OASIS Academies - what's your experience?

[skewiff]

That's it really.

A group near me are trying to set one up. We have not enough places for secondary children in the borough - so the council are basically expecting everyone to move out (they actually have said this). There is no money with the local authority to set up any new schools.

All that can happen is existing schools can enlarge or a free school/ academy can open.

Our local group of parents have chosen Oasis as a backer. I would like to know more about them, if anyone has any information.

Do they bring religion into their schools and curriculum. How are they are managing the schools?

Are they any good?

I am looking for both positive and negative feedback, of course.

Thank you.

Awful places

Oasis took over DC's primary school and number of others in the area - they weren't too bad compared with other academy chains. They also opened a new Secondary school and taken over others locally.

The secondary school they opened isn't very popular and had trouble keeping Head teachers. I think that it has just reached the first year of GCSEs now but when we looked for DS it was too new and empty. The one they took over is popular and well liked and it was a poorly regarded school before then.

I must admit that I was very resistant to them taking over the primary school because I was worried about the religious element. They are not a 'faith' school but a local vicar used to hold an assembly once a week. There was a lot more religion in the school. I know that all schools are meant to have some form of collective worship and be vaguely C of E but most non-faith schools don't really do a lot.

My other big issue was the uniform - they did away with the fleeces, polo shirts and sweat shirts and made them all wear proper shirts, proper ties and then from Y4 blazers. I hate uniform on young kids and especially really strict expensive uniform like that. It cost more and was more grown up than the generic blazer and clip on the DS wore when he went intoY7 .

I was involved i PTA and the new head wanted the bank account, but we kept hold of it. Oasis as an organisation provided a liaison person who worked with parents and was also the PTA contact with the school.

There was more 'this is the Oasis way' some better than before, some not. DS always says that it was the worst thing to happen to the school - I saw that they got some funding and deadwood staff fell by the wayside.

Many of their schools, are literally money making and people just want to climb the ladder of the business.

The local one we had and where safeguarding was ignored on the visit, we were told that there wasn't any religious ethos, and then through the years and the dissapointments we started to investigate a bit further, realising that they Oasis Community as they are called, was created by an evangelical pastor, and it trickels down to the schools, we the 9 habits, coming from the bible, and the way the teach RE, to top it off, we also had ads on the newsletters regarding the local evangelical church which were using on the weekends the school hall and were invited to the school events.

The management was dredful, and in 5 years open had passed 3 heads and deputies, staff left in alarming rate, although some of them were quite un-experience and bad in general, and not well supported, no idea how the passed Ofsted, well I do know, suddenly as soona s they knew the inspection was imminent, the head office sent the experts to groom them.

Lots of families left, particularly in the last 2 years because they had enough, and moved to the schools around the area. In the one we moved our child to, they are around 20 kids that came from the same place, and includes families that were very inside the school, in PTFA and volunteering.

It supposed to be a 2 entry school, but they had to go down to 1 reception class, and now are trying to get extra funding opening a nursery, the rest of the classes are not at full capacity either, considering that from a class of 25, 10 kids left at the end of the last academic year.

The other schools from this group that I know in the South West of the country are not much better, and had a very bad reputation, so I can't still believe that they get contracts with the DfE.

I just don't think big academy chains is the way to run the schools. At least local authorities were well.... local.

Unfortunately its the model the givt favours :(