What is the point of academies?

[justanotherdaduser]

Government websites say they have more freedom in choosing curriculum, plus (to some extent) how they spend their budget. This freedom presumably would enable them to perform better.

But they don't seem to be notably better than their maintained peers. Some are, some aren't, on average they are similar. For example, here is a summary fullfact.org/education/academies-and-maintained-schools-what-do-we-know/

So if they cost the same and outcome is same too, why did Department for Education went for academies to begin with? What was the original expectation?

And now with the information we have, why are schools still converting into academies? What is the advantage?

I genuinely don’t get them . If they think there is too much red tape in traditional schools remove it.

schools should not be businesses . It forgets the children are the centre of this . Although schools are all much more like factories these days . Looses the teacher’s unique skills

To filter public money into wealthy people's pockets by using 'Educompanies' who don't even need to know anything about education.

Local authorities don’t have to employ all those staff members

Being kind it was to give people a choice in areas where local authories were doing badly at running things as there was a bit of luck on whether your LA was any good.

Being less kind there has been a lot of moves to reduce Local authority power over time and increase central goverment power.

I also think its a stepping stone to for profit schools that are free to attend.

Originally they were to offer an alternative specialised education. Some of the originals were known as 'City Technology Colleges' - usually STEM subjects were the main concept and the idea was that students could focus on a education that was more focused on a particular career goal. One near me it's original speciality was Business and Enterprise. Now it's part of a large chain and I don't think it still has that tag line.
The Brit School is listed as a CTC on league tables.
Now however that concept seems to have gone. There are now the 14+ University Technology Colleges (UTCs) that are genuine in offering a specific alternative education but Academies have just become the standard for most schools and it's mostly just about how they are funded.

It was based on evidence from other countries that giving schools certain freedoms, including the freedom to compete for pupils (which LA maintained schools cannot do), led to better outcomes. Also, LA maintained schools have their budget top-sliced by the LA and many felt that they didn't need some of the services the LA provided and that they could get the services they did need at lower cost, freeing up more to spend on educating the pupils. That is still a motivation for schools to convert.

At the time Labour introduced academies, there were significant numbers of schools that had been failing to perform at an acceptable standard for a decade or more. Some LAs had significant concentrations of such schools, so it was clear that the LA was not doing anything effective to improve school performance. Removing such schools from LA control was therefore seen as essential to improve performance.

It was also believed that the academy model would give parents greater choice, with different schools offering different approaches. I'm not convinced this has actually happened to any significant degree.

Contrary to what @willingtolearn says, it was not about "filtering public money into wealthy people's pockets". It is a legal requirement that academies are run by charities. They may be constituted as a company (many charities are), but it is a company limited by guarantee. That means it doesn't have shareholders and no-one can own the charity. It also means that the charity cannot distribute its profits to its members and that the majority of trustees (the people who control the charity) are unpaid. Where trustees are paid, they cannot be paid simply for being a trustee and, if challenged, the charity must be able to show that they are receiving goods and/or services to at least the value of the amount paid. These controls also apply to paying close relatives, business partners and businesses connected to trustees. Of course, none of this is an absolute guarantee against fraud, but fraud happens at LA maintained schools as well.

What the FullFact article misses is that evidence from other countries is that academy-style schools drag up standards generally - that LA maintained schools (or their equivalent) perform better where academy-style schools exist. The fact that the UK has moved up the PISA rankings significantly would be seen by supporters of academies as evidence that it is working. The fact that England has moved up significantly whilst Scotland (which does not have academies) has gone down would also be seen as evidence in favour of academies.

Another point re the FullFact article is that its data is from 2016, at which time a lot of academies were forced conversions of schools judged to be failing. It might, therefore, have been instructive to see how much such schools had improved compared to LA maintained schools.

My personal view is that it is clear the UK's education system has improved relative to other countries over the last decade. I have no idea how much, if any, of that improvement is down to the academy programme. However, it is clear that academies are here to stay.

In simple terms it is more financial freedom. The funding for all schools is the same. Funding for maintained schools is filtered by the LA who take a cut to fund their services. Academies get their funding straight from the government and it includes the LACSEG (local authority central spend equivalent grant).

Originally this was very attractive because so many LAs are rubbish and HTs thought why would I want it to give a huge chunk of money to an inadequate LA.

But they still have to buy those services somewhere and they've discovered grass isn't always greener and go back cap in hand to the LA.

Of course it has now become much more complicated with multi academy trusts with the trust boards taking their own cut and numerous examples of dodgy dealing and backhanders.

And as you say, educational standards have not risen.

I am not sure they have gone back cap in hand to the LA

Trust boards certainly dont take their own cut if anything. Rather the opposite being a Trustee of a MAT means giving tens of thousands of pounds worth of your professional services/expertise for free each year.

Simply put it means the school (or group of schools usually) report into Whitehall for funding purposes rather than the Local Education Authority, which is part of the local council. It means a lot of the decisions previously made at council level are now made at school (or school partnership) level. It doesn't automatically change the built environment, facilities, teaching staff or pupil cohort. In some cases it might result in a shakeup that improves a school. In other cases the shakeup makes everyone miserable and doesn't improve anything.

The point of academies is to bypass normal teacher employment terms and conditions, and also to be able to employ unqualified staff much cheaper

I have no axe to grind either way in philosophical terms - a good school is a good school.

I think the charter school approach, vouchers or paying the fees of low-cost private schools is the best approach in places where public schooling is just utterly broken, meaning that trying to improve public schools is like pushing on a piece of string - they have been shown to be better in developing and middle-income countries, and in parts of the US where public schools are just plain awful and have seemed to be absolutely beyond reform, like Mississippi.

I think they do not do anything in particular in places where state schools are basically fine, like most parts of England.

It is true that English schools have improved gradually in international assessments over the past 10 years, but I think that is more likely to be the (delayed/time-lagged) effect of better phonics teaching since 2006-ish and Gove's reforms (as those cohorts have gradually aged up and the better phonics and the more knowledge-rich approach have become better embedded).

Just charterization without doing anything else doesn't seem to do anything; Sweden tried this and their schools got worse over the period, probably because in terms of content the Swedish schools were doing the opposite of the Gove reforms - they were moving more and more in the direction of fuzzy, child-led interdisciplinary project based learning blah blah. Lots of fun, no doubt, but the kids educated this way have done worse and worse on int'l assessments.

In terms of why schools are still converting.

One is financial. The LA take a cut of funding to provide services. The MAT takes a cut, but sometimes its a lower cut and a better service.

Also in terms of educational improvement the less LA schools there are, the less they offer so you end up a bit of an island . Its harder to find schools to do montoring visits, moderation, just visit to see their set up, have heads groups, senco groups etc.

@LeakyWaterMain sorry poor choice of words from me about the trust board, I mean the MAT umbrella layer of CEO and others (paid posts) not the trustees.

I think also there are so many red herrings in these debates. Dodgy dealings and the chumocracy are alive and kicking in the maintained sector as well. And there are some amazing MATs full of innovative wonderful people who run fantastic schools.

@prh47bridge is one of the reasons MN is so great - I really value posts by people like her!

As an ex-governor who led a primary into an academy, the local academy offerings were considerably better than the LA. When I started as a governor, academies were seen as to be avoided at all costs, and by the time I quit about 8 years later, the academies locally had matured into solid, respected educational organisations. Our LA just doesn't have any kind of dynamic thinking or ability to help schools solve their problems. For example, our biggest headache as a small school was staffing - limited career opportunities and facilities to support junior staff. The LA basically shrugged their shoulders; the academies have training programmes, shared learning across classes, and the ability to swap teachers around according to need.

There are 2 academies that are GDST schools, Birkenhead High and Belvedere. Not all are schools that were failing previously.

what "gove reform" do you imagine has lead to any improvement in schools? Or are you deliberately being a wind up merchant?

When I was a parent governor I was struck by just how much like businesses/factories schools have become these days. They are manufacturing a product (GCSE grades) and the pupils are the raw material used to make the product.

The raw material child goes in at one end, is moulded by following a process where a flow chart of yes and no answers determines its exact route through, and comes out the other end in the desired shape.

There are quality checks along the way where the duff products failing children are taken out of the production chain and recycled (sent to some kind of specialist school), or if the duff product child reaches the end of the production process and doesn't turn out quite right (doesn't achieve the predicted grades), is sold off as factory seconds (doesn't get to go to sixth form).

Gone are the days when the French teacher could veer off mid lesson to talk about the world's greatest mountains, or the history teacher would enthuse us by talking about his favourite ever rugby game are long gone. The timetable is rigid.

Schools these days are judged on the grades they produce, not on the well rounded education they provide their pupils.

@justanotherdaduser The academy model breaks the LA monopolies that used to exist, for better or worse.

In the past you may have been lucky to give in a good LEA area, or unlucky to live in an area where the LEA did a poor job. If the latter, there was nothing you could do but move or go private. Now you may be able to send your child to an academy instead. There are good and bad academies, but when they do a bad job, the DfE can sack the trustees and install replacement trustees. They couldn't do that with LEA's.

This is a good thing, in my view (as a local governor of an academy) and in the view of many school leaders (but not all).

If it makes you feel any better, many academy trusts are run by people who used to work for LEAs, and some local authorities have representatives on local academy trust boards.

@oktopus the thing is in some places an Academy chain can have a monopoly and there is barely an alternative choice or LA alternative if you don't want your child in one of those schools.

Yes, true, but the DfE will be happy if they're seen to be doing a relatively good job. Parent power is a bit "10 years ago". For a short time, parents could join forces with academy sponsors to create new "free schools" where they where wanted. That is what happened in my lical area. It is still possible, but only in certain target areas where standards are considered low, not in areas where standards are ok but there is an unwanted monopoly.

”Gove” is being used vaguely here, but since the late 2000s there has been a distinct push towards the more knowledge-rich approach in schools, tighter emphasis on phonics, memorizing maths facts and so on. OFSTED no longer demands all-singing all-dancing “active” lessons with learning carousels and as little direct instruction as possible. I get that the phonics screenings and timed times tables tests and all that are really unpopular in some quarters and I’m not denying that schools across the UK have a lot of problems and challenges, but the kids who have gone through this have done better on things like PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS over the years. Scotland meanwhile has gone the other way, which is probably quite telling!

On a personal level, as a parent, the primary school that my kids have went to is very good.

It is part of an academy chain and the resources they have available to them seem better than most other local schools.

I will admit I was nervous at 1st and wasn't overly happy about an academy but I have been really pleased.

I do find this sort of thread, which pops up from time to time, to be in a bit of a time warp - so many schools are now academies that it's a bit like grammar school traditionalists asking "what is the point of comprehensives?" ... just move on ... academies are here to stay - no political party is planning to reverse the trend. Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto may have contained something along those lines, but other Labour leadership teams, before and since, have accepted that academisation per se is an established part of the educational landscape. But there have been changes to the model along the way, and no doubt there will be more.

It's worth remembering that the academy concept was originally invented by a Labour government, under Tony Blair.

@prh47bridge , thank you very much for the insightful answer. Really helped me understand the background and the original motivation behind it.

It is a very long time since a parent led free school has been approved for opening.

Why do you think it is still possible?