected

This happens with all kinds of school. It is not unique to academies.

It's the lack of accountability that worries me, at least we have some input into who runs the local authority, with academies, parents have no real power at all.

Wasn’t there some speech about how academies could employ the inventor of the Dyson as their science teacher because he would be a better science teacher than a teacher would be but schools couldn’t employ scientists as teachers but now with the academy system...they could.

Which obviously means they can just employ anyone to teach anything.

In practice, its hltas or recent graduates or anyone who fancies a pop at teaching... who gets employed as it's cheap rather than some world expert!

Academies run their own budgets so teaching staff salaries are often looked at. One school near me nearly all staff are under 30 and recently qualified. It was intentional :(

There's a lot of stories of people who are older or more experienced being managed out of schools for cheaper staff...

Academies save money as they don’t have to use qualified teachers. In reality it means that support staff are much cheaper as they are not on local authority pay and conditions - so no defined benefit pension etc. This is where they really save money.

There is no local governance to speak of, so you better hope the Trust is on the ball. No need to take parents into account (no parent governors), and school get limited say over finances.

Every secondary in my LA is an academy. I've worked in 3 while they were academies, one of which converted while I was there. From a teacher's POV there was no change. All the ones I know of use STPCD.

I'm assuming you are talking about Academy chains? Because the schools in which I have worked (converters) do manage their finances and have LGBs complete with parent governors.