Primary school applying to become an Academy, any experiences out there, good & bad

[Urbanvoltaire]

Local primary school is planning on becoming an Academy, has anyone gone through this process & if so what are your thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

I'm afraid your faith that maintained schools in your LA are not managing out any part of the community is misplaced.

Let us assume for a moment that your LA happens to be the one with the lowest SEN-exclusion rate in the country - it isn't because that is not one of the nine LAs. In that LA, 42% of the excluded children have SEN and SEN children are roughly 4 times as likely to be permanently excluded as non-SEN children. If an academy had these kind of figures it would be accused of managing out SEN children, but the maintained schools in every LA in the country have figures at least as bad as this and no-one seems to mind.

Are you happy that at least 10 primary schools in your LA consistently have less than 60% of children reaching level 4 at the end of KS2? That children in these schools consistently achieve less progress than children in similar areas elsewhere? And that these schools were also failing the minimum standard set by the previous government? And, indeed, that most of these schools have been performing like this for over 10 years?

By the way, the same nine LAs that have a high proportion of underperforming primary schools also have a high proportion of underperforming secondary schools. And I note that the last government in 2008 identified the same nine LAs as having high proportions of underperforming schools and found that the LAs concerned were not taking any meaningful action to address the problem. But perhaps you think Ed Balls is guilty of the same ideological rhetoric as Michael Gove.

I have not said the schools in your LA are failing. But they are underperforming. That seems to me to be beyond dispute. You can argue about one year's figures but the picture has been so consistent for such a long time that it seems to me impossible to argue the point.

I don't have faith that all maintained schools in our LA aren't managing out any part of the community at all.

In fact, I said that some local schools are (nor ours) are doing exactly this a few posts above.

(not ours) that should have said.

prh47 That was the 'reason' we were given. A girls' grammar school was not thought to require access to the LA's SEN services, so why contribute to the pool?

Julia - You still haven't understood how this all works, as a result of which you are completely misinterpreting what the school has told you.

The LA still receives funding from the government for ed psych, SEN assessments, statementing, monitoring SEN provision, PRUs, etc. The LA has to provide these services free of charge to all the schools in the area including academies. So this school does have access to these services regardless of whether or not it uses them.

The academy does not receive any money for ed psych, SEN assessments, etc. because those things are provided by the LA. If it had to provide those services itself it would receive more money. Instead, its contribution to these central services is taken away by central government and given directly to the LA.

To illustrate with some figures (which will be wildly inaccurate but give the general idea), imagine that the government pays grants totalling £7000 per pupil to your LA and that the LA deducts 10% of that for central services of all kinds and passes on £6300 to the schools. Of the £700 deducted by the LA, let us say that £200 is for ed psych, SEN assessments, statementing, etc.

When a school converts to academy status it will receive its funding direct from central government. But that doesn't mean the school will be getting £7000 per pupil. It will get £6800 per pupil at most, with the LA still receiving £200 for each pupil at the academy for ed psych, etc. In fact the academy will get less than £6800 per pupil as the LA will still receive funding for certain other central services that remain their responsibility such as co-ordinated admissions.

The academy is effectively paying £200 per pupil to the LA for SEN services. It isn't paying that money directly but that is how much its grant would go up if the LA was not providing SEN services to the academy.

The important point is that the LA has precisely the same amount to spend on these aspects of SEN services as it would have had if the school had not converted to an academy.

The only thing the LA may be providing which the school will not have access to once it becomes an academy is SEN support services (I say "may be providing" as many LAs don't do this, leaving it up to individual schools to do it themselves). As it has to provide its own support services the academy will receive some additional funding based on the number of pupils it has with SEN. If there are 100 pupils with SEN in the LA and only one of these pupils goes to this school, the school will receive 1% of the funding that would otherwise have gone to the LA for SEN support services. The amount of money available per pupil for SEN support services in the other schools is therefore exactly the same as it would have been if the school was not an academy.

Other schools are not losing out on SEN services in any way as a result of this school becoming an academy.

prh47 You may well be right, in which case the Head is mistake. I just discussed it with dp and his recollection is the same as mine; we were told that as an Academy, the school could keep money which would otherwise go to the LA to provide services which would not be used by 'our' pupils. What is the alternative explanation?

Yes, the school can keep money which would otherwise go to the LA to provide services, but that is NOT money for SEN services as I've outlined above.

For example, an academy receives funding for repair and maintenance of kitchens as it takes over that responsibility from the LA. If its kitchens don't need any repairs or maintenance this year they can either spend it on other things or save it up so that it is available for future years when they do need to do some work. An academy is also free to use any contractor it wants for this work rather than sticking with the LA's approved contractors. Many academies have found they can get the work done cheaper elsewhere with no loss of quality.

It is also the case that quite a few LAs provide services to their schools which the schools don't actually want or use. The maintained schools have no choice - the LA simply takes money from them for these services. Academies, however, don't have to buy these services from the LA unless they want them and are happy with the price the LA wants to charge.

I would also add that SEN funding for academies is a little complicated. There are a lot of myths floating around and a lot of people don't really understand how it works. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the head thought the school was going to receive money for SEN services when this wasn't the case.

That's interesting, prh47. Actually, I find it far preferable to our previous understanding which I considered v selfish.

prh, please see my point above regarding pupil mobility and 'underperformance'. This is quite a simple point and not one I have the patience to explain again except to say these particular LAs have had consistently high levels of pupil mobility for some years.

The other issue is the treatment of staff, deregulation, undermining national agreements etc

academyblues - I understand your point about pupil mobility but I am not convinced. I know schools with higher levels of pupil mobility than you mention and with a significant proportion of pupils arriving as non-English speakers or with English as a second language which nonetheless are able to comfortably exceed the floor standard every year. Nor am I convinced that it explains why your LA has been identified by both this government and the previous government as one which has a high concentration of underperforming schools. It also doesn't explain why the previous government identified it as an LA which was not taking any meaningful action to address the problems with its schools.

You seem to be suggesting that the children joining the school in KS2 are all below the expected level for their age and that it is therefore acceptable for the school to fail to meet the required standards.

I care passionately about the education of the nation's children. I think it is unacceptable for any primary school to consistently have 40% of its pupils transferring to secondary school without the skills to allow them to fully access the secondary school curriculum.

JuliaScurr - I'm not sure what deregulation you refer to. There is no reason why staff should be treated any differently in an academy. It is true that academies are not subject to national agreements on pay. They can pay their staff more than the national agreement and some do. They can also pay new staff less than the national agreement provided they can still attract staff of the appropriate quality. They cannot easily reduce the pay of existing staff as they are protected.

academyblues - Sorry to come back to this straight way but 50% pupil turnover in KS2 is not unusual in urban areas. Yes, there is a link between high turnover and performance. I am not disputing that. But, as an example, I know of one school where 20% of the pupils have refugee status, less than 25% of the pupils who start in Reception are still there in Y6 and which, for at least one year, saw an average of 10 pupil changes a week with the head teacher having to draw up new class lists every weekend. This school has around 60% of its pupils on FSM. Despite all this they are now managing to consistently exceed the floor standard.

Surely we should be trying to get all schools up to this standard rather than making excuses for why they can't get there.

Or maybe we need not be lumping together communities with 'refugee status' or those on FSM but think about the challenges to formal schooling which particular social groups face?

Yes, most of the children who join our school in KS2 are well below expected levels. The vast majority have had several breaks in their education as they are from traveller communities.

Btw, I've just returned from a meeting where the LA confirmed that there were no school from LA on Gove's original 200 list.

Every primary head in the borough has signed a letter to the Secretary of State opposing primaries being forced to become academies because it's an unproven way of delivering school improvements, saying that schools are being arbitrarily targeted and they believe that the decisions are politically motivated.

I sort of think they they know more about the realities of teaching in the borough that either Gove or your good self tbh.

julia, are you referring to the weakening of local and national negotiating frameworks for staff pay, terms and conditions when schools convert?

This is a large part of the reason that the NUT are actively campaigning against academies.

I have repeatedly said that I don't know whether or not academies are the right solution for your LA. I wouild say that calling it an unproven way of delivering school improvements is at odds with the evidence to date but that does not mean it is right for your schools.

My only argument with you is that you seem to think it is ok for your LA's schools to continue to produce poor results and for the LA to do nothing about it.

Our governors' training session on academies scared the pants of us because it seems that the school would have to pay iadditional sums into the pension funds of non-teaching staff.

For a small school, it sounded very risky.

academyblues - I did not lump refugees and FSM children together. I described the demographics of the school to which I was referring.

I object to you continually bracketing me with Michael Gove. I have repeatedly said that I do not know if academies are the right solution in your area. Since Ed Balls said that your LA has a high proportion of underperforming schools and neither the schools or the LA were doing anything to address the problem, perhaps you should bracket him and Gove together.

I note that your schools have not adopted your approach of arguing that there is no problem. They seem to implicitly accept that there is a problem but don't think academies are the right way to solve it. However, they don't seem to have a alternative solution. And since these schools have been consistently underperforming for at least 5 years, most of them for 10 years or more, I would question whether they know how improve their schools. I am not saying that Michael Gove or Ed Balls (or any other politician) has the right answer either.

choccyp1g - If you are already members of the Local Government Pension Scheme that will not be affected. After conversion any new non-teaching staff are eligible to join LGPS and will be enrolled automatically but can opt out within the first three months if they wish. The academy can also pay into private pension schemes but that is unusual for an ex-maintained school.

The employer's pension contributions for non-teaching staff come out of a maintained school's budget. The same is true for an academy. However, whereas it is normal for all maintained schools within an LA to pay the same pooled rate based on the staff profile, the rate for an academy will be calculated separately using the academy's staff profile. That can result in the academy paying more or less than maintained schools in the area.

Unlike the Teachers' Pension Scheme, LGPS can be in surplus or deficit depending on investment performance. Currently most LAs are in deficit. The academy will take on the deficit relating to its non-teaching staff on conversion. This will be taken into account in calculating the employer contribution rate. Normally the calculation assumes that the deficit will be paid off over 20 years.

Does that answer your question?

Well, Ofsted are of the view that good support has been provided by the LA since the school was put on a notice to improve and that progress targets have been met.

There is no evidence of improvement or not in primary schools forced to convert as there haven't been any, so I'm not sure what evidence you're referring to.

I bracket you with Gove because you so often repeat his rhetoric. I can't face another discussion about the value or not of a retrospective analysis with changing goal posts.

I don't think I've gone so far as to say that there are no problems in education in our LA. Actually, attainment is steadily improving with the gaps between the schools in poorer and affluent areas narrowing. My point is that education is somewhat broader than being taught to pass tests in English and Maths and that I'd rather my children's education wasn't used as a guinea pig to justify Gove's ideological agendas thanks very much.

Thanks prh47bridge. Yes, it answers my question, but doesn't make me happy.

If some academies end up paying a higher or lower contribution rate for pensions, surely that gives those schools an unfair financial advantage or disadvantage over other schools.

How does that square with wanting all children to be given equal opportunities?

Is there are risk that as time goes on, schools will be looking at candidates pension profiles rather than their CVs?

academyblues - I have never knowingly repeated any of Gove's rhetoric. In fact more of the information (and some of the actual words) I have put forward comes from his predecessor and echoes things he was saying a few years ago, so I am probably guilty of repeating Ed Balls' rhetoric.

I would remind you again that these schools were classified as underperforming by the last government using the old goalposts, so the changing goalposts are a red herring. I would also say that I would hope any government would want to make the goalposts more demanding over time so that we can stop our slide down the international educational league tables.

I understand your complaint about retrospective analysis but find it hard to support you given the clear evidence that these schools have fallen below the floor standard for a long time and were regarded as doing so throughout this time. If they had been regarded as achieving a satisfactory standard at the time and were now being reclassified as unsatisfactory I would agree with you, but that isn't the case here.

The evidence of academies improving standards is clear. However, I agree that it may not apply to the new academies. They have a number of differences compared to existing academies which may or may not have a bearing on the outcome. Evidence from other countries suggests they should succeed (and I am not referring to Sweden) but there is no guarantee that their experience will be duplicated in the UK.

Even if primary school academies without external sponsors do improve standards I am uneasy with forcing schools to convert. That is part of why I am unsure that this is the right course, although I agree with Balls and Gove that just carrying on with no change isn't an option.

Yes, of course education is broader than passing tests in English and Maths. But if children fail to achieve the basic standards in those subjects they will struggle to access the curriculum (to use some education jargon - sorry).

And by the way, if the standards in schools in your LA are catching up with the floor standard that may allow them to resist conversion to academy status, especially if they have had new management teams as well. I think that is far more likely to succeed than writing letters calling the changes politically motivated (even if they are - something of which I am not convinced given that support for (and opposition to) academies seems to run across the political spectrum).

choccyp1g - Pension costs are a small part of the total cost of employing someone and non-teaching staff costs are only a small part of a school's total costs. The difference between the amount an academy pays in pension contributions for non-teaching staff as against what it would have paid as a maintained school is likely to represent significantly less than half a percent of the school's budget.

Calculating the employer's contribution using the pension profile is what happens for equivalent schemes in the private sector. I have never come across an employer who even considers a candidate's pension profile, let alone uses it as a significant deciding factor in determining who to employ.

Forcing conversion is politically motivated.

I'm relieved that the 58 heads of primaries had the courage to actually say it.