fighting conversion to MAT - help?

[Jumpingshipquick]

My children's school is pushing for conversion to MAT. It's a school considered 'good' with a governing body considered 'effective' by OFSTED, within a local authority that performs well. It's a single form entry school, and has no good reason to convert - it won't give them anything they can't already do. I have my suspicions why, but the argument so far is that it is better to lead rather than be forced. Whilst I don't doubt the good intentions of the people currently running the school, I have serious concerns about the implications of the change of structure. I would really appreciate someone looking over my points to see whether I am right for now.

• My school will legally cease to exist.
• Funding will go to the MAT, not individual schools within the MAT and the Board of Directors is required to make spending decisions based on the MAT priorities, not individual (ex)school priorities.
• The Board of Directors of the MAT can be paid for their roles.
• Teachers are employed by the MAT, not the individual schools (and can therefore be deployed anywhere within the MAT)
• There is no legal requirement to keep the individual school’s board of governors, and as it will have no power beyond what the Board happen to devolve, it will only be a talking shop anyway.
• The MAT will be run by a board of governors, akin to the board of directors in a business. This board will consist purely of co-opted members, no requirement for parent governors, no teachers, not necessary local people. Appointments are neither required to be advertised, nor elected and members can only be removed by the Secretary of State, from London.
• The only form of public scrutiny is the published accounts.
• The only way parents can hold the MAT board to account is via the Regional Schools Commissioner. (There are going to be 8 for the whole country) The RSC will be appointed by the Secretary of State.
• The Secretary of State retains the right to remove, or force schools/ MATs to join other MATs.

Thanks

Unless the DfE is paying for the land ( which it appears not to be) then this seems like theft!

Theft from who? By who? (?whom?)

The city near me used to be part of the County Council. When the City Council converted to a unitary authority, all the public land - roads, parks, etc was transferred from the County Council to the Unitary Council. Was that theft?

Public land is entrusted to the Government - either locally or nationally. Does it really make any difference which Dept holds the deeds?

Pretty- I suppose you can argue it doesn't matter. Maybe it comes down to who we trust most to act in the interests of the local community- a democratically elected local council, or bureaucrats in London, indirectly accountable to a minister of the government of the day.

I don't think the councils are exactly happy about the transfer, they certainly feel it makes a difference.

dlacey thank you for the figures re academy numbers.

spanieleyes the White Paper says that the DfE are looking at how the LA school land can be transferred to the DfE and will also discuss how land owned by 'others' (Diocese etc) about how land can be leased to academy.

I don't know how LAs account for land ownership - is it a balance sheet item?

I don't think it is quite the same to transfer school land to the DfE (with a potential for sale at some point in the future, and who reaps the financial return) to transferring all council activities from an LA to a unitary authority.

As a Governor I am also wondering whether our great HT of a small rural primary will realise that an MAT is quite likely to result in her not having a job. The financial model would have to be - MAT has Executive HT and runs finances/management/HR etc; small schools main overhead is staff; remove HTs and replace with cheaper 'School Leader/Curriculum Manager role.

Whilst this may 'free up' a successful practitioner to go to lead another school in need, it takes no account that moving elsewhere in the country is not feasible for family commitments.

Is it still in SM and undersubscribed? If not how did they go about encouraging parents to put their children in the school?

Well technically it isn't in SM as it is a new academy school and the old school has closed. And yes it is still unsubscribed but not ridiculously so. FWIW it's a naice school, because contrary to popular belief any school can have problems.

I think all cases are different, it was leadership problems in a historically good school that caused short term issues. So it has previous good reputation. It is a good school again now, but having a bad OFSTED takes years for a school to get past entirely. We need them to come again and hopefully it will be early next academic year.

"it comes down to who we trust most ... a democratically elected local council, or bureaucrats in London" or you could say, it comes down to who we trust most ... a democratically elected government, or petty bureaucrats in the council.

So academisation really never can be undone Of course it could, a new government could come along and pass any law they want.

"Does it mean we're still in the vicious circle whereby schools have to fail completely before something is done" As opposed to leaving them to decompose on the scrapheap of council neglect, for decades?

"The outstanding academy in the town is being offered 1.25 million over 5 years to take over failing forced academy" While does this get called a bribes/incentive/carrot to become an academy. Where is the evidence that this isnt anything other than a legitimate cost to take on an extra resbonsibility/burden.

"As a Governor I am also wondering whether our great HT of a small rural primary will realise that an MAT is quite likely to result in her not having a job." Does this really say a school governor knows more about the HT's career path than the actual HT themselves?

No of course not in absolute terms in that the HT will determine their career path. As a governor I have experience of HTs sharing their career plans with me so I am aware that they do consider next steps/forever schools/retirement.

But you do not address the point I was making about whether in an MAT HTs generally of small rural schools are 'at risk' of not remaining in post. It is simply surmising that an MAT will need to be cost effective. HTs of small rural primaries may well be a swift way to reduce overhead where an executive head wants to implement their vision for the collection of schools and can do that by directly managing those schools, so no need for an 'on site' HT. This has happened over the county border.

a democratically elected government, or petty bureaucrats in the council.

About the first bit of that sentence ...

Urban- this policy is a massive centralisation of power and property without even the mandate of being in a manifesto. It seems rather facile to counter any criticism with- well it won't be any worse than it already is.

I expect the bureaucrats will probably end up being the same people, only local people won't have even the semblance of accountability.

The case I just outlined was the LA bailing out an academy, I absolutely agree that the money is unlikely to be anything other than very necessary. But where does that leave the argument that academisation will stop failure where LAs have failed to intervene? And what is going to happen when the RSCs can just force such a partnership upon schools? Where would the money come from? Would an LA really be expected to finance a deal brokered by London for a school it doesn't have any say over anymore, not even own the land?

There is that Suburban... I do keep thinking I should get over my faith in democracy and just accept the country is run by men in suits in London that went to private schools and Oxbridge and like their bank accounts.

(Every time I teach Inspector Calls I think how poignant it is now that Mr Birling was right after all, all that hope)

I do think that we have to be very careful here in defining what we mean by 'academty' - the Government conveniently 'smears the boundaries' when it presents data, but convertor academies (good / outstanding schools, most have remained stand-alone academies after conversion) are completely different from forced-conversion academies, especially those who have been forced to join large national MATs.

Just to illustrate:

Academy 1 (Convertor)
FSM (Ever 6 basis): 8.2%
GCSE A* to C including English and Maths
has varied between 79-90% over last 4 years

Academy 2 (Sponsor-led - religious)
FSM (Ever 6 basis): 44.4%
GCSE A* to C including English and Maths
has increased from 36 - 41% over the last 4 years, with 1 outlier value of 53% a few years ago

Academy 3 (Sponsor-led - large national MAT)
FSM (Ever 6 basis): 37.4%
GCSE A* to C including English and Maths
after conversion, halved from just above 50% to mid-20%s

These schools have almost nothing in common, and creating some sort of 'academy average' to prove that academies are successful is statistical nonsense.

What it seems to indicate, at an anecdotal level which seems to tie in with common sense, is that strong schools which were already good or outstanding also do well as stand alone academies. Sponsor-led academies, even with very challenging cohorts but with good sponsors - perhaps the disinterested, non-profit making concerns of a locally-based religious sponsor which has very long experience of involvement in education through VC and VA schools - can show gradual improvement. Sponsor-led academies where the original school was in difficulty and the MAT is a poor quality national one can decline very fast indeed.

What we should be asking is - since many of the schools that are no yet academies are NOT good / outstanding schools, so cannot be assumed to be likely to be any more successful as academies unless something changes - is how the Government proposes to guarantee that ALL new 'forced academisation' schools do NOT fall into the hands of poor-quality national MATs, but are guided by high quality, long term, local sponsors of high integrity and genuine educational knowledge?

"this policy is a massive centralisation of power"

I tend to agree with you on that. And recall who set up the original programme, which arranged it so that they came under national level political control.

It always was going to be a one-way street towards expansion to all/most schools, even if the parties' rhetoric varied.

BTW, governments do lots of things that aren't in their manifestos, such as changing who can marry. 'Twas ever thus, and consequently is never going to be convincing.

But, once it is all out of anyone's control, in this 'everyone must have freedom' world - what happens when it all goes wrong?

So in the past, it was fairly clear:
Central government dictated overall policy -national curriculum, budget, testing.
Local authorities oversaw implementation and provided regional services e.g. training, admissions, support for failing schools.
Ofsted and HMI inspected schools and reported both opn individual schools and on overall trends.

In the future:
Central government sets budgets and testing arrangements.
Ofsted and HMI inspect schools
A mixture of stand-alone and MAT academies muddle along in the middle. Some MATs will be good, and will support failing schools within their groups and develop staff. Other MATs will not. But from the government's point of view, it will all be fine because it's not under their control so it is someone else's fault.

Then further in the future, there will be an outcry because too many schools have been failed within MATs.
The government of the day will be unable to handle this centrally so will set up regional 'oversight of schools' bodies. These will start to provide regional services e.g. training, support for failing schools - and in return, MATs will probably pay a levy from their budget to fund these regional bodies...who will begin to look more and more like local authorities but will probably not be locally accountable through local politicians...

Posted on the NM thread in 'In the News'

Some further info from the DfE and others on the likely cost of mass conversion, and Tory back bench challenge.

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/02/backbench-pressure-on-osborne-academy-scheme

Just read that JWIM. It gives me a little hope that writing to my MP, and local councillors will at least contribute to the pressure in a tiny way.

I came on originally to find out whether what I knew about academies was right, and have been comprehensively fact checked and made to think about my arguments. I was starting to think maybe I should just roll over and get on with it. But maybe I should try and do something other than just vote in elections to contribute to a democracy. Hmm back to the letter writing...

But you do not address the point I was making about whether in an MAT HTs generally of small rural schools are 'at risk' of not remaining in post. It is simply surmising that an MAT will need to be cost effective. HTs of small rural primaries may well be a swift way to reduce overhead where an executive head wants to implement their vision for the collection of schools and can do that by directly managing those schools, so no need for an 'on site' HT.

It's like everything else, and dependent on the MAT. The point is that in this new world there are no norms, each can do their own thing. With my daughter's school it was the deputy head post that went.

A mixture of stand-alone and MAT academies muddle along in the middle. Some MATs will be good, and will support failing schools within their groups and develop staff. Other MATs will not.

The same can be said about LAs now, though.

Even Wilshaw, who has expressed his concerns to the Sec of Ed about 7 "super-MATs" which have not brought about rapid improvement is clear on one thing; too many DCs are being failed under the LA model.

But there is a mechanism already in place to force conversion where schools (of whatever type) are failing the children attending them. Why is the focus not on tackling this immediate problem? The Stephen Machin led research indicates that converting failing schools to academies with strong leadership (new SLT is the most significant factor) does produce improvements for the children.

In all the discussion we need to bring the focus back to the children in, or soon to be in, the state education system.

JWIM Sat 02-Apr-16 18:47:45 "Tory back bench challenge"

It'll be interesting to see how big the challenge is and whether it goes anywhere. I've only seen local conservative councillors for Hampshire, Kent and Oxfordshire speak out so far, and of those only Hampshire stands out as having a significant number of maintained schools. I've been looking at some of the stats by LA (and political control) and they're more mixed than I expected. In my area the convertor academies have had their hands held by the (Conservative led) LA, but I guess in other areas they've been going it alone.

Sorry if the list is a bit long, but I thought others might be interested to see where their own LA fits into the overall picture. The numbers are the percentage of maintained schools, ordered from low to high:

Rutland, Conservative, 0%
Isles Of Scilly, Independent, 0%
City of London, Independent, 0%
Bournemouth, Conservative, 2%
Newcastle upon Tyne, Labour, 6%
Torbay, Conservative, 10%
Slough, Labour, 10%
Bromley, Conservative, 11%
Darlington, Labour, 12%
Westminster, Conservative, 13%
Thurrock, NOC, 13%
North East Lincolnshire, NOC, 14%
Kingston upon Hull City of, Labour, 15%
Blackpool, Labour, 17%
Wiltshire ,Conservative, 18%
Cornwall ,NOC, 21%
Middlesbrough, Labour, 22%
Redcar and Cleveland, Labour, 22%
Leicestershire, Conservative, 23%
Shropshire, Conservative, 24%
Dorset, Conservative, 24%
Oxfordshire, NOC, 25%
Blackburn with Darwen, Labour, 25%
Wigan, Labour, 25%
Croydon, Labour, 26%
Bedford, NOC, 26%
Hammersmith and Fulham, Labour, 27%
North Tyneside, Labour, 27%
Bristol City of, NOC, 27%
Manchester, Labour, 27%
Lincolnshire, NOC, 28%
Bexley, Conservative, 28%
Somerset, Conservative, 28%
Kensington and Chelsea, Conservative, 28%
Plymouth, Labour, 29%
North Somerset, Conservative, 29%
Northamptonshire, Conservative, 29%
Herefordshire, Conservative, 29%
Kent, Conservative, 30%
Stoke-on-Trent, Labour, 30%
Worcestershire, Conservative, 31%
Gloucestershire, NOC, 31%
Poole, NOC, 32%
Windsor and Maidenhead, Conservative, 32%
Devon, Conservative, 32%
Southwark, Labour, 32%
East Sussex, NOC, 32%
Staffordshire, Conservative, 32%
Wakefield, Labour, 32%
Lancashire, NOC, 32%
Bath and North East Somerset, Conservative, 33%
Warwickshire, NOC, 33%
Knowsley, Labour, 33%
Essex, Conservative, 33%
Birmingham, Labour, 34%
Barnet, Conservative, 34%
Sefton, Labour, 34%
Medway, Conservative, 34%
Surrey, Conservative, 34%
Hillingdon, Conservative, 34%
Cheshire East, Conservative, 34%
Kingston upon Thames, Conservative, 35%
Central Bedfordshire, Conservative, 36%
Oldham, Labour, 36%
Wandsworth, Conservative, 36%
Swindon, Conservative, 36%
Liverpool, Labour, 36%
Nottingham, NOC, 37%
Hartlepool, Labour, 37%
Bolton, Labour, 37%
Sutton, LD, 37%
Cumbria, NOC, 37%
Brent, Labour, 38%
St. Helens, Labour, 38%
Cambridgeshire, NOC, 38%
Lambeth , Labour, 38%
Leeds, Labour, 38%
Camden, Labour, 38%
Suffolk, Conservative, 38%
Reading, Labour, 39%
West Berkshire, Conservative, 39%
Telford and Wrekin, Labour, 39%
Calderdale, NOC, 39%
Isle of Wight, NOC, 39%
Wolverhampton, Labour, 39%
Rochdale, Labour, 39%
Southend-on-Sea, NOC, 40%
Walsall, NOC, 40%
West Sussex, Conservative, 40%
Halton, Labour, 40%
Salford, Labour, 40%
South Gloucestershire, NOC, 41%
Buckinghamshire, Conservative, 41%
Southampton, Labour, 41%
Richmond upon Thames, Conservative, 41%
Tameside, Labour, 42%
Norfolk, NOC, 42%
Trafford, Conservative, 42%
North Lincolnshire, Conservative, 42%
Rotherham, Labour, 42%
Bradford , Labour, 42%
Sunderland, Labour, 42%
Bury, Labour, 43%
Sandwell, Labour, 43%
North Yorkshire, Conservative, 43%
Milton Keynes, NOC, 44%
Warrington, Labour, 44%
Solihull, Conservative, 44%
Sheffield, Labour, 44%
Coventry, Labour, 44%
Kirklees, NOC, 44%
Waltham Forest, Labour, 44%
Cheshire West and Chester, Labour, 44%
Barnsley, Labour, 44%
Peterborough, NOC, 45%
Stockton-On-Tees, NOC, 45%
Islington, Labour, 46%
Haringey , Labour, 47%
Wirral, Labour, 47%
Doncaster, Labour, 49%
Hertfordshire, Conservative, 49%
York, Labour, 49%
Havering, NOC, 50%
Hackney, Labour, 51%
South Tyneside, Labour, 51%
Harrow, Labour, 51%
Derby, Labour, 51%
Wokingham, Conservative, 52%
Portsmouth, NOC, 52%
Northumberland, NOC, 52%
Tower Hamlets, NOC, 53%
East Riding of Yorkshire, Conservative, 53%
Hounslow, Labour, 53%
Enfield, Labour, 54%
Stockport, NOC, 54%
Ealing, Labour, 54%
Nottinghamshire, NOC, 54%
Lewisham, Labour, 55%
Luton, Labour, 55%
Dudley, Labour, 56%
Derbyshire, Labour, 56%
Greenwich, Labour, 56%
Durham, Labour, 57%
Brighton and Hove, NOC, 57%
Gateshead, Labour, 57%
Merton, Labour, 57%
Hampshire, Conservative, 59%
Barking and Dagenham, Labour, 61%
Redbridge, Labour, 62%
Newham, Labour, 63%
Bracknell Forest, Conservative, 64%
Leicester, Labour, 67%

dlacey is that a list of LA maintained secondary schools?

I think almost all Hampshire primaries are still maintained (assuming that includes VC/VA schools) and there are many more primaries than secondaries so the 59% looks more like Hampshire's figure for maintained secondary schools - 41% now academies.

To put those numbers in context ..... Across Labour controlled councils the average number of state schools that remain under LA control is 41%. That compares to 33% in Conservative controlled councils.

I would have expected a bigger difference.

dlacey is that a list of LA maintained secondary schools?

It's all state funded schools. I haven't distinguished by primary/secondary.

Correction - it's the percentage of maintained community schools (i.e. not va/vc).

In our local market town/villages cluster approx 50% of primary schools are VC/VA. None are academies.