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?

I suspect a lot of schools will look to buy back LEA services. It will be good in the pockets where the provision wasn't so good, there will now be an incentive to improve.

I also hope the YPLA are developing their support system so it is robust if requried.

When the LAs are all closed and private companies step in to fill the gaps, what's to stop them putting the prices up?

Competition.

Academies and free schools are run by charitable trusts, not private companies. And they do not have any freedom to set their "charges". The government tells them how much money they will receive per pupil.

Academies can buy services back from the LEA or from the general market.

One of these, as an example, is payroll services. There isn't suddenly a new market being created for this service - outsourcing payroll has been around for eons and it is a competitive market. So, if the LEA didn't exist, and one outsourcer put it's prices up, the Academy can move to another.

There is a whole competitive market place out there for, probably, everything an Academy could want.

One disadvantage an Academy faces if it shops on its own is lack of economies of scale. I can see local groups of Academies getting together to source some things, so they can gain economies of scale as well as access to the competitive market place. Or, if the LEA are as good a value as the marketplace as many people argue, then I am sure Academies will use them.

prh
your schools knowledge is second to none, but you need to read up more about Companies Limited By Guarantee and how Charity companies can extract money from their revenue streams.
There are lots of clever ways to make things disappear and the incentive will all be with the SMT of academy schools rather than with YPLA
especially a few years down the line when the governing bodies have been tamed

The risks to budgets from corruption in school management is exactly the same as exist currently under LEAs. Far too many stories about council corruption (from both counsellors and officials) and occasionally SMT members.

An Academy is subject to external, independant, audit and strict disclosure requirements.

link?
just that the companies act disclosures are not onerous, not are the charity ones
is there an additional burden on academy schools?
I note that former colleagues are suddenly putting 'academy school audit' in their expertise on linked in but am not clear what the legal framework is....

I recommend you start by reading the Academies Financial Handbook. Ask your colleagues to lend you a copy as they will, I'm sure, be fully conversant with it given their expertise.

again, what Kez said "I can see local groups of Academies getting together to source some things, so they can gain economies of scale as well as access to the competitive market place."

we have done exactly this, and also with cross-curriculum benefits, sharing staff and expertise, training for staff and governors etc etc etc.

Yes, Boschy, they're called academy chains.

Who are generally better at making themselves a profit by buying in their own services than educating children, as the performance data produced by the Dfe shows very clearly.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/14/crony-capitalism-corporate-schools?INTCMP=SRCH

no rosebud, we are not part of a chain; we are totally independent but have come together to work as a group. any one of us (not many of us) can walk away at any time; but each school has particular strengths the others can learn from; and areas which others can help improve on.

Talkinpeace2 - You are alleging criminal activity. It can, of course, happen. It happens in the state sector too.

Rosebud05 - I've tried to explain this several times but you still don't seem to grasp the basic point that an academy buying services from its profit making subsidiaries means more money for the school. Let me try again.

An academy needs some building work done. It could pay a commercial contractor to do the work just like LA-controlled schools. The contractor charges, say, £10,000 making £1,000 profit. That £1,000 profit goes into the contractor's pockets. Alternatively it could pay its subsidiary to do the work. Let us assume that the charges and profit level are the same. So it pays £10,000 to its subsidiary which makes £1,000 profit. However, as that subsidiary is wholly owned that profit comes back to the academy chain which must, as a charity, spend it on the schools. So the net result is £1,000 more to spend on the school than if it had used a contractor.

prh, a bit of creative accounting and overseas bank accounts gets round that little problem. Also, paying executives shed loads of cash tends to account for rather a lot of profit.

The point is that academy chains, ARK, for example, use only their own subsidaries for building work regardless of whether their services best meet the needs of the school or represent best value for money etc. As these chains get bigger, they push out competition as smaller, local companies have less work to tender for.

Think Tesco vs corner shop. My perspective is that giving for profit companies (which several of the new academy chains are, with more to come out of the wood work) increased purchasing power is not a desirable way forward for our education system.

It actually means more money for those involved in and associated with the academy chains, not the school.

I see you have gone back to alleging criminal behaviour - creative accounting, etc. It does, of course, happen in both the state sector and the private sector.

I am intrigued as to why opponents of academies think it is ok to pay LA bureaucrats shedloads of cash from the schools budget but not people doing similar jobs in academy trusts.

I agree that an academy chain should only use its own subsidiaries if overall it will provide better value for the schools. The fact that the chain retains any profit made on the job if it uses its subsidiary can make it harder for some to compete, of course. An independent contractor would need to have lower costs so that they could do the job for a lower price and still make a profit.

Do please name an academy chain that is run for profit. As far as I am aware there are none.

Accountability, in response to your second pint.

Gove has approved K12, Edison Learning and Mosaica to run UK schools. All for profit companies, all with a poor track record in the States.

I don't view LA bureaucrats as accountable. You can't vote them out of office and the alleged democratic control exercised over them by the LA is generally minimal.

Those companies have NOT been approved to "run UK schools" despite what the Anti-Academies Alliance say. They are amongst 12 suppliers who have been approved to provide support and advice to groups setting up free schools and schools converting to academy status. So a school looking to convert (or being forced to convert) may be given this list and told that these people can help you, meaning that they can provide project management services and advice on legal and financial issues, school policy, staff recruitment and the like. Not the same thing at all.

"help schools"

Just on the insurance for academy schools buildings - there is a cost implication that is being overlooked when academies will have to buy their own cover.

I am associated with small volutary aided primary school (100 pupils) that has to contribute 10% to all capital projects. Our LA 'self insures' school buildings but we would have to contribute 10% should any disaster befall our building. We do insure for the 10% risk via a group policy organised by the Diocese and our annual premium is @£2000. Scale that up to the full cover an academy would need to buy in for a school accomodating 1000 to 1500 pupils and it will be a significant overhead.

These were offered as 'sponsors' to schools in Birmingham very recently, btw.

Precisely, JWIM, that's exactly why, even with the bribes available, most primaries don't want to become academies.

Which is why they'll be so vulnerable to the clutches of large, usually poorly performing academy chains.

JWIM. That has been covered already in this thread.

It's an important point and one worth returning to.

Every school has to look at its own situation. My only experience is with 'new type' academies. The choice to convert or not is nothing to do with bribes at all. It's to do with the amount of LACSEG you will get given directly now and the freedoms you will get and whether these things are of benefit, or not, for your particular school. Every school will have a different case and some will convert, others will not.