School Academies

[Lone4anger]

I was looking at this thread to find out if there was any concern about the Governments plan that all local authority schools should become academies by 2022. Personally I am horrified at the thought. However would this plan include those schools which are Faith Schools and therefore partly funded by the Church/parents?

I think the fact that the NAHT have voted to consider industrial action against it suggests that there is concern!

Faith schools have got some private agreement going on.

Yes, I heard about that - and I thought 'great'. Maybe my view of Academies is skewed. We have two senior school academies which are failing... and two others which converted recently and were most recently OFSTED rated good but their reasons for conversion were to do with getting more money which in turn has lead to smaller class sizes and enhancing facilities (and their most recent ratings were based on pre-Academy practices). With getting money directly from government, they will be at the mercy of fluctuations in financing in a way that under local authority control they were not. Local governance is more directly accountable.

The main thread discussing academies is actually here:-

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2598460-Nicky-Morgans-thread-continued-MNers-calling-for-Lucy-Powell-to-do-webchat

If you have the stamina to read through it. It also has links to various other thread on Mumsnet and various other things on the Internet.

Interesting blog post here:-

tishnaught.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/academy-status/

Lone4anger, I am afraid that the information you have on academy school finances is incorrect. Now any school that is an academy gets exactly the same funding as any maintained school, other than some extra funding that they get over and above which is for services that maintained schools get from the LA that academy schools cannot get. Also all funding comes from the government, it either goes via the EFA to academies or via LAs to maintained schools and in the future all funding will go to all schools via the EFA.
Having said that I agree with you that local governance is better.whether it comes from a maintained school or an academy

With getting money directly from government, they will be at the mercy of fluctuations in financing in a way that under local authority control they were not

That is not true. All school funding comes from the government regardless of whether it goes direct to the school or is administered by the LA. The LA does not top up that funding. Academies are funded using the same funding formula that is used for other schools in the LA.

In reality from what the parents see it makes no difference whatsoever.

I would agree that in many cases where schools have chosen to convert to Academy status parents notice little difference. Particularly so where they converted basically for the extra money. After all the teaching staff (or the children, or the parents) did not change on conversion day. If the staff were good before conversion well then good just after. It also makes a huge difference if they converted (as most converting schools did) into being a "stand alone Academy" rather than joining a Multi Academy Trust. If things are going well with a school most parents will not notice whether it is a Community School or an Academy. The problem is when things go wrong with a school. Then, experience has shown (Cuckoo Hall, Perry Beechs, Durand Academy and so forth) that its much more difficult to fix than if its an Community School with an effective LA.

The fact, for example, that the finances of a community school are in practice much more closely supervised than the finances of an Academy (where it is an overburdened DfE that must take the strain) matters not if the finances are well, and also honestly run. Its when the finances are NOT well run, or elements of actual dishonesty creep in that the inadequacy of DfE supervision show up, relying as it too often does on whistle blowers to reveal the problems. Just google the academies I list above if you want more info.