Gillian Keegan: how’s the ‘hot mic’ thing gone down with you?

[Crinklycut]

For my part, I don’t think it was very ministerial, and I do wonder how No. 10 all talk to each other these days (do they just swear all the time?) BUT she is a bit right, isn’t she?

The DfE have finally acted to make the public aware that their children are not safe in school. That’s more than anyone else in the Conservative party has done since they cancelled ‘Building Schools for the Future’ in 2010 and during their 13 years of government.

So how’s it gone down with you?

It was totally a choice. It was a choice to get more money that very often went into Chief execs’ pockets rather than into the school facilities and teaching resources and staff.

I totally disagree. My now CEO was very clear at the time that we didn’t want to become an academy but it was inevitable that all schools would be pushed that way and if we didn’t convert early we’d end up having to anyway but miss out on the early financial incentives.

Same for becoming a MAT. If you don’t set up one, you will end up taken over by one. Which is preferable?

A friend works at one of the last few LA schools, you may have seen it in the news - a bizarre downgrading to inadequate by Ofsted, a shady takeover assigned behind the HT’s back in a backroom deal with some unsuitable MAT with DfE links. Then a campaign by parents for more transparency led to a reinspection by Ofsted, an upgrade to good and the academy order revoked.

Anyone who thinks it was ever a free choice to academise is politically quite naive.

But your CEO as it turns out was wrong. Lots of schools never converted.

The vast majority of secondaries are now academies. Look at what happened to my mate’s school who tried to hold out.

The Tory target was for 100% academies and they have definitely been working on that.

Last White paper was talking about all schools being in MATs and they needed to be large MATS, certain number of schools, certain number of pupils. The Government want all schools to be academies

Could schools in a local area, say a county form a MAT and call it perhaps the Local Education Authority.

Why are posters against MATS and preferring LEA?

Is the layer of state involvement better?

Googled to see the pros and cons as it’s not something that impacts me much. Dc’ schools are in a MAT school. Seems they share stuff between the schools a fair bit

I just looked at full list in the trust, they are all schools with very good reputations.

@jgw1 I'm sure that is what will sort of happen, as Government want ever larger MATS and many MATs are struggling financially, so quite a few mergers happening already

@EasternStandard Im not sure it does in many ways unless you are the last LA school in Sheffield! They love being the remaining one. Other schools are doing ok being mats but what they lose out on is a dedicated architects/engineers contracts that LAs tend to have for their schools. Hence the heads and CEOs are responsible and some won’t know where to turn. They don’t have the back up from a LA. It’s their choice what buildings contracts they enter into but a single school academy is vulnerable and this is outside their expertise.

Quite

Cambridgeshire wanted to do this iirc.

Im not sure it does in many ways unless you are the last LA school in Sheffield! They love being the remaining one.

They didn’t love being rated Inadequate by Ofsted and they certainly didn’t love being handed over to a crap MAT without consultation, and forced academisation.

The govt certainly want rid of them. Then they could close the LA.

Pooling resources does make some sense. Most schools have no building expertise at all. They need consultants to do the job. They also are responsible for H&S. The buildings are part of this and they should know what state their buildings are in. Clearly a larger mat would be better placed to do this. Largely heads have little idea about buildings. Why should they? However the mat has responsibility. Just like any other employer who cannot run to the government.

Could schools in a local area, say a county form a MAT and call it perhaps the Local Education Authority.

Brilliant! @jgw1

I get your point about pooling resources and buildings within MATS and ensuring they have that expertise

Educationally ours seems to be highly valued and sharing how to do that. Why do people miss LEAs being involved

(not you but seems generally on thread)

@EasternStandard

Because the aspiration for MATS to share resources is

1. reinventing the wheel (this is what LAs offered)
2. a response to the deconstruction of LAs

If you have a MAT that is academically well thought of then you might like to enquire about how MATs are assessed - because the government don’t have any means of assessing the quality of MATs or of executive leadership. OFSTED don’t do it. And this means that there is no accountability.

The individual schools are inspected though?

Parents can see if outstanding or otherwise (although some are asking for that to be dropped)

@EasternStandard Ofsted do not look at how a school discharges it’s numerous legal duties. Keeping the buildings safe for one.

If we go back to LEA days, everything was under one roof. Our Education Dept had a buildings section. Heads went to them. The LEA had the County Architects team design schools. The whole LA worked together.

There’s no reason a mat cannot buy in these services but, as they don’t have a one stop shop, they need to think a lot more carefully about where they get expertise from. Given the schools are struggling, it seems they don’t have expertise available to them.

LAs also could be like families. Lots of excellent training, the nurturing of careers, away days ( anyone old enough from my coounty remembers trips to Fairyland!). Some, like Cambridgeshire really innovated. MATs are far more insular and self serving. And corporate. People from LAs had a wider picture and , yes, departments within councils worked with each other.

The death of LAs has also led to the decline of things like music programmes and county orchestras .

Schools have to buy into these resources (eg music centres) where they still exist. Other LA trading services were available but closed as they were not purchased. Architects disappeared a long time ago.

The mats have £millions for each school. It’s a decision for them to make about how they spend their money and discharge their duties. In practice over inflated salaries at the top!!

So I have just picked up my newspaper of choice, and there in the middle of the first page of articles is some number crunching. 440 years it would take to refurb all the UK's schools at the current rate.

(No I don't write for them).

Haha - fat cats in the LA. Have you looked at salaries against responsibility?

Academy CEO - between £130,000 ( 6 primaries, 2 secondary) - up to £275,000 in a large MAT (48 schools).

Assistant Director for Education, Skills and Inclusion, responsible and accountable for ( and not exhaustive) 120 schools, SEND, inclusion, place planning, early years settings, admissions, attendance, NEET, links with corporate landlord for school buildings, budgets, safeguarding in schools and held to account weekly and publically by elected council members - £90,000

Director of Children and Young Peoples Services, (£135,000) 300 schools/ 130,000 children - responsible and accountable for all of the above plus children’s social care, adult education, child health, safeguarding children 0-19 and care leavers up to 25.

No comparison.

Difficult to find school improvement partners as LA budgets are cut year on year by central government. My LA has to save another £30m this year.

The LA school improvement team has reduced from 120 to 20 in the last 8 years.

The root cause of the problems we see now...

How much has been saved through austerity? where did saved monies go? and how much has it really cost the UK?

Much like skimping on our own house mtce, short term savings, have much larger long term costs.

Austerity will be proven to have cost the UK far far more than that other magical cure, PFI, has cost us.

Just seen as part of a statement from the Prisons Association about the recent escaped terror suspect:

"No-one ever wants to see an escape from prison, but since 2010 this union has been saying: cuts have consequences. You cannot take out £900m from the budget and expect the prison service to operate as if nothing has happened."

The whole thing is falling apart. Austerity was a false economy and the government's chickens are coming home to roost.

Its amazing how something that appear to be too good to be true, always turns out to be so.