Re academies

[autienotnaughty]

Are academies worse as they are business run? My ds school became an academy a few years ago. It's gone from outstanding to RI . (Headteacher blames previous head saying problems were there long before she joined, she has been there at least 6/7 years. ) Since it's become an academy a number of long standing staff have left (I'm talking more than 50%) so it's largely NQT. They have also streamlined support staff, there's a morning ta in each reception- Y2 class but they finish at 12 and after that it's just a teacher with up to 30 children. Y3-6 no ta at all. This year's reception intake was 65 so they had 2 teachers and a relief teacher so 3 classes. But as of January they cancelled the relief and are now back down to 2 teachers and 5 of the reception children are now in y1.

Comparatively a friend works in a school that's not an academy and they have a ta in every class from reception- y6. Plus additional ta staff to work with groups for core subjects.

Just wondering are academies generally considered better or worse?

im no fan of academies either. However where LAs have failed to turn schools around, and governors have also failed, it is the case that schools will become academies. The governors should have been better and held the head to account. They could have stayed as they were if they were “good”. They had control of their own destiny.

Governors and staff frequently don’t know they are poor because they don’t evaluate the school effectively. They don’t see weakness so they don’t improve. Heads can also cover up weakness and ineffective governors don’t ask any pertinent questions. They just agree with the head. So ofsted come along and find multiple things wrong. However they had their opportunities. Lots of people don’t like change, but it’s avoidable. When the super head moves on if will all calm down.

They vary and just as there are good and poor maintained schools this is the same for academies. Often the cost to purchase LA services is more expensive than shopping around. There is no standard for governors and they are often out of touch with expectations and how quickly education has changed. No Ofsted outcome should ever be a surprise if you have systems in place to monitor and question provision. Losing experienced staff is not always negative if the results are not as expected. Without the background information one can't know if they were pushed or left from choice.

@TizerorFizz

The superhead actually moved on very quickly, probably because there was actually very little to address in a tiny special school of 70 pupils
The previous head was very clearly exhausted and ground down and needed to go for her own sake. They could just have replaced her

@Ted27
Well clearly the new head was a mistake but that doesn’t mean the governors should not have seen what the issues were and also the head. It’s the hardest thing for governors to understand what a failing school looks like when all they have known is the same head and don’t ask for data and dig deeper into what they are being told. I haven’t seen any school being forced to be an academy that was a roaring success.

The academy itself should have trustees, and they should all be neutral parties. They are the ones who make the most important decisions.

If the trustees are not neutral, I have been told this is a conflict of interest and you could pursue this further.

Academisation has been shown to have no real effect overall on the improvement schools make.
Generally good schools remained good, poor remained poor.
Unfortunately the government is still trying to force Academisation on all schools whether good or bad and were/are cooking the books to force it to happen.

@Postapocalypticcowgirl thank you I'll look into it

Good schools are not forced to do anything. @FrippEnos who is “cooking the books”? What do you mean?

TizerorFizz

The white paper that is currently on hold was forcing all schools to become academies by 2030.

As for "cooking the books", the government has repeatedly changed the goal posts for what schools must do to remain under LAs.

Currently schools can be forced to become an academy if they are not able to stay within their budgets.

Do you not find that strange given the governments desire to have all schools turn into academies and their underfunding of schools?

A White Paper is not law. Schools have not been allowed to set deficit budgets for eons. Decades in fact. Most schools are forced to be academies due to continued failings as reported on by Ofsted. Quite often problems persist afterwards. For many reasons. Often quality of teaching and learning.

Every single service is financially challenged. Being an academy won’t help but some LAs have poor oversight of schools too. Schools might want to be academies and they should be allowed to if it works for them. Some academies are good and the CofE ones are popular.

Where did I say that the white paper was law?

I said that it shows that the government are trying to force the remaining LA schools to become academies.

And yes budget deficits haven't been allowed for a long time but they also were not used to forced schools to become academies till recently.
The same with Ofsted inspections in that they were used to try and improve the schools but then moved to forcing schools to join academy trusts.

If a school wants to join a trust it can, but it shouldn't be forced too.

As you cannot set a deficit budget there’s no route to become an academy because you have!

Ofsted inspections don’t, in themselves, force anything. Poor inadequate schools force it on themselves.

However I’ve seen schools fail Dc for years and LAs and change of slt haven’t improved them. A new broom might. Quite often they don’t. I agree with that. However Dc deserve not to be failed. All Dc deserve good schools so alternative ideas have to be tried. One RI inspection never leads to a school being an academy. Years of inadequate and no improvement is not acceptable and Dc deserve better in any way that can be made to happen.

And HUGE CEO salaries - money that is coming from each academies budget.
Locally academy trust CEO job advertised -£145,000 - far more than an LA Children and Young People’s director - who has much more far reaching roles and responsibilities.
MATES MATS! We call them, all looking after there own, self appointed CEO’s ( I know a few), jobs for the boys.
A disgraceful waste of tax payers money, with no actual impact of improvements in our children education.
Divisive, poorly managed system.

But actually @autienotnaughty - thank you for raising this.

I'm shocked at how many parents just accept the Academy system or perhaps don't even understand what it means. We are losing democratic control, of our education system.

Also, the difference to you as an unhappy parent, a parent needing support - the number of threads on here, with complaints about schools and the answer is ‘go to the LA’ - oh no you don't, no LA to support you.

TizerorFizz

And yet academies have not proved to be better.

In fact some academy chains have proved themselves to be much worse. and with less accountability.

Yes, the lack of accountability is extremely worrying.

I agree about lack of accountability. However poor schools failing children year after year were not accountable either. Yes GBs were changed, and heads, but plenty were inadequate all over again. Academies are not always the answer. I agree about that but neither were many LAs.

I also agree that mat salaries are too high. They are sucking away good heads.

So what is the point of large system change if it isn't making a difference?

My LA - a significant number of academy inspections, taking place because of the backlog created by COVID. Academies have a three year grace period following conversion. ( please note no grace period in LA schools under a new HT or board - in fact one LA school inspected with a new HT six days in) and OFSTED are having to catch up.

Certainly we are seeing some levelling up in terms of OFTSED judgements where converted academies are being judged inadequate or RI as the trusts have not improved the schools or maintained standards. They are not making a difference, re brokering happening.

In primary schools there is not necessarily a huge change. Not that many primary schools are inadequate repeatedly and fail to improve.

All the secondaries in my LA are academies. Either by choice and a few forced. Some have been perfectly ok since being forced. Others have not. Both primary and secondary. It wholly depends on quality of mat. The biggest hindrance is quality of staff and SLT. That affects both LA and Mat. I’ve seen a mat give up and pass a school on. Whatever system is in use, quality teachers matter. LAs and mats both can struggle. The mat staff come from the LA schools anyway. They are not a separate breed of teacher.

The fish rots from the head down.

So what is the point of large system change if it isn't making a difference?

@MTIH the point is that it's now possible for the DfE to remove a school from a failing trust or LA and put it under new leadership. Before academies were invented (by Labour, by the way) local authorities had a monopoly on all the schools in their area, fir better or worse.

I get the bit about ‘removal’ - but system change of this scale isn't transferring to improved schools.

I get the bit about ‘removal’ - but system change of this scale isn't transferring to improved schools.

@MTIH, the original academies were aimed at encouraging company sponsorship of schools, to give them a new lease of life. They were focussed on improving schools that had been in the doldrums for years. The Government injected capital for rebuilding to help oil the wheels and make the scheme attractive for local authorities. Not all of the organisations that stepped in to sponsor schools were succesful - there were 2 in my area that were very unsuccesful because they wanted to run the schools in a certain way which fitted their ideology, but their ideology wasn't popular with parents. In the meantime, successful schools that wanted autonomy from their LA were allowed to convert if they wanted to, and the free-school policy allowed organisations to set up new academies from scratch. Many of these converter or new academies are very succesful, but some not so succesful. But all of them can be taken away from their trusts and handed over to other trusts if they fail. Nobody knows if the overall landscape would have been better if academies never existed - my view is probably not because some LA's were just sh#t. But in any case, academies do exist, and will continue to exist even if Labour get back in, so this thread is several years late to the debate. The biggest problem for schools now is not their academy status - that bird has flown - but their chronic lack of funding!