Changing school status

[lesleya61]

My daughters secondary school is proposing to change to a foundation school and acquiring charitable trust. I have done an internet search but cant really make sense of what it means not only for me as a mum and my daughter, but for the school in the longer term and also for myself as a visiting health professional who works regularly within the school.

The charitable trust is a way of making sure that it is harder to change the ethos of the school, as as well as the normal head teacher and governors, there will also be trustees. I assume they want to become an academy, and have more control over their funds and not have to stick to the NC so rigidly.
DCs school became an academy and not much seems to have changed (although it does mean they could find some funds to help support a youth worker/counsellor who works in the school, whose charitable funding had been cut).

It's quite different to becoming an academy I think; your dd's school is likely to be going into partnership with local businesses and becoming a trust foundation school, rather than an Academy.

My school (where I teach, am a parent, and am a teacher Governor!) has just initiated this and we'll be forming a partnership with the Cooperative Trust and the the local council - so while we'll be able to draw on the Coop's ethos in raising the aspiration of our students via training, work experience, mentoring, lectures etc, and they'll benefit from involvement with our lovely shiny school (new build a couple of years ago) the day to day life will not change at all.

The first thing our Head said to us was that our T&C would remain the same, and I think this applies to all outreach workers too.

Her worry was that with Academy status, there are a lot of private businesses looking to take over schools and our school would be very attractive because of its facilities. She then reckoned that they'd apple business type thinking to the whole ethos of the school - she felt that this wasn't for us.

Academy status feels more brutal and rigorous in my opinion. Trust status is more about partnership and community. Eventually our learning community will hopefully comprise all the local schools.

Oh, and our name isn't going to change, but it will have a sub-heading pointing firmly to community interaction. Can't remember what that is at the moment!

Despite my heave involvement in the school I'm aware that my contribution is a little woolly - but I hope it makes sense!

My DCs school has no connection with any businesses (unless you count the County Cricket club, and that was pre-academy) but is an academy. Doesn't plan to change either.