Academy trust with local secondary school?

[DorisIsAPinkDragon]

Hi All,

I have a parent 'consultation' tonight regarding the probability possibility of creating an academy trust with dd's primary and the local (well performing) secondary school.

I have been looking back through old threads for issues that I should be concerned about, to establish how things will work etc etc however most of the threads do not relate to academy trusts of primary and secondary schools.

My points so far are:

Provsion for SEN, My dd whilst not having SEN does have additional medical needs, so I will look into how they plan to meet needs such as these.

I also plan to ask what they feel the disadvantages of the trust status will be- If they can't see any I will be very

So not much...

Does anyone who already has experience of the academy system have specific pointers I need to be aware of/ raise as potential issues.

Academies bill is very clear that all the SEN provision stuff applies equally to academies as to other schools.

Ok good! will not bore them with the SEN stuff then, the threads I read were old...

The academies bill may be clear but the execution of it is NOT.
You need to check what YOUR academy providers track record is.

I was on a thread with a poster called cory - what she was saying about the school near her is dire - and current autumn 2010.

prh is spot on about legislation issues but we all accept that how it works in practice can leave a lot to be desired.

I'm anti academy because they are not accountable.

Have been to the meeting and tbh I am quite postive atm. They are planning on very few changes to the basic teaching functions (improvements in the number of classes so no split classes) as a result of a longer term investment which can be bourne by the larger senior school. The more mangerial procurement and policy functions and budget will be done on a joint basis.

However the school will retain it's seperate identity and ethos. One of the mum's at the meeting already has a child at the college and she was inmpressed with how smooth the transistion had been and how little had actaully changed.

I am supporting the change as without the change to the funding the only otions for future years would be to reduce the number of classes further resulting in more split classes, and a more disjointed education for my dc's.