whats an academy ??

[loosinas]

my sons school have informed us in the most recent newsletter that the governers are discussing the school becoming an academy.. what will this mean in real terms for the school? many thanks in advance

As I understand it academy status means that the school runs itself and is no longer part of the local authority.

So it can set its own curriculum (not sure about admissions) and will employ its own teachers and staff which means that they don't have to be paid at the agreed rates.

I know the NUT are very against primary acadamies but the fact that the governors are discussing it doesn't necessarly mean anything - as a governing body should discuss it as its a big issue at the moment.

thanks thats really helpful.... have any primaries become academies as yet do you know ?

Not sure how many solely primary academies there are, but in Nottingham a(very large) primary has joined with 2 secondary schools to become a HUGE Academy-and they have plans to adopt 1 more primary into its fold too.
Their 'selling' point is once you join at 3 yrs old, you have a guaranteed place until you are 18, should you wish for it.

I don't know but I'd be surprised as I think the discussion phase has just started and there probably hasn't been enough time to go through the process of consultation and set up.

Unless your school is huge its likely to decide not to convert as it would mean essentially running the school like a business and some kind of manager would be needed to deal with the finance, personel and admin issues. I don't think many heads do this so would need an additional member of staff.

One option is for schools to group together and replace a head for each school with one head for all and then other professionals so the overall headcount doesn't change.

Its a very complicated issue and you're right to make sure you know as much about it as possible

That's interesting 3, cross post whilst I was typing. Is it one haed for the super school ?

In that situation I can see that there would be advantages for a child in not having to change schools

It totally depends on your LEA, whether or not it's a good idea for your school to become an academy.

Why is that indigo? Is it that a school in a bad LEA would be better off on its own?

The little reading I've done suggests that the extra costs for an individual school would be pretty high.

That's interesting - do any LEAs provide the central services for free?

However paying towards a central service is likely to be cheaper for an individual school than having to have everything on tap within the school.

An LEA has dedicated departments for everything - finance/purchasing/legal/training/HR and each individual school only needs to pay a relatively small charge for them.

Individual schools would be very exposed without that back up.

I don't work for an LEA btw and I'm sure that in some cases they get things wrong but on balance I think I'd prefer my DCs to go to a primary school where the emphasis is on teaching not running a business.

No LAs provide central services for free as such. The LA has to provide some services and deducts money from the funding received from central government in order to pay for this. Some LAs are very good and run efficient services. Some are inefficient and end up deducting quite a lot for services the schools neither want nor need. Just because a service is provided centrally doesn't necessarily make it cheaper than doing it yourself.

Some services are still centrally funded for academies. However, the academy receives the funding that previously went to the LA for many of the services it may need. It is up to the academy whether it pays the LA to provide the service, gets the service from another provider or does the necessary work itself.

On admissions, academies set their own admission criteria but they are still bound by the Admissions Code and the bulk of the work will be done by the LA, much as with faith schools.

prh - yes, some LAs may be inefficient but assuming an efficient one I'd be surprised if an individual school could source all central services as cheaply as buying in from the LA.

If things run smoothly and you have no HR issues or legal problems maybe you could do it for the same amount but it just takes one incident to blow the budget for many years.

I'm not saying that this would be the only deciding factor but on a practical basis I'd be very interested in seeing how it will work.

Do you know whether, if a school decides to go to an acadaemy, there will be a clean break one midnight or will there be some kind of handover period? The logistics for an individual school look extremely complex.

If the LA offers a service the academy wants at a price the academy is willing to pay the academy is free to buy that service from the LA. And remember that it isn't all central services - some will continue to be provided centrally.

From registering an interest in becoming an academy to completing the conversion process takes at least 3 months. Once conversion has been approved in principle the school can make preparations in earnest starting with legal documents relating to governance, land transfer, etc. A funding agreement will be produced and signed which specifies the date on which the school will become an academy. The period from signing of the funding agreement to actual conversion allows the school to put financial systems and contracts in place, register with exam bodies, etc. There is a lot of guidance around all of this on the Department for Education website.

Thanks prh - I can't imagine that my DCs' school would want to convert but its very interesting to find out more about it. I'll have a look on the DoE website.

I'm aware that there are secondary acadamies but it seems such a huge change for a primary that I wonder how many will actually decide to go down that route.