Every school to be an academy?

[CamboricumMinor]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35814215

Apparently this is expected in tomorrow's budget. I'm sure this isn't going to be a good move for school staff but what about the children? I'm not convinced at all.

Or they could make you cover the promotion for nothing if you are ups. Or just not cover the head of dept job.

'I'm just about to come off mat leave back to a department where the hod is pregnant and the other staff member is supply. Doesn't that put me in a better bargaining position to say, get a promotion because they clearly need me back?'

But you would be in this strong position whether it was an academy or not? Are you talking purely monetary promotion or taking over as hod? Also (just thinking out loud), on the flip side, what if while you'd been on mat leave they'd employed a really excellent cover and didn't need you back. Would your rights still be protected in an academy?

If academies are businesses

They aren't. They are charities.

Teachers will have all pay and conditions removed. Academy chains can insist on longer hours etc.

TUPE applies to existing teachers when a school becomes an academy.

Because no academy chain will want to take them on. No money to be made.

Academy chains are charities, not businesses. Some small schools are academies already.

The academy chains are private companies. So your child's school could end up being run by Coca-Cola or Microsoft.

Absolutely not. The academy chains are charities so they are third sector enterprises, not private companies. By law every academy trust must be a charity.

They would, yes - maternity is pretty well protected as a rule.

However, let's just run with that hypothetical situation but an LA maintained school: the HT decides he doesn't want the returning teacher and he wants the person who had done the maternity cover. Don't think for a second he wouldn't be able to get the returning teacher out in a matter of weeks if he chose to do so.

They won't be private schools as in independent schools, just under private control. I (school governor in school doing just this)envisage all the schools who haven't joined MATS already (and believe me schools are scrabbling to get into a MAT of their choice,with similar ethos and values) will be picked over by the private chains, so those quickest and with most clout politically will get the best (ie most potentially profit making). Schools' managing chains could be at the other end of the country, have no knowledge of local issues or needs. No choice over appointments, or current contacts and terms and conditions. And you think getting into the school of your choice is bad now, think about schools/chains being able to impose their own entry conditions.
I'm grateful that my DC will be finished school by then and I'll be close to retirement, but gods it's terrifying for the future.

I really don't understand this very well. Surely SEN children will still be protected by law and that's enforceable by the legal side.

They're protected by law on the basis that local authorities have education departments and have a whole structure around providing for SEN - admittedly not necessarily very well, but at least it's there. If LAs aren't running schools, and have no powers within schools, I can't see them maintaining education departments. There is also little point in imposing duties on LAs about provision for SEN when they can't enforce them as they have no say in how the local schools are run: if they give schools money for 1:1 support and the schools choose not to provide it, what will an LA be able to do about it? Yes, they can take the money away, but the child will still not be getting support.

Going back up a bit, home, I hope you're right I really do, but I find your trusting innocence naive. Twenty years ago we might have said things like 'of course no government will start charging £9k a year for universities'. Back then they were free and £1k debt was a fucking big deal, now it's normal for youngsters to start off in life with £50k debt if they want any chance of decent employment prospects. Believe me, at a time when you coukd buy houses for £15k and could get a mortgage even on low wages, people then would be horrified and appalled if you picked them up and dumped them in our time now. Just over 20 years. We might also have said that of course no one will start removing all means of surviving off people and happily watch them die, but benefit sanctions deaths are happening. Many people claim they aren't. I could find various other examples of how, if you heat water gradually, an animal will stay in it until it is boiled to death.

As someone else said, the private sector taking on public services actually find that they have always relied pretty heavily on public infrastructure and when it's not there they struggle to make ends meet. And the private sector is about profit, not about public good. The whole point of this exercise is to divest the state of expenses and allow private profit, so do you think the state will then provide the difference? Firstly teachers pay and conditions will hit the floor, then numbers will be cut and class sizes will go up, then they will start asking for 'contributions' as some schools already do. In rich areas they will get adequate extras, in poor areas they won't. And there you have it, a two-tiered system requiring parental financial input which most people 'that matter' will claim, in the absence of any privatised media interest in the poor, is not happening.

'I'm just about to come off mat leave back to a department where the hod is pregnant and the other staff member is supply. Doesn't that put me in a better bargaining position to say, get a promotion because they clearly need me back?'

Not necessarily, if they can recruit an unqualified teacher as a HoD.

guerre I think it was a chain but not certain on that.

prh, I assume you don't contend that academy chains are not run on a business model? As has been pointed out, the fact that an academy chain is a charity is no bar to connected businesses making money from them, nor indeed is it any bar to commercial salaries being paid to chief executives and the like. No academy chain operates out of philanthropy.

What will this mean for home education?
I'm concerned on two counts - the right to home educate for those who want to, will it be undermined?
And who will oversee HE kids - safeguarding?

I'm also very bloody concerned for my own state educated children and all their peers. This is only going to widen the gap between the old Etonian wankers running the show and the rest of us.

Re the SEN issue, I think it's already firmly established that this government hate people with disabilities. I am not letting myself think about what might happen in future.

Absolutely not. The academy chains are charities so they are third sector enterprises, not private companies. By law every academy trust must be a charity.

Eton is also a charity.
Have you ever worked for a large charity? Lots of corruption and high salaries.

The best hope at this point is that the private companies themselves start to balk, because they can't afford to run public services. That they then start to recognise the value of them as infrastructure and the power of state spending and start to back us. That they realise that all privatisation has achieved since the 80s is, oddly enough, massive public debt and an increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer people. God knows our government listens to no one else. The worst is that the 'charitable foundation' arms of the big multinational conglomerates get involved, asset strip us, and abandon us for china and india to start the same cycle there and there is nothing left here to rebuild with.

None of what I have seen from academies around here makes them appear at all charitable by any 'person on the street' standard, the word, concept and meaning of 'charity' must have evolved.

People hear charity and think that it's all done out of the kindness of people's hearts not to line their own pockets.

bungo 20 years ago only 20% or so of school leavers went to University. It's because New Labour decided that this should go to 50% (and thereby devaluing the degree qualification) that Universities coukd not cope were it not for charging. I actually don't mind the charges for Uni. I also do not believe that any government could actually do what the doom mongers here predict. It's political suicide

What I read here is fear of change, tinged with a certain political outlook that would object to any proposals made by this government that threatens entrenched practices. I make no apology for having a more positive outlook, and if that makes me innocent and naive then so be it.

If I have understood correctly, academy's are Not charities, but non-profit making companies. They appear to be registered with companies house- local MATs and secondary academy's are anyway. Not su they are all companies or not.

Secondly- don't the buildings and land remain owned by the council and are leased to the academy??

If you start from the premis that Local Authorities have had 100 years to get the delivery of state education right, then it's easier to understand why the government want to change things.

Some of the posts on this thread imply that the current LA led model of state education is a successful utopia - yet other threads on MN make it clear that is far from the truth.

There are failing LA schools, there is a lot of wastage, and teachers are already leaving in droves, is disingenuous to suggest that the Academisation agenda is responsible for that.

The not-for-profit sector has always been far more efficient with money than the local government sector - and the Academisation agenda is part of a larger government plan to redirect funds from the inefficient public sector to the more efficient third-sector.

And, the free-school model will still be available, as far as I know so parents/ teaches can remain in control of their schools if they want to.

Homes do you know any state school teachers? Isn't it a little ignorant to ignore what the majority of educational professionals are saying? ( is Homes a politician or politicians wife as before!?)

Most poor people do mind those charges, but yes, the increasing requirement for university education is a problem. It's fast becoming a part of compulsory education, so I really don't see how you can think that 'necessary', 'compulsory' and 'fee-paying' are exclusive terms.

I do have a certain political outlook, yes, and it is opposed to the ideological 'privatization is always good' political outlook of the elite. Because it is invariably good for them alone, not the rest of us. Their's is also a political outlook as is yours, don't dismiss evidence on the basis that it is politically motivated, because it all is.

I wouldn't mind, but the naivety and selfish blinkered greed of so many people is selling all of our childrens' future into their hands.

Who WANTS longer school hours? The £1.5 billion which is supposed to fund after 3:30 activities. Will it help some working parents? DC have no demand for more after school clubs.

Why not £1.5 billion spent on higher salaries & more teachers for core subjects, DD's secondary is short of math teachers. Address some of stress the teachers already have rather than ask them to do more. Local 6th form runs on a constant deficit. Oh silly me to think fixing those situations makes more sense....

I assume you don't contend that academy chains are not run on a business model

Any large charity is run as a business. However, a charity does not have shareholders. Any surplus must be retained within the charity and used for the purposes of the charity. Unlike a business a charity is not generating profits for its owners.

the fact that an academy chain is a charity is no bar to connected businesses making money from them

It does not completely prevent a connected business making money from it but it severely restricts the ability of the business to do so. It cannot simply syphon off any surplus. It can act as a supplier to the charity but the trustees must, if challenged, be able to show that any payments are in the charity's best interests and reasonable for the services provided.

nor indeed is it any bar to commercial salaries being paid to chief executives and the like

A charity can indeed pay its employees whatever it wants. However, there are restrictions on its ability to pay trustees (the equivalent of a company's board of directors) and people or businesses associated with trustees. Unlike company directors, trustees cannot in general be paid just for being trustees. They can be paid for doing other work for the charity under certain conditions but only a minority of the charity's trustees can receive such payments.

No academy chain operates out of philanthropy

I would dispute that given that one academy chain was set up by someone who has a long history of philanthropy in the education sector, most of them are independent (i.e. not related to any business) and none of them distribute their profits.

Have you ever worked for a large charity? Lots of corruption and high salaries

I have never worked for a large charity but I have been closely associated with a number of charities of all sizes. Yes, the chief executives of many large charities receive high salaries but generally below the salaries paid to private sector chief executives controlling organisations of similar size. As for the "lots of corruption" allegation, all I can say is not in my experience. I won't say all charities are squeaky clean but there is no reason to believe there is any more corruption in charities than there is in the public sector or the private sector. I have encountered corrupt individuals in charities. That is not the same as saying the charity itself is corrupt. There may be corrupt charities but I have yet to encounter one. There was a thread on this subject recently.

The property one is complex and depends on who owns the land, sometimes the deeds are transfered, others are done on long leases. This explains it better than some of the mass hysteria - www.teachingtimes.com/news/academy-conversion.htm

If academies and multi-academy trusts were proven to improve education and outcomes then I would be all for it. However the evidence simply isn't there to support this. It is going to cost millions to convert the schools and when school budgets are being squeezed. Schools where I live are being forced to take extra classes simply for the income so they can try and balance the books with no extra staff. (Both academies and LEA schools.)

The universities can afford it. Many have surpluses. I would be really interested to see a break down of where fees go as many students are not getting value for money (9k for 3 hours a week!)