Did Supply in a new Academy yesterday and feel sad

[gabid]

Yesterday I went into a once failing school in a deprived area that has been an Academy for a year now. The first impression was good - new buildings, great photos of children in the reception area, but at the end of the day I felt sad .

There was no ino given to me (e.g. rewards and sanctions, map of the school etc) so I felt I was sent into the classroom 'naked'. I had to ask someone in the staffroom.

In general, I felt the kids weren't motivated or interested, even the better groups, behaviour in class and around the school was very poor (shouting, swearing - just lots of noise). I entered a couple of classrooms and there was lots of rubbish on the floor (in period 4 and 5).

I spoke to some members of staff and they didn't seem to have enough textbooks to go round, I didn't see many in the classrooms either.

And in P5 I taught a bottom Y9 group who didn't know their timestables and after the lesson on the way out I had to break up a fight.

Shouldn't things change and improve with turning a school into an Academy?

Fiddle the insurance premiums through the LEA? What do you mean?

Kez100
I'm an ex Council Auditor - this is one of my pet subjects !

Local Councils do not tend to inure their fixed assets with an insurance company.
They tend to 'self insure' on the basis that what they would pay in premiums would dwarf what they would have to pay out in major repairs each year.
So, to rebuild half a secondary school costs around £4,000,000
BUT
to insure said secondary school will cost around £800,000 PER YEAR every year, extracted from the education budget into the profits of insurers.

SO for 2011/12 (and I think 2012/13) the DFes has agreed to underwrite the insurance cover of all conversion academies on the basis they do not have the economies of scale
BUT
its only a matter of time till a private school (sadly quite rightly) demands parity one way or the other

its a total fiddle based on the fact that the policy twonks at Whitehall had NO IDEA how state schools actually operate, never having darkened the doors of one !!!

So, you are saying at some point, a private (fee paying?) school will argue for insurance cover to be paid for?

I'm still confused how this is a fiddle? It's not even happened yet.

Kez
its either that or somebody in the insurance industry will ....
LEAs were able to argue that it was in common with all other council assets and keeping council tax down.
Academies are private companies
and the sums involved are equivalent to hundreds and hundreds of teachers
when I emailed the Dfes about it just after the election the answer I basically got was

So at some point the DFE is going to be lumbered with a massive insurance bill either to pay insurers to insure new academies (or they'll go bust) or to insure private schools who already fork out for private insurance?

So it costs £800,000 for £8m of building insurance cover for a school?

I am perfectly happy to accept school buildings are at greater risk, so the figure should be somewhat higher, but my home buildings (if extrapolated up from 400k cover to 8m cover) would be £4000 a year.

There seems to be some expertise on this thread so, am I right in thinking that Academies can do pretty much what they want?

I know they can change the school holiday, teachers pay scale and also decide on what extra resource they want to buy in. But what about other bigger issues? Could they (for example) decide to become selective? Or increase class size?

They cannot become academically selective. Former state grammar schools can remain selective though if they convert.

Free schools cannot be academically selective, and independent schools which convert have to drop selection.

I'm not sure about class size.

Or increase the number of classes?

Or refuse to increase the number of classes when the LEA tell them to?

Talkinpeace2 - They are charitable trusts (which are usually constituted as companies limited by guarantee). The board members are the trustees of the charity and are not remunerated at all.

northcountrygirl - To add to other comments, they cannot breach the infant class size limit. There are no limits on class sizes in any other stage of school regardless of whether it is an academy or a community school.

choccyp1g - They can increase the number of classes and have smaller classes if they wish, provided they can afford it. If they refuse to increase the number of classes when the LA tells them to the matter is referred to the Schools Adjudicator. An academy is in a stronger position than a community school (many of whom have been forced to increase the number of classes against their wishes) but it is still possible the Adjudicator will rule that they need to add additional classes.

Textbooks don't necessarily mean lazy teaching, but I have seen lots of "read and answer questions" lessons using textbooks. You'd struggle to get an outstanding on new Ofsted criteria with textbooks. If they are used well, group work, active learning etc then fine.

I can't afford them. I get £1500 a year to buy all paper, pens, sugar paper, exercise books, resources, photocopying etc. I do very little photocopying, I can't afford it.

But I get through hundreds of pens- what do you do when they come without pens? You have to supply them.

I sell them a pen. Kids can normally find 10p. And if you tell them they have to pay and you won't just give them one they often magically find a pen in their bag.

Or for bottom sets where pen forgetting takes up the first half of the lesson I hand out a plastic wallet with a pen, pencil and ruler in to each student, whether they need it or not. Makes it easier collecting them in when I don't need to remember who has what.

Or as I lend equipment I write their name on the board, and only cross it off at the end of the lesson when I get it back.

I stopped lending pens in my first year of teaching after I went through a whole box in a term.

prh
the trustees of the charity are indeed not remunerated - I'm a charity trustee for various things
BUT Charities employ executive directors and it is THOSE people that get VERY highly paid - particularly in Oasis

kez
you cannot compare domestic insurance with commercial
I base my numbers on knowing what small local small councils have to pay to insure their buildings for public use and its horrendous - lots of Parish Councils have their budgets online - read and weep

Talkinpeace2 I would second your conclusion that the real target is to diminish the role of LAs. Your observations about insurance cover for school buildings are similar to the research I have carried out regarding our small primary school converting to academy status. Whilst the cash uplift is much spoken/written about, for a small school to buy in (because we don't have the spare staff capacity/expert skills in house) the same support we get from our LA (admittedly we have a very successful LA) would eat up the cash uplift and some.

One key test for new academies will be when there is some form of 'disaster' - only then will it be clear if the SLT is up to sorting out the situation without the support of LA teams of people and if they have the relevant insurance cover and the insurance company acts swiftly.

I did say I expect it to be somewhat higher tham my domestic. I'm sorry, I simply do not believe £8m of buildings insurance cover will cost 800k per annum for a school in normal circumstances. That is 10% of the cover! In fact, although the Anti-academy website brings the matter of insurance and disparity issue up, even they are quoting costs 10x less than you are.

I'm not saying the underlying point you are making doesn't have foundaton but the amounts you are quoting appear to be scaremongering.

antiacademies.org.uk/2011/10/morehigher-insurance-costs-for-new-academies/

Kez,
even if it is 80k, that will swallow up the whole of the £350k bung in the first four years, leaving the school in a worse financial situation than before from then on ....

For parish councils with village halls, £16k premiums are nothing out of the ordinary so scaling up and taking into account the risk profile of some secondaries .....

Kumquat - but I don't ever use them in lessons. And the cost of copying short revision booklets for pupils to take home diesn't even begin to equate to textbooks / replacing lost ones etc

By that comment, you obviously don't understand how the LACSEG works.

My last post refers to TalkinPeace2

Kez - I've just looked up the LACSEG
and my point is that if Academies ever have to cough up for insurance premiums, it will be NEW money out of the education budget - because there are no premiums currently being paid by the LEAs
so the transfer does not include an allowance for insurance

HOPEFULLY the Dfee will take the pleasingly socialist approach of continuing to underwrite the deemed insurance for academies, ensuring that the money goes to teachers and pupils rather than the bosses of insurance companies.
we shall see !

Extra insurance costs - yes. Your point though, you continually cloud - first with quoting £800k per annum (no) and the implication it will bust Academies. Second, in assuming the only money an academy will get is 'the bung' (no - and the bung went a year ago anyway). Thirdly, you notice extra costs but there is no mention of the savings Academies can make by accessing services privately.

Politically, it's fine being anti-academy. If you read back, in many ways - although different ones to you - politically, I would prefer a different system.

However, financially, it is different for every school and strategically it is different for every school and that actually makes Academy status a good thing for some when the decision is made on a financial and strategic level.

Governing bodies were not tasked to make a decision on a national and political level. They were tasked to make the best decision for their school.

"Governing bodies were not tasked to make a decision on a national and political level. They were tasked to make the best decision for their school."

I agree (2ndary school governor here, or in fact director now we are an academy).

This is what we did; it made sense for us on so many different levels, not least because the LA education dept was disappearing before our eyes; and also because it gives us greater freedom. We were not a failing school, we are one of the latest round of converter academies. We have not and will not change teacher contracts nor school hours. We've got a bloody fantastic SMT, and a "strong, clear" governing body (so Ofsted said a couple of weeks ago, when we got Good all round under the new and more stringent framework).

For us its business as usual and in fact business better than usual because we have more freedom - and it was the best decision for our school, in our circumstances.

I am not anti academies per se
I AM anti the sponsored ones as certainly my local one was given for political rather than educational reasons
my DCs school is a new academy and I'm waiting for the next governor vacancy to go in and support it
I'm lucky that our LEA is big and strong and I know that the bulk of the schools are sticking with the LEA services in the mean time
I also know that some LEAs are frankly crap and the sooner schools are not hidebound to them the better

my big problem with MUCH of recent political decision making is that it is based on the advice of consultants who are pretty little ex public school kids who do not have an effing clue and did not even REALISE things like the insurance issue until it was too late!

HOPEFULLY somebody, somewhere inside the Dfee is quietly working out contingencies so that when an academy fails catastrophically the children will not suffer too much.