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

I think that the issue is not so much with 'standard' support such as payroll and HR, which differ little between education and other sectors.

What is a much greater issue will be:

• SEN support: some small schools have very high percentages of SEN pupils, sometimes because parents seek out small schools, fearing that their child may become 'lost' in a larger classroom. Being able to draw on specialists in different disabilities - not just an Ed Psych, but specialist support with visual impairment, hearuing impairment, physical access issues, as well as different SpLDs - without having to identify possible experts in each case is a huge benefit for small schools, where even the SENCo may have 3 or 4 other responsibilities.

• High quality, verified CPD - yes, leaflets drop through every post from commercail providers, but who / what is effective?

• Networking between teachers - one of the most valuable things an old LA I worked in used to do was to run networking / training events for Science co-ordinators / IT Co-ordinators / Maths co-ordinators etc. These - often attended by 50+ different schools - led to fruitful discussions as well as sharing equipment, visits between schools etc.

• Sourcing - again, my old LA used to help with e.g specifying and sourcing IT solutions specific to education, and relevant to small schools, without relying on snake oil salesmen company reps.

• Support for failing schools - bringing in experienced heads on a temporary basis etc.

• Admissions - i have seen no proposal for how co-ordinated admissions will work?

(And yes, I know that some of the above could be done within MATs - some were in the past done within e.g. 'pyramids' of feeder schools - but unless the MAT is very, very large and very, very competent educationally as well as financially, maintaining the same 'core expertise' as was available within a good LA will be tricky)

Admissions - i have seen no proposal for how co-ordinated admissions will work

Exactly the same as they do today for VA schools. The LA will receive all applications and will send academies a list of applicants. The academy will put the list in order using their admission criteria and return the list to the LA. The rest of the process is up to the LA.

So absolutely EVERYTHING about schools gets completely removed from Local authorities - EXCEPT twice a year they have to crank the whole machinery for admissions into action?

A sort of 'this supermarket site is closed, except there is a small fridge from which you can get milk every Sunday morning', completely illogical thing? Why should LAs do anything, or care, about admissions? How are they to be funded to do admissions, since they will have no more money from schools?

(While there is a mixed economy of LA, VA and academy schools, I can see why LAs have been willing to hold the ring on admissions, because while they are responsible for at least some of the schools it is worth local politicians' and bureaucrats' time and effort to ensure that school places are fairly allocated. But when they can say 'none of the schools are anything to do with us, and we have no power over them or responsibility for them', why should they continue to do admissions when they can do nothing else?)

A very simple answer is that they will continue to be REQUIRED to do admissions, but not funded to do admissions. The logic is the same as leaving LA's with the legal duty to manage school places.

When you say logic, do you mean genuine logic, or 'logic'? So the LA has to manage school places, despite not beibng able to build new schools, extend old schools or persuade independent academy chains to don anything at all? So they have legal resoponsibility, but no money and no power??

Hmm, yes, that will work, definitely.

As i said above, I can see that the longer term future will involve RSCs acquiring a range of responsibilities and powers and roles to sort out the mess that is left once LAs have disappeared - and become more and more like LAs again....

Except the regional schools commissioners deal with a much bigger area, have in some cases rather odd boundaries, (London is divided up between three separate regions) are directly appointed by the Secretary of State and are directly responsible to the Secretary of State.

Whether you think this is a good or a bad thing, this is a huge change in the ay things are done, which has been done without proper public discussion, nor does it have a stautory basis, so its never been properly discussed in parliament either...

A very simple answer is that they will continue to be REQUIRED to do admissions, but not funded to do admissions

Half right. They will still be required to co-ordinate admissions but they WILL be funded for it. There are a number of services that LAs still have to provide even if all schools become academies. They will continue to receive funding for those services.

So the LA has to manage school places, despite not being able to build new schools

An LA can build a new school but it must then find an academy trust to operate it. They can also support applications to open free schools and encourage such applications in their area.

prh47,

Just for interest - if the schools no longer pay anything to the LA (because that is the point of academies, i thought), are LAs directly funded by the DfE for the services they are required to provide?

Isn't a simple answer for the councils to start their own MAT's. That way schools have an option if they want to stay with the LA but also the option to go elsewhere if its a crap LA! Problem solved.

AFAIK, councils aren't allowed to start or run MATs - otherwise that would have been an obvious way round them not being allowed to build new schools (as prh says, they can build a new school but have to find an academy trust to run it).

More information for you.

www.facebook.com/stopnickymorgan/?ref=ts&fref=ts

LA's can set up and run learning trusts giving schools an option to become an academy within that trust. For some LA's, especially the more successful where there are minimal numbers of schools that have so far opted for academy status, this is something that, due to the White Paper, they will now consider. Previously this wasn't the case as these LA's were successfully supporting schools under the current system and had no need to consider the effect of 'mass' academisation.

Difficulty with admissions will arise in rural counties. Currently many such LA's provide school places in small village schools even though each small school isn't financially viable (doesn't fit a business model). These small schools, as already happens will not be accepted as part of a MAT or if the MAT is forced to take them the financial viability of the small school will have to be subsidised from other schools in that MAT. Can't see this working out given current finances.

Then again, academy schools don't need to have qualified teachers, so which will be the case...no village school or village school with no teachers?

I was reading about a council that is doing that. So problem solved?

Camden council MAT

My understanding is that the RSC must approve the MAT. The White Paper as I read it suggests that RSCs will not look favourably on MATs that are 'geographically limited' such as by LA area.

It will be interesting to see how the Camden proposal goes forward.

MillyDLA - almost certainly the MAT would remove the need for small rural primary HTs. Leadership would be provided from the MAT. Presumably, to make funds work efficiently all schools in the MAT will follow same curriculum, training/CPD, staffing shared across schools, same data management system etc. HTs would be surplus to requirements and a saving on overheads.

A lot of smaller (1&2 form entry) primaries are already federating under a single executive head, especially in areas which have not been growing a new cohort of senior leaders locally - being an LA school is by no means a guarantee for a school of an exclusive HT.
The NGA have been actively promoting "formal collaboration" models to GBoards for several years.

are LAs directly funded by the DfE for the services they are required to provide?

There is an element of direct funding as well as a de-delegated proportion of the school budget and the recharging to schools for certain services - the new LA funding formulae will undoubtedly take account of the changing responsibilities that LAs will have; hence why it was a budget announcement, I suspect.

are LAs directly funded by the DfE for the services they are required to provide

Yes. Keeping it simple (without getting into terms like de-delegating!) they will still receive that portion of the DSG that relates to the services they are still required to provide.

Currently many such LA's provide school places in small village schools even though each small school isn't financially viable (doesn't fit a business model).

I keep hearing this claim that small schools are not financially viable. They stand on their own two feet financially today. I see no reason to believe they will not continue to do so. They get additional funding through the LA using a sparsity factor in the funding formula. The same factor continues to apply when the school becomes an academy.

prh47bridge must be in the dept for Education, she knows what she is talking about. Hope she is using a secure server.

prh47 has been posting really helpfully for years as an education (law) expert and he is not a government official (indeed I have no idea of his personal political views). He is very keen on accuracy, though.

That's not as scandalous as speculating that posters are DfE/Tory spies, though, is it, medi?

Thanks prh for the accurate information. I know some years ago that there was a bit of a panic amongst small schools because changes to the the formula for calculating their 'extra' money were proposed..

(I laugh when '1 and 2 form entry' schools are mentioned as small schools. In many rural areas, the LARGE schools are the ones that can manage a single class per year group. The smallest school I have worked in had 36 children R-Y6 in 2 classes. The largest one, until I moved into a large town school, had a PAN of 20 and thus had classes with 20 children from 1 year group + 10 from another. I seem to remember that when mentioning 'smaller than average'/ 'larger than average' in their reports, Ofsted uses 1 form entry (so 210 pupils) as an 'average' primary school.)