your thoughts on the whole academy thing?

[ArfurBrain]

My child's secondary has just announced consultation into becoming one.

By my reckoning, this now means all the town's secondaries will be (potentially) academies.
I dare say many of my questions will be answered at the parents' evening. But the whole academy thing appears to be so rushed that I'm sure there are loads of issues which no-one really knows what will happen until they rear their heads, so to speak.

From a social point of view, what implications might this have on the town?
Admissions etc?

What will happen to those academies which have a less afluent parent pool?
SEN services?
Exclusions?
I mean if all the schools are no longer in LEA control, whose responsibliy is it to ensure each child gets a school place ?

And as I understand it, once a school has become an academy, it cannot go back to LEA control,
I sort of feel our children are being guinea pigs in a ratheruncontrolled educational experiment.
Would just like to know what MNetters feel.

Cross posted!

Appointment of governors should not generally be the job of the Secretary of State. However, the fact that the Secretary steps in when things go wrong is a consequence of devolving as much power as possible to schools by making them report to the Secretary rather than the LA. It will only work if the Secretary uses his powers to intervene sparingly. Whether or not that will happen under this or future governments remains to be seen.

Kez - my school is looking into becoming an academy for purely financial reasons. No one gives a toss about the curriculum freedom or less red tape. No one wants to become an academy - teachers or head. But the huge black hole in our finances from funding cuts means that if we don't become an academy, we have to make very unpleasant cuts elsewhere. I don't think we're alone in this.

Not all first generation academies were failing schools. The Oasis Mayfield was cobbled together out of two schools and one of them, our previous catchment school, was certainly not a failing school at all: students got very good results there. It's a failing school now, that's for sure, but that was not what we had in Woolston before the take-over.

Accountability is the big issue. DD school becoming an academy now. Academies are run by a body of trustees but there is no business plan yet to see how this will be set up and what limits to their powers there will be. But once an academy the school can vary everything - admissions (within code), school day, holidays (so bad luck if you have two kids at different schools), pay and conditions of teachers (which in academy nearby went to lead to Head being paid super star salary until he took very early retirement which school will be paying for years to come). Risk it will lead to dictatorial heads excluding pupils not up to the 5. Also if spends more than income it will self off school playing fields, equipment school books, etc.

Can't see the advantages myself - schools already have a lot of autonomy and accountability to central government rather than local government doesn't seem to make sense. We won't kick politicians out over a school issue but we just might locally if bad enough.

There is a campaign at DD school for proper consultation with parents. We think at very least at start of school as an academy there should be a sound financial plan and business plan - there isn't because they are rushing it to get the £25,000 from the government for the conversion.

Probably won't be much change in short-term but the aim is to create a competition in schools - seems wasteful of building resources if schools forced to close - and doubtful that competition will work unless we get a genuine choice i.e. more places that kids. Yet to be convinced this is the way to improve schools.

''Kez - my school is looking into becoming an academy for purely financial reasons. No one gives a toss about the curriculum freedom or less red tape. No one wants to become an academy - teachers or head. But the huge black hole in our finances from funding cuts means that if we don't become an academy, we have to make very unpleasant cuts elsewhere. I don't think we're alone in this.''

I firmly suspect this is our school's motivation.

Tht is why I am so suspicious of the whole system.
Any rushed decision made purely on monetary grounds is questionable in my book. I know non of us are pyschic, but I do worry about what willhappen in the future. Will be actually have bankrupt schools closing?

Financial was certainly part of the motivation behind our academisation- the council wanted to sell off land. And the other part was that a local councillor had close ties with the religious group in question.

prh
you say that if the school is failing it will close
how will that help?
Where do the children go?
In London where there are lots of schools close together it might be an option but in less populated areas there just isn't the capacity

And what Cory says about "close ties" is a massive understatement

rarebite - The new academies are different from the old ones in that they don't have to have an external sponsor. This affects the governance arrangements. The principles of governance for an academy are the same as for an LA school but the governors have greater autonomy.

It is expected that most converting schools will stick with their existing governors. There can be no more than one governor appointed by the LA, but there doesn't have to be an LA appointee at all. No more than one third of the governors can be members of staff but again there don't have to be any staff on the governing body, although it would be highly unusual if the head teacher at least wasn't there. There must be at least two parent governors but there is no upper limit, so in theory an academy can have a governing body made up entirely of parents.

I don't know if any of that answers your questions about governance.

On accountability, by the way, the argument of proponents of the system is that academies are more accountable to parents than LA schools. That certainly wasn't always the case with the existing academies due to the involvement of external sponsors. It remains to be seen whether it will be true of academies that don't have external sponsors.

One of the most problematic things about the Mayfield takeover was that this organisation was so set in their (wide international) experience of rescuing failing schools that everything about them, their curriculum, their rhetoric, their ethos was based on this situation. The effect on pupils and families who had previously had quite high expectations, when suddenly addressed as if they were bound to struggle, was not positive. It is easy to make somebody believe they have a problem if you speak to them as if you knew they did. I was there at the first introductory evening and if I hadn't happened to know half the families in the auditorium personally I would have got some very strange ideas about them simply from the assumptions made by Oasis in addressing them. My first thought was that if we stay in the company of this lot I will start believing we have educational problems.

But I am willing to recognise that a major part of this problem was the external sponsors bit.

If you don't think the process is being undertaken properly then why not ask the anti academy group for advice? I will if my school doesn't consult properly or ensure they have a business plan before converting. I don't expect them to necessarily agree and follow my choice (not sure what it would be at the moment I don't have enough information) but I do expect them to follow the correct process and will question that at any consultation.

I fear that black hole budget schools, only making the decision on financial grounds, are just delaying what appears to be a problem with keeping to budget. You may mean a black hole this year, that's different, if they have been building up a problem over time then they should have cut costs before. This will indeed be likely to just act like a temporary sticking plaster.

the whole thing is being marketed as a way to free up teachers from red tape. It also frees them up from the burden of stable employment and job security. Way to go! Just what our kids need.

TalkinPeace2 - The situation is no different from a failing LA school being closed. That happened in the town where I work a while ago. The children go to other schools in the area which are, presumably, not failing. Here, that meant that some of the schools were over capacity for a while until additional teaching space was sorted out. This is a less populated area so it means the children affected generally faced a longer journey to school. The important point is that it doesn't make any difference whether the school is an academy or an LA school if it is closed for underperformance.

As for how it helps, if a school is failing and is unwilling or unable to improve closure gets the children out of that environment and sends them to schools that will deliver a better education. I don't really see that there is any alternative to closure if a failing school isn't improving despite all the resources that get pumped in to help it improve.

Part of the reason LAs have been largely removed from the conversion process is to stop the kind of "close ties" situation you and Cory describe.

DD's school governors are pretty much sold on idea of conversion - their key argument being that it won't be a CITY academy (yeuch apparently) it will be a CONVERTER academy (all cheer ...)

Why oh why oh why if the new "converter" academies are supposed to be a completely different beasst from the "city" academies - how come they couldn't find a word other than academy for this new initiative - if you ask me they are TRYING to confuse us

i am finding this academy thing v concerning. the local one here in plymouth is already in trouble and all the staff (a few under 200) are in redundancy consultation.

I think most schools in my town likely to be academies within next couple of years

Went to consultation meeting at our school and though I can see the school's point - LEA just isn't going to be what it was anyway, more freedoms etc - I felt it was all short-term advantage/knee-jerk and not looking further ahead enough. the 'sales pitch' was very much what an advantage it would be for pupils and parents already at the school.

No mention of how such a system could impact on wider community or those applying to schools in future. other parents views were very 'so I'm alright Jack'

"Kez - my school is looking into becoming an academy for purely financial reasons. No one gives a toss about the curriculum freedom or less red tape. No one wants to become an academy - teachers or head. But the huge black hole in our finances from funding cuts means that if we don't become an academy, we have to make very unpleasant cuts elsewhere. I don't think we're alone in this."

Our school is in exactly the same situation - so no, you are not alone. Again, we would potentially be last non-academy school left in the LA, with major implications for funding.

We were told that if the school became a failing one in the future, it would revert back to government control - although I don't know how that would work, if by all accounts there would be no Local Authority Education Department by that point.
(I may have misunderstood this - no expert - but that's what it sounded like).

Have to say in our case it was handled well by the Governors - it was a real consultation discussing the pros & cons - but there still really was no real choice financially.

Kez, I don't think you understand. We have a huge hole in our finances not because a problem has been building over time, not because we have overspent in previous years, not through any fault of our own - simply, the school is being given far less money for next year than it was in previous years, and these figures have only come out relatively recently. We need a new school building but the Building Schools for the Future programme was axed. Savings have to be made. Job losses. Teachers working more for less. Kids losing out on opportunities.

Then you hear that if you become an academy, the amount of money the school has to play with is boosted by a few hundred thousand. Sure you will have to buy in services with that; but it sounds tempting...doesn't it?

As a chair of governors, things that I think need to be asked....

Who is going to pay the pensions deficit for your schools staff if (when?) it arises? I quote from the DfE "If a pension fund is managing a deficit, the deficit is transferred to the academy" (Ponder that one...)

Why does Michael Gove think a bunch of amateurs (for that is what governors are) can run a school better than professionals? And even if the current cohort of governors is competent, what happens if the next one isn't? What happens if the additional workload makes it difficult to recruit new (adequately qualified) governors and the school is left without decent management?

The fact that Michael Gove has made it so easy to convert and that governors (and governors alone!) decide with whom to consult and to what extent, demonstrates that this is NOT a move with parents best interests in mind. Governors have absolutely no need to even consult parents before making the decision to convert! Gove has stated he wants every school to convert. This is politically driven.

Another quote "Personal liability will not accrue to governors if they carry out their duties, acting in good faith". However the DfE Guide to the law is 528 pages long!! What happens in 10, 15 years when someone feels that governors (ME!!) did not understand the law thoroughly and their education suffered. Can they take legal action against me and sue because I didn't know every one of those pages?

I take my responsibility to the children at my school very seriously and have undertaken extensive research (happy to share more if anyone is interested). However, I also feel a huge burden of responsibility to future cohorts of children and believe they may be greatly disadvantaged in the future.

I have spoken to many people far better qualified than I and with a great deal more experience. The prime motivator to convert seems to be fear that if they don't they will end up being disadvantaged. The DfE web page has a testimonies from academy supporters, and the best reason they seem able to muster is along the lines of "it enables us to forge our own destinies". The truth is there are very few decisions a school can take as an academy that they could not take as a school.

I think fear, or at least anxiety, is a key driver for many schools opting to convert.

And btw SEN like so many aspects of this process has not been properly thought through.

Kez, some schools, like my dc's has been running along on very limited funding for several years and doing REALLY well. It pulled up from Satisfactory to Outstanding, although in our town it has always been considered poor relation to some other schools with massively affluent catchement areas.
Budget cuts THIS year have left it with no choice but to become an academy, from what i can see.
In fact, yeah, exactly what nobel giraffe has said, acually.

''No mention of how such a system could impact on wider community or those applying to schools in future. other parents views were very 'so I'm alright Jack' '' grungeblob - you are the first perosn apart from myself I have heard say this...

Pensions - Teachers pension scheme is unfunded - comes out of taxe : there cannot be a deficit.
DfE do not know what they are talking about.

Under Tupe they will stay in that scheme and unions will not allow it to be closed to new entrants.

LGPS scheme may cover support staff - your Country Council can advise on that. BE VERY WARY making people redundant. Pension contribs area killer.

Other issues - Yup, I agree

The White Paper says basically that in the future all schools will be academies, although it acknowledges that not all schools will want to convert 'yet'.

Who knows what pressures will be put on schools in the future? How can they have an LA existing just to provide services to the last remaining school? Their position will be made untenable somehow.

I'm feeling very depressed about the whole thing and feel that the government is stitching us up.

''I'm feeling very depressed about the whole thing and feel that the government is stitching us up''

Yup.

The consultation periods are just so short!