Primary is changing to ACademy status, what if anything will change?

[LovesBloominChristmas]

Met with tge head of the primary I want dd to go to. It's fantastic and very popular but is changing to academy next year before dd attends. Does anyone have any experience?

Tia

Every year more and more schools are becoming an academy.

Almost always they are converting because they'll get more money.

Absolutely nothing could change (besides who provides their payroll, and fixes their broken windows etc)

or quite a few things could change.

But the likely scenario is he's doing it for more money and nothing will change this year.

As a parent you'll never find out all the ins and outs of the politics of the school. If you like the HT and you like the school you'll have yo trust him. Over this decision, and many hundreds more.

There is a report by Machin & Venoit (2011) looking at City Academies which compares things like salaries, class size, results, intake
I found this bit interesting

moving to a more autonomous school structure through academy conversion generates a significant improvement in the quality of their pupil intake and a significant improvement in pupil performance.

I'm not particularly political, but it seems to me that this Govt is quite anti Local Authority control over schools and in order to get rid of what it sees as "loony left" ideas is trying to get rid of Local Authorities altogether by incentivising (? not sure if there is such a word) schools to become academies. Currently, schools have a % of their income sliced off to give to LAs to pay for centralised services such as ICT support, payroll, HR etc. Also to pay for resources such as specialised teachers who will come to to advise on children with behaviour problems, children with EAL, children with ASD, pre-school counsellors, children with SEN. Also, curriculum advisers who provide training for staff. This is based on the school's income so currently some schools are subsidising the services provided to others.

So a headteacher may be thinking that he/she doesn't have any children with EAL, ASD, EBD etc and has very wise and experienced staff, so in fact this money would be better in the pocket of the school than the LA. In my LA, nearly all the secondary schools (which is where most of the LA money came from) are now academies and LA staff are very thin on the ground indeed. So it's a bit like a domino effect - which is what the Govt wants ... it will get to the point where it makes no sense NOT to be an academy. The last Tory Govt did something similar with Grant Maintained schools, and one of the first things Labour did in the late 90s was to get rid of them. I'm thinking Gove is trying to get to the point where that's not possible.

So in terms of your individual school, they will get some extra money at the start to help them sort out all the legal bit. The money that would have been given to the LA will go directly to the school to buy in services. They may have to employ extra admin staff to cope with this. They will be a little more free in terms of the curriculum they offer (but the curriculum is being reviewed anyway). Day to day for the children things should not change that much. But even if the school ring-fences budgets at some stage the head may someday have to face the fact that there is no money left to support a particular child.

Hmm, so how do they "measure" the quality of intake-and what do they mean by improving the quality-do they mean by reducing the number of children with FSM, EAL, SEN, even the proportion of boys, all of which are seen as groups that MIGHT affect performance!

Improving the "quality of pupil intake" is lovely, if you are one of the ones let in, but what happens to those that aren't?

no money left to support a particular child - that is no different if you're an academy or not. Both types of schools have very limited budgets and have very difficult decisions to make.

In my LEA we get nothing for free. We already have to 'buy back' all the specialist services like EAL and BEST.

Academies cannot mess with admissions. They are bound by the same rules as everyone else.

Snowball - I took the quote to mean that when a sink school converted to an academy more MC parents were willing to send their kids there. Which I'd a good thing for the school.

Don't we often bemoan on here how everything would be improved if we all just went yo our local school? If a school is more attractive to local families I consider it a good thing.

and remember the extra money for academies is guaranteed year on year ...
also services that have to be bought in often cost more

But when ALL schools are academies, some academies will then become "better than others" and inevitably some will then be considered sink schools!

When a school becomes an academy, the academy trust will become the admission authority. For some schools, such as foundation and voluntary aided schools, this will mean little change, but for community schools and voluntary controlled schools the academy will need to manage its own admissions process. This will involve periodic consultation, and regularly publishing the academy's admission arrangements.
www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/typesofschools/academies/academiesfaq/a0063384/admissions-and-school-places-faqs#faq1

Some are already considered sink schools snowball

From what I understand, if they are an academy they can refuse to take children who have been excluded from other schools. Round here, all of the high schools in the county went academy apart from one and they then went academy because of a pot of money that was available and also for the reason of not wanting to be forced to take excluded children from out of the area who could have been coming from 20-30 miles away.

Academies will have to take excluded kids, same as any other school:

Will academies have to be a part of the in-year coordinated admissions scheme? e.g. when the LA needs to find places for families that have relocated to the area, etc.

Academy funding agreements require them to be within local coordination. That means that although the school will apply its admission arrangements, the LA will send out offers. From 2010/2011 local authorities will also coordinate admissions for in-year applications and from 2011/2012 for applications for year groups other than the normal point(s) of entry. This will not affect the academy?s right to determine which applicants have priority for admission. Academies are also required through their funding agreements to participate in in-year fair access protocols.

but for community schools and voluntary controlled schools the academy will need to manage its own admissions process

No. I don't thin that's right.

Would academies be part of coordinated admissions with the LA?

Yes, all academies continue to be within coordination i.e. the process for allocating school places to children. This means that parents/carers only need to complete one application form (but they can name several schools on it). Parents/carers will be given an offer of a single school place. Using secondary coordination as an example, parents will apply to the LA on 31 October. The LA will send a list of applicants to the schools by a date agreed in the locally agreed coordination scheme (this is owned by the LA who agrees it with all its schools). The schools then rank the applicants against their oversubscription criteria, and send a ranked list back to the LA. The LA then coordinates admissions across its schools and with neighbouring authorities and offers parents their highest available preference on 1 March.

sorry lagrandissima I meant isn't ... and didn't notice even after I'd posted.

It's correct according to the government FAQ Indigo

What are the admission requirements for schools converting to become academies?

Schools that are performing well and are converting to academy status will be able to retain the admission criteria they currently use. These arrangements and related processes should at all times comply with the School Admissions Code.

<strong>When a school becomes an academy, the academy trust will become the admission authority</strong>. For some schools, such as foundation and voluntary aided schools, this will mean little change, <strong>but for community schools and voluntary controlled schools the academy will need to manage its own admissions process</strong>. This will involve periodic consultation, and regularly publishing the academy's admission arrangements.

The situation on admissions is that the Local Authority is the admission authority for all maintained community and voluntary controlled schools, whereas the school is the admission authority for voluntary aided CoE schools, catholic schools, foundation, trust and all academy schools.

What that means is that they are responsible for deciding the admission criteria for the school, but that can only be done annually and only 18 months before it comes into operation. So a decision taken to change a schools admission criteria in April 2012 will come into operation for school intake September 2013. The school governing body is also responsible for putting all applicants into the order dictated by the admission criteria.

The Local Authority for all admissions at the normal point of entry to a schools is responsible for co-ordinating the admissions process. That means they run the computer programs that decide, under the equal preference admission process, which pupils are allocated the school places and for sending out the notification of which school has been allocated.

So for a converter Academy the admission process still has to meet the Admission code and as such most will see in the short term little in the way of change to the admission criteria. A converter academy is one where the school has been judged good or outstanding by Ofsted and allowed to convert. The situation can be different where the Academy is a sponsored academy, that is it is being forced to convert by the Department because of poor results and is being teamed up with an organisation who is considered capable of improving things in the school. This type of school is in effect a new school and so could change their admission criteria at the point where they open as a new school, potentially September 2012.

So an academy CAN change the admissions criteria to " improve the quality of pupil intake" !
Perhaps not so much middle class parents choosing an academy, but an academy choosing middle class parents!

which seems to be what the report is suggesting - improved performance is related to changes to intake

mrz - this report doesn't seem to be nearly as disparaging as you suggest.

The research, by Stephen Machin and James Vernoit of the London School of Economics, recently, as we have previously reported, produced some conclusions which look very positive for the Academies programme. The study found that turning a school into an academy improves its performance ? and, crucially, that of neighbouring schools.

Machin and Veniot found that the quality of the intake of these Academies improved over time. In other words, the academies under study were taking in pupils with better key stage 2 results than had been achieved by pupils entering the schools that the academies replaced. It is self-evident that if you improve a schools intake, then the educational outcomes of that schools are likely to improve. Its not rocket science. However, the research also found that after taking this pupil intake factor into account, the results achieved in the academies were still better than those achieved by a control group of schools.

cee.lse.ac.uk/ceedpsceedp123.pdf

They also seem to be suggesting that the key to success is the autonomy provided by academy status

In essence, the results paint a (relatively) positive picture of the academy schools thatwere introduced by the Labour government of 1997-2010. The caveat is that such benefits have, at least for the schools we consider, taken a while to materialise.

Our results suggest that moving to a more autonomous school structure through academy conversion generates a significant improvement in the quality of pupil intake, a significant improvement in pupil performance and small significant improvements in the performance of pupils enrolled in neighbouring schools.

the performance improvements cannot be explained by the increased prevalence of higher ability pupils in the academies.

Wouldn't it be simpler and cheaper to offer all schools that autonomy?