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?

Why do you think it's still possible?

@LeakyWaterMain well, for a start, it says so here: https://www.gov.uk/set-up-free-school

In the past cases I know of, the parent groups joined forces with an academy trust, or else had educational leadership experience within their group. After all, being a parent is not mutually exclusive of having other skills too.

And the last time a parent led approved free school was?

Which past cases do you know of?

And how many applied in wave 15?
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/free-schools-application-information-for-wave-15

I don't monitor free school approvals to that level of detail, do you? You could go through the piblished list of approvals and read all the applications if you wanted to. You would need to read the applications, because it wouldn't always be possible to tell from the name of the trust exactly who was involved.

But I don't know what point you're trying to make down this rabbit hole. Whether or not a parent group has had an approval recently does not negate the fact that it's possible. Though, as I said before, it is only possible in certain priority areas, where standards are considered low and places are needed.

This.

If Labour gets in, I hope it's one of the things they dump first because no-one wants them or likes them, except the board of the MAT, and they are of no benefit.

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.

I agree with this. There are many things I can't stand about Gove's time in office, but he did make some positive changes in my opinion.

The move away from all singing,all dancing, Poundland pedagogy lessons with carousels and everyone out their seats 'discovering' things or being led by peers, who also don't know the topic, was a positive move.
I also think it was positive that there was an increased expectation that all children do well, not just get as many as possible over the C/D threshold.

I don't like some of the boot camp style behaviour policies that are fashionable now, but I do think challenging some of the awful teacher-blaming behaviour policies of the past was long overdue. The idea a mainscale classroom teacher should have endless meetings with pupils to find out why the pupil was verbally abusive and disruptive was a terrible trend.

As a school leader I feel there are NO benefits to a school becoming an academy...

It's the slow privatisation of the schooling system. Mark my words!

You will be disappointed. Labour's policy is to keep academies. They do, however, intend to force academies to follow the national curriculum despite evidence from international research that this freedom is one of the factors that leads to improved school performance.

What I find interesting is that academies having curriculum freedom is meant to be a positive thing, but so many of the big MATs have top down centralised curriculum that doesn't reflect the individual schools' contexts.
There's also a push to expand Oak Ofsted approved provider for curriculum, which is more narrow prescriptive approaches.

This seems at odds with the idea of freedom from a national curriculum, which could easily be revised to be appropriate and a minimum standard for all schools, with flexibility built in.

@LolaSmiles Academies in theory can use their own curriculum but SATS/GCSEs/A-Levels etc still need to be taken so they have to follow the curriculum to match what will be on the exam syllabus.
Remember that alternative 'Diploma' qualification that was tried out for a few years? That would have been perfect for specialised schools (eg a STEM school or Visual and Performing Arts School or whatever) run as an Academy and been an actual alternative to a typical LA comp.
Unfortunately they have all (curriculum wise) just become a "typical comp".

I agree with you Needmorelego, which is why I find it interesting that the freedom from NC is a reason given for academies promoting school improvement.

In my area certain chains improve the school by removing the students who don't fit a very narrow model to other local schools or the PRUs.

I've seen some of their KS3 plans for my subject and they don't seem to focus on a love of learning or subject knowledge. If anything they have less subject depth than other schools in the area. It's basically a 5 year GCSE course.

It’s all political. And it’s very hard to get a handle on whether they do better or worse than LA schools. Despite what PPs have said, there is no conclusive evidence either way, partly because it’s a whole fruit bowl of apples, pears, bananas and oranges.

The earliest academies were the strongest schools, including many grammars in selective areas. They were allowed/encouraged to step away from their LA. Many of these remain as standalone academies. Some perform well. Others are poorly led and have negligible governance.

Multi-academy trusts have grown through a combination of choice and compulsion. Strong MATs are expected to take on failing LA schools.

Recent government declarations that all schools will need to be in a MAT by 2030 (now seemingly rowed back on) have caused schools that are actually happy with their LA to start looking at MATs because they want to avoid having no choice who they team up with.

As for money. Yes, they are legally not-profits. But salaries are usually huge. The per pupil salaries of the senior central roles in MATs vastly exceed the equivalent LA roles. It is unclear what value all of these new roles add for children. Many headteachers have expressed surprise at the extent to which their budget shrinks after joining a MAT - they need to do due diligence to identify all the top slicing and charging back that they will be subject to.

There are also several examples of MATs with ‘financial irregularities’, including sourcing vastly over-priced services from companies owned by senior people’s family members.

Tory governments like academisation because they feel they can control MATs in a way that is not possible with LA’s who have a link to some kind of democratic mandate. The sad reality though is that the DfE is not competent to manage such a complex system.

The earliest academies were the strongest schools, including many grammars in selective areas

Not true. The earliest academies were failing schools that were forced to convert to academy status. When Labour introduced academies, this was the only way a school could become an academy.

But salaries are usually huge. The per pupil salaries of the senior central roles in MATs vastly exceed the equivalent LA roles

Debatable. Some MATs pay huge salaries, most do not. In 2019, the highest salary in most MATs was £80k-£90k. However, there was a long tail of higher salaries, pushing the average up to £113k. Average per pupil cost was £26.81. For large MATs with 11+ schools, this fell to £21.30 per pupil.

In reality, I don't think any state school can get away with not following the national curriculum anyway. Not to make this thread a debate about Ofsted as we have enough of those, but if they come in and feel you are not covering enough of the national curriculum in a subject, then your school will likely be criticised. As the national curriculum for most subjects is quite large, this leads to limited space for covering anything else.

And of course at KS4 and KS5, the vast majority of what is covered is dictated by the exam board you have chosen! In reality, in my subject at least, most secondary schools who don't follow the national curriculum fully at KS3 cut out the bits on the GCSE- so you miss topics like bones and muscles, and the rock cycle, and sometimes space- which is a shame as these are often topics students really enjoy!

I would love more curricular freedom in England but I think whilst the exam system exists as it does, in reality we'll always be very limited in what we cover. Obviously, at KS5 at least, choice of exam board does make a difference. But it's not really "freedom".

An academy in my area tried a non-traditional curriculum and failed dismally - parents didn't want to be part of the experiment, and teachers were wary of working there. The trust was replaced, and now it's mainstream. All the other academies in the area are mainstream too. Just because something "can" be done, doesn"t mean it is.

What sort of curriculum was it, out of curiosity?

It was a curriculum from abroad, from an early academy sponsor taking a gamble on the UK's academy model going down the "for profit" route. Thankfully it didn't. It's just a shame our local authority bought into their marketing pitch.

Thanks for the background; I didn't know the history behind why they were set up.

For context, I asked a the question after DD's LA run struggling primary ('requires improvement') became part of a MAT.

We didn't have any opinion either way about academies at the time (still don't tbh; except that more curious now).

We haven't seen any significant difference in the school after the change. DD has now left; four years and two headteacher later, the school still 'Requires improvement' according to ofsted.

Obviously one anecdote doesn't make data, so was looking for whether there are studies on this; whether adopting this structure actually makes a difference in outcome.

From what I found and read here, there doesn't seem to be any, except that mass academic conversion coincided with a period when U.K. school outcomes (as measured by PISA etc) improved. But other things were changing too at the same time (Gove changes etc), so it's probably impossible to extract out the differences academies made on average, if any.

It's probably not worth finding out anymore because after all most schools are academies, and the remaining will eventually become so. In my area all the secondaries are part of some MAT, so there isn't a choice anyway.

The schools that were good in this area before (good by ofsted rating, gcse result), continue to perform well as academies. The schools that were struggling as LA run ones few year back, continue to struggle as academies now.

It probably makes sense - if spending per head is same, if cohort is similar, if no dramatic advancement in teaching techniques have been made since, it's hard to see why outcome would be different under different management structure unless previous management was terribly incompetent. That maybe true for specific cases, but on average across England probably wasn't true.