Cotham School an academy? What would this mean?

[Motherfunster]

Meeting tonight seemed to suggest it was a done deal, and it was polite formality by the management to tell us about it.

What are others experience of this process and the pros and cons from it.

Bumpadebump

Anyone...? anyone....? voodoo economics...(Ferris Bueller's Day Off quote)

I think it depends a lot on the school. Presumably Cotham is doing it because it got an Ofsted outstanding and so the whole process is simplified - in their case, I wouldn't have thought it would make much difference, as they are a well-functioning school already. It will just give them more independence from council/government control so they can manage budgets etc themselves.

The Ridings High School (Winterbourne) - also a well-thought-of school with good results - turned into an academy a year or two ago, and from what I've heard the only real differences as far as parents and pupils are concerned is that they introduced a smarter uniform and have formed a federation with another school in Yate.

It's very different from being a failing school that has to be 'rescued' by an outside operator and relaunched as an academy, like what used to be the Portway school in Shirehampton (now Oasis) - there was much more of a shake-up as part of the process. And of course when the Cathedral School and Colston's Girls turned into academies there were big changes because they used to be private.

But I would guess that unless the Cotham head said they were planning big changes (new specialisations or anything) it won't make much day-to-day difference.

BTW the Ridings is now 'Winterbourne International Academy', part of the Ridings Federation, if you want to look it up.

Cheers exexpat

It shouldn't make a difference to children already at the school but academies can set their own admissions criteria. Bristol City council are currently carrying out a consultation about admissions for Sept 2012 (see council website for details). This still lists Cotham as a community school which suggests they are keeping things the same at the moment. However would recommend that parents do attend the meetings and find out what is going on and ask questions.

A lot of Cotham parents who went to the meeting didn't think the consultation process was thorough and that the financial case had been made - seemed to be a lot of scaremongering about redundancies without any good financial figures. We have set up a website to collect information and views of parents:

www.cothamschoolfuture.co.uk

Dear expat
Just for the record academies are still answerable to central Gov. In effect central gov become the local authority for all academies across the country. There is no quality assurance from local authorities, which is one role that LA's have carried out.
Since LMS almost two decades ago schools have been in control of their own budgets, funding for items like students with special needs has not been ring fenced and heads/governing bodies have been able to spend the majority of the schoolbudget as they see fit.
My main concern is that currently as a parent if you make a complaint against a local authority school and are unhappy with the outcome you can ask the LGov Ombudsman to consider the case. There is no similar mechanism for academies at the current time.
The degree of parental representation in academies is down to the membership of the governing body and the trust behind/above that.
While the school may be fortunate to have a competent leadership team and governing body at this time employees and governors will move on and this will not always be the case.

Cotham became an outstanding school as a community school under local authority control. So why change? We have not been given any good reason.

Will there be much change to the school? Yes I think there will be - not necessarily straight away but over the next few years. Academy schools have to have a Trust Board but they do not need to have a governing body. Currently we have elected parent governors but there will be no parent elected to the Trust Board. Parents will have no voice.

If you have a problem with the school or if your child is excluded you have no right of appeal beyond the Trust Board unlike now where you can go to the Local Authority and ultimately the Ombudsman. If you have a head with autocratic tendencies there are no checks and balances. School admissions policy can be changed withoput recourse to parents.

If things go wrong community schools fall back on the help from the local authority. Academy schools have no safety net.

Heads automatically seem to assume there is a financial advantage to conversion but that is because they do not cost replacing the local authority support fully - they ignore significant potential liabilities from pensions, maternity pay and redundances, and significant risks such as litigation. Why else would the Dfe say no school will be better off as an academy.

Being a democrat and an ex-chair of governors I prefer parents to have a real voice in the school. Academy status will slowly grind away that parental involvement.

I have been working with the head of another school yet to announce that it's going academy (but it is - so so much for consultations).

Basically the mentality seems to be that of rats from a sinking ship. The more schools that pull out of LEA control the poorer the LEA service and the more the remaining schools have to pay for it.

As an Academy this particular school would be £450k better off and can pool resources such as HR etc with other academies.

Personally I'm not pro academy. It's definitely a step back towards a two tier system.