Primary schools into academies

[academyblues]

Regular but name changed as my geographical area will be obvious to some and I don't want to out myself.

It looks like my dc's primary is going to be made into an academy, presumably from Sept 2012. It wasn't on Gove's original list of 200, but there seems to have been some behind the scenes negotiations with the LA.

I know that no-one knows how primary schools will function as academies as our children are the first in this particular educational and social experiment, but can someone give me some ideas of what to expect?

What exactly is the process? How are the head/sponsor appointed/decided on? Is there any mechanism for parents to have a say in the school's specialisms or to try to hold on the the aspects of the school that are good, of which there are many?

The plan is for a very sizeable proportion of our borough's (Haringey) primaries to become academies over the next couple of years, hence undermining the LA infrastructure sufficiently for the rest to be forced to convert, it would seem.

Like most parents, I just like a decent local school - is this possible with academy status.

Rabbitstew, I think that your point about schools in deprived areas who might need more services but who find no-one can provide them is very scary.

As a small rural school with over 1/3 of the children on the SEN register and a large number from a specific ethnic minority for whom we have a much-needed specific LEA advisor, we are 'heavy' LA service users for our size. If we are forced to become an academy, there is no way that we could buy the level of service we currently get - we would thus fall further behind as our children would get even less of the specialised support they need, the school's results would fall further, school becomes smaller and gets even more of the children 'with nowhere else to go' etc etc.

scarevola - The "minimum floor standard" is that 60% of children reach a basic level in maths and English by the end of KS2. This is higher than the standard set by the last government. Around 1400 primary schools fail to achieve that standard. The 200 schools being forced to convert to academy status have all been below that level for the last five years. I believe from Gove's public statements that he regards the minimum floor standard as unacceptably low.

academyblues - Governing bodies with parents will definitely not be disbanded. The rules are designed to encourage academies to have more parent governors. A maximum of one third of the governors can be staff, there can be no more than one LA-appointed governor (and there doesn't have to be an LA governor at all) and there must be at least two parent governors. As the new academies don't have sponsors, the remaining governors are likely to be parents or community governors. But the main point, as I understand it, is to make sure that parents have more choice as to where to send their children to school, hence giving them more power.

Complaints, suggestions, etc. go to the governors, just as they do for a state school. Academies have been running for many years, well before this government came to power. The processes around them are well established.

pipsqueak and rabbitstew - LAs are not being forced to stop providing services. And any sensible LA will try to sell its services to academies before it makes all its staff redundant. If they are unwilling or unable to supply services to academies then yes, academies will have to look elsewhere. Many of the existing academies are in more deprived areas. They have not faced any shortage of people wanting to provide services to them, often at much lower prices than the LA used to charge. Remember that academies in deprived areas receive more money per pupil than other academies. Any sensible service provider is going to want to go after that market.

What Michael Gove is doing is broadly what Tony Blair and his associates wanted to do, which is why so many Blairites support it. Was Tony Blair pursuing an anti public sector dogma too?

Actually, prh, the school I'm talking about hasn't been below 60% for the past 5 years. It was above that this year, for example.

As I said in my opening post, it wasn't on the original 200 list, but Gove seems to have altered his focus to specific local authorities.

In what way squeezing funding and removing schools from their remit is encouraging local authorities to provide services rather than make their staff redunant, I don't know. The existing academies have to-date operated in a totally different environment to the likely future one, which will be one in which LAs have opted out of providing anything of note. As for Tony Blair - yes, I think he was pursuing an effectively anti-public sector dogma. What makes you think he wasn't?

academyblues - If this school is achieving the required standard I presume it is not being forced to become an academy but is doing so through choice. The list of 200 has not changed as far as I am aware and the government is definitely not forcing successful schools to convert.

rabbitstew - If I lose an income stream I can either give up or find an alternative source of revenue. You seem to be assuming that everyone is going to give up. The guidance from DfE to schools regarding the services for which they become responsible on conversion starts by telling them that they "are free to buy back the services from an LA". That sounds to me like a pretty clear signal to LAs that they should be trying to sell their services to academies.

If you think Tony Blair was anti-public sector I am not going to debate that with you.

prh, were you aware of the content of the original list? It very pointedly wasn't made public knowledge, and attempts to obtain it under the Freedom of Information Act were not successful.

The current situation is that the school is on a notice to improve, though achieved above the floor target in 2011. One third of Haringey schools are ear-marked as Gove has now decided to target specific authorities.

A couple of these did have poor SATS years in 2007/08 but then had a change of head and have improved dramatically. They're still going to be classed as 'failing' under Gove's retrospective analysis.

The dividing line between 'failing' and 'successful' is one that the government is exploiting for their own political agenda, it would seem.

I agree that failing schools cannot be allowed to remain failing, but I'm not sure that selling them it the answer.

Prh47bridge - yes, that's what I was saying my earlier posts.

Interesting point about role of government in this. The academy system and buy-back of services from LAs was definitely a Labour policy. So if it's an ant-public sector move now, it must have been then as well.

But academies are under direct, centralised Whitehall control. Fine for now, but what if a government of a different hue came in. There would be State control of schools as has never been seen before.

academyblues - The DfE say they won't publish the list as they don't want to stigmatise the schools involved. However, it is possible to work out which schools are involved by looking at SATS results. If a school has been below the floor standard for 5 years or more it is one of those affected, so I've worked out which schools in my area are affected. I note that the Haringey Campaign Against Academies seems to be focussed on Alexandra Park which has chosen to convert. Are you saying there is more going on than that?

scarevola - That is one of my concerns. I can't think of a way round it if you want to take schools away from LA control but I remain concerned.

prh, the 'below floor standards for 5 years or more' was Gove's 'standard' for the next 500 schools,and then increasingly more as he continues to shift the goal posts ie CVA being changed to VA.

There are many more than 200 schools who meet that criteria nationally.

The 200 schools were simply described as 'the worst', with no description of what that meant. The school I'm speaking about was above the floor target in its KS2 SATs in 2011.

So, yes i would say that there is much more going on than that.

At least secondary schools have been informed in advance when the goal posts will shift.

A couple of local primaries with new heads who have turned the school around are still ear-marked, as a retrospective analysis indicates that they are 'below standard'.

Hasn't everything already been centralised more for all schools, whether in or already out out of LA control? I thought OFSTED now got quite a lot of the info on schools direct that LAs used to collect from their schools and deal with in between inspections, which seems to me another signal from central government that they want LAs out of the picture and are quite happy with all the redundancies?????

academyblues - I am sorry but you are wrong. I actually reread Gove's speech this morning. I also double checked with some stats I can see and information on the DfE website. The definition I gave is correct. There are approximately 200 schools that have been below the target standard for 5 years or more. Around half of them have been below the standard for 10 years or more. The next 500 schools have been below the standard for at least 3 years out of the last 4. So it is possible to identify both the 200 and the 500 from SATS scores.

The 500 are not being forced to turn into academies. All that is happening there is that LAs are being asked to draw up plans showing how they intend to improve these schools.

And the reason the government is reverting to VA is that there are real doubts as to whether or not CVA is a statistically valid measurement. Many schools and other education experts have real concerns that CVA is not really measuring progress in delivering the curriculum to students but is actually measuring other factors.

My question about "more going on than that" was relating specifically to Haringey. You seem to be saying that Haringey is being targetted and schools forced to convert to academy status. However, HCAA only seems to be campaigning against the conversion of Alexandra Park, a school which has chosen to convert. So is there more going on than that in Haringey?

I am also correct, the school in question was above the floor standard this year, so it's inaccurate to say that it has been below the target standard for 5 years or more.

HCCA is campaigning about the voluntary conversion of APS. There was an article in the local paper about 2 LA schools which are going to be converted with 10 other identified as in the near future. There has been no consultation about this, and a campaign hasn't yet been lauched as it's only a few days since the press release and there has been no official announcement.

I think it's very likely that the other 500 schools will be converted, once the bill is through the Lords and enough LAs sufficiently undermined enough.

Indeed, isn't Gove's idea that all schools become academies?

I did not say you were wrong on that point. I have now found the article to which you refer which claims that 10 schools will be forced to convert with two of them (Downhills and Coleraine Park) ready to change. Note that this is not 2 converting now with another 10 to follow, this is 2 converting now out of 10 converting in total. The 2 converting have already been given "notice to improve" so they are definitely in the 200 schools as, from the sounds of it, are the other 8. I don't know what years statistics are being used to determine which schools are told they must convert. It is obviously a concern if a school is told it must convert because it is failing when it has actually already turned itself around.

The Bill currently going through Parliament makes very little difference to the law on academies. It removes the requirement to have a specialism and allows for 16-19 academies to be set up. It brings the admission arrangements of academies within the remit of the Schools Adjudicator and makes some other minor tweaks. I don't see anything in the Bill that presages a wholesale conversion to academies, nor is there anything in the Bill that undermines LAs.

Gove wants most schools to become academies, but that isn't quite the same as saying he wants all schools to convert (pedant mode off).

prh47bridge - you sound like a politician, yourself. It's the effect a politician's policies have that tells you what he wants, not what he says. Either that, or he is a very stupid man who doesn't realise what he is doing.

What I see happening is that once a school becomes an academy, the others in the area feel pressure to follow.

In our area all the secondary schools have gone academy but the primary schools aren't keen.

Our chair of governors is convinced that governors will take on far more responsibilties if a school becomes an academy. I.e. you could be personally bankrupted if the school you are governing fails financially.

Academy Blues, you are correct in that governments (and parents) can't see past raw sats results. Our school has the local authority autistic unit as part of it. Their sats results feed in to ours and bring our average down. We are then judged on it!

The govs can't be personally bankrupted! They have a liability of £1 or something like they.

rabbitstew - I am not a politician. My point is that you are judging by what you think the outcome will be and ignoring any indications that the actual outcome will be different.

academyblues - Having looked at the article in the Hornsey Journal again, I wasn't entirely correct. It seems that Downhills and Coleraine Park are in the 200 and are being forced to convert to academy status. The article says the other 8 schools (not identified in this report but should be possible by looking at SATs results) cannot be forced to convert so they are presumably part of the 500 rather than the 200, in which case all that his happening is that Haringey is being asked what they are going to do about it.

builder - I agree with you about parents. However, the government is looking at both raw results and value added, so a school like yours will come out better than it would on results only. Whether they've got the balance right is another matter.

No, of course they can't be personally bankrupted. They can be blamed when a school messes up its finances and half the teachers are made redundant, though. And without a LA overseeing what a school is up to and providing advice when needed, there's a lot more scope to mess up, which is a big responsibility for unpaid volunteers who aren't required to have any relevant expertise beyond the fact of having a child or two at the school.

prh47bridgeSun 16-Oct-11 11:16:59... There is absolutely no reason why the extra funding per pupil received by academies should disappear in future. It is not extra money. It is part of the amount that would previously have been deducted from the school's funding by the LA. The startup funding is relatively small - a one off grant of £25,000 which may not even cover the cost of conversion...

If all the schools become academies, how can they all get "extra" money out of the same-size (or smaller) pot?
If most of the schools become academies, and those academies get extra, the remaining LA schools will be receiving the scrapings of a very empty barrel.

Academies don't get extra!

Academies may not get "extra" (except those that benefited from Government incompetence earlier in the year), but LAs are getting less because of the academies, therefore it is an increasingly empty barrel for the schools left under LA control - less bulk purchasing power and less money to pay LA employees.

What exactly do LAs purchase in bulk?

Yes, LA staff are getting made redundant left, right and centre. Some of that is to do with council budgets getting slashed across the board, and some of that is to do with academies.

But surely LA staff getting made redundant shouldn't be our concern? Isn't education about the pupils?

Some of our LA staff have quite the LA and set up their own business, which now all the schools use. If you're good at your job there's every reason to think that you can sell your services back to schools or academies, with or without being employed by the LA.

Schools working on their own will have to employ someone to look around for the cheapest electricity provider, gas provider, buildings maintenance provider, legal adviser, who to use to do their HR - eg maternity provision calculations, PAYE, redundancies, terms and conditions of employment and salaries - external SEN provision, etc, etc. That's time spent away from focusing directly on children's education, requiring a dedicated business manager to do it (multiplied across all schools that's a lot of business managers unless schools club together to form their own mini-authorities, as I've already mentioned on here, which would be at risk of serious fallings out as schools wax and wane in their fortunes and therefore in the desirability of their being connected with other schools) and a level of detail most unqualified school governors would shie away from wanting to have anything to do with. Some of the responsibility some schools might want to take on, but a lot of it is a hassle only indirectly related to children's education.

"But surely LA staff getting made redundant shouldn't be our concern? Isn't education about the pupils?"

If those pupils need specialists with particular expertise in order to remove / reduce some of the barriers to their learning, then the absence of LA staff DOES affect the pupils.

The point is that if we, as a small school with lots of pupils with very high needs (School action + rates nearly 5x the national average in some year groups), had to 'buy' visits from all the specialists who come in to work with our children, we could not afford it. The current system at least has a measure of 'help dependent on level of needs not level of resources'.