Does anyone teach at or have dcs go to a school with Academy status?

[itchyandscratchy]

Failing school in our area getting academy status soon and the PR is glowing (obv) and trumpets fantastic exam success rates in its 'sister' school in another authority. (It does stick in the craw somewhat to learn that in an area where education is so very poorly funded by the LA, the new academy now has £2M to spend - on publicity alone .)

Most sec schools is area are dead against it as the excluded pupils that will be inevitably kicked out of the academy will end up there.

Unions are also dead against it as teachers will need to reapply for their jobs and roles will be performance-related.

But it's hard getting viewpoints that aren't based on spin or doom. I can see points from both sides tbh but need some anecdotal evidence too, based on experiences.

It is hard getting a neutral viewpoint, the school I taught at previously was more than likely to become an academy and when I was making the decision to stay or leave I tried to get neutral information and just couldnt.

I would be wary of who runs the academy, lots have religious affiliations and I would want to look carefully at their science and RE curriculums.

As a teacher I would have no issue over teachers re applying for jobs as it would weed out the chaff. Peformance related is another issue as it is difficult to measure but if it could be used to get rid of teachers who are not working hard or fail to get results that is not a bad things. I refuse to even apply for my PR pay as I think my time should be spent being a good teacher not filling in forms to get a pay rise.

Acadamies to spend a lot of money to recruit the right kind of staff. I was appraoched about running a department in an academy and would have earnt almost double what a private school offered to pay me.

I do know there is evidence that acadamies can have a negative effect on other schools, from a selfish but inderstandable point of view it therefore may be better to have your child in an academy than a local school being hit negatively by one.

I know when an academy was being discussed in my old school it was going to have a real emphasis on vocational qualifications, lots of NVQs and BTECS which are often used to falsely boost grades and league table places.

Sorry I cannot be more help but will watch with interest.
Sorry I cannot be more help, but I will watch wit interest.

Interesting, twinset. I was on the TES forums yesterday and it was worth noting that the only poster who actually worked in an Academy was very positive. All of the negative comments were based on hearsay and no-one could actually give excamples of where and when they had actually happened (related to teachers' p&c; religious curriculum, etc.).

It is frustrating though to think that our LA has more or less 'given up' on a school that they have failed to improve over the past 10 years. The catchment is difficult, but no worse than others I have worked in (for another, well-funded and very successful) authority. The problem has been with the Leadership Team. Heads that have failed have been given jobs in the LA and no one seems to be accountable.

In some ways I am pleased for all the families and kids who have no choice but to go to this school as I think they will get a better deal for the most part. But the other schools will probably suffer and, therefore, the kids that go there.

Very true itchy beyond being approached about a job via email I have never spoken to anyone who work in an academy which is why I found it so hard to make an informed choice.

It depends on who runs the academy. Academy status in itself is just a name.

Our local and very good secondary was merged with another secondary, given academy status and given to a religious group to run last year.

It has been a complete disaster. There have been riots, teachers not turning up for lessons, no clear lesson plans, 19 staff including the head resigned within the course of a week, Ofsted have been sent in. It took about a month of new academy status for the whole school to descend into chaos.

Dd thankfully got into an out-of-catchment school because she is a wheelchair user and the new school had no information about how they were going to help her access the curriculum in a non-accessible school.

The last time she asked a friend in the other school how things were going he said: 'well, it's a bit better, the teachers are turning up now, but I still can't hear what they're saying.'

I met the Mum of one of dd's friends the otherday, and she was almost in tears when she told me how her dd had completely lost her motivation, she is not learning anything, she never has any homework because she gets through all the work in class. I remember this girl from Yr 6 as one of the most intelligent, bubbly, interested girls you could meet, someone you would swear would get top GCSE results. It's taken them less than a year to destroy all that.

I then went and checked the Ofsted reports for the two schools the same organisation already had up and running before us: one seems to be good, the other reports definite problems with the quality of the teaching.

The irony is, that this organisation claims to specialise in failing schools, and ours was a perfectly useful school that only failed when they took it over.

Being part of the "diversity" programme, they're bound to have a very wide variation.

I've heard about good ones. The religious sponsors bother me a lot though.

twinset, I think what you said about the discussion of b-tecs and NVQ's as a way of boosting qualifications on paper is interesting.
It's a symptom of target driven industry...

A friends dc was more or less forced to do city and guilds hair and beauty, when actually she wanted to do art and design and drama, but she was more likely to get good grades in h and b.

Obviously some children are suited to a less academic structure, but having taught on some nvq courses (a while ago) I agree that they don't fill the gap they should. They certainly give the impression that if the box is ticked that a module is complete, it's more important than the content and drive of the course.

And linking that with cory's point about children losing enthusiasm and motivation, the whole acdemy thing looks like a huge exercise is empty qualifications which look good on paper.

Cory that is so sad.

I am lucky that my new school does not have to do that kind of thing northernrefugee as it made me feel very uncomfortable.

Usually when a school makes a miraculous leap up the league tables if you scratch the surface there will be Btechs and NVQs galore

I teach in an Academy which is very high achieving. I also work with 2 other local academies, with trainee teachers, and the 3 of them are very different. Academy status per se doesn't mean things will go well nor does it mean that they will go badly, though I have experience of both. It is down to the sponsors, their relationship with the management team etc. Unions will be dead against it because Academies are not bound by school teachers pay and conditions therefore can demand more of their staff (I know mine does!). Theoretically it is a good thing, but in practice it may be anything but...

Do you enjoy working there ducky? Is it working in your opinion?

In what way do they demand more from staff> I have no problems with more being asked of me if it works.

It is hard to get unbiased reports as the unions are against them

it was a CTC before it became an academy, so no real difference! We are obliged to offer 2 after hours sessions a week, plus 2 hours of staff training on weds. Results are good, therefore pressure on staff is high, to maintain the standards. The main change from CTC to academy has been the catchment area, which is now far more local than it was (not a good thing!). I don't like it, but that's an internal political issue for me, not an academy thing. It wouldn't put me off working for another one.

lots of teachers do that anyway tbh.

BTECs, NVQs etc are not a product of academies though, they are a product of a system which focuses on league tables to the ignorance of anything else. However, now that schools are judged on the percentage of pupils getting five A-Cs including English and Maths, the schools that shot up the league tables due to vocational qualifications are likely to shoot down again now.

Academies seem to be one of the few things that the unions agree on but when we've had the unions in our school they spout a lot of hot air but haven't been able to give us much actual concrete evidence as to why academies seem to be so hated by the unions. They also don't consider individual school circumstances at all, so their rhetoric isn't really relevant/meaningful to many teachers or specific school situations.

If one school is becoming an academy (rather than several schools merging) my understanding is that teachers transfer to the academy intheir existing roles and can choose to remain on their existing contract. I don't think they should have to re-apply for their jobs, as it should all move across via TUPE (is that what it's called?).

V sad re: the little girl who has been so badly put off school.

Depending on the circumstances generally transition to an Academy is pretty grim all round and I would avoid it like the plague if you possibly can.

I work in a secondary school (not a failing school) and we are closing this summer along with two others to become an Academy. As is common the new buildings will not be available for several years, so the 'Academy' will function in the old buildings of two of the schools for a few years.

If I told you some of the details of what is going on 'behind the scenes' it would make your hair crawl. I wouldn't touch a school in Academy transition with a barge pole if it were my children.

itchy are you in Kent?

there is one local-ish to us which is reopening as an academy in 2010 i think.

No you are right Janeite the are not a product of academies. But the problem is that because the government is investing so much both in terms of money and reputation in academies they want results fast whicb can mean BTECHS etc. Of course there is nothing wrong with those courses of the correct students are doing them

I have felt the same thing about unions and academies. When we had or meeting to say our school was being merged and an academy was likely the union reps were very scathing about academies but beyond a vague statment about contracts being changed they could not say why.

Roisin I can well imagine, we were a failing school that was merging and it was the final straw in my leaving.

no, not in kent. The academy has been a failing school for a few years now but has had a shed-load of money thrown at it so the facilties are second-to-none already. Terrible area though, so a bit like putting make-up on a goat at this stage

Very scary that it seems so random as to who takes over the running of each academy. The one near us at least has a track record with another school 30 miles away. The new head was the deputy at the other school. She's one of these fast-track whizz kids, aged about 12 and a half years old.

interesting what you say about Academy transition, roisin. I wish I could hope that that is all it is in our school, and that they will come out the other end once their teething problems are over

but I have my doubts about this particular management

I went to the introductory meeting and it was fascinating how they just assumed that all parents would be really negative towards education and would need lots and lots of reassurance that the school would understand their fears and not overwhelm the children with academic expectations

there was no sign of recognition of the fact that some parents who might actually want their children to work hard and do well at school, and that some children might even (heaven forbid) have ambitions

the reality is that we are not a wealthy community, but we are a fairly stable one, where most parents probably do expect their children to work hard and behave well

local people were very proud of the council run language college we had there was no need to change it in order to get better figures: youngsters were leaving with all A's and getting in at prestigious universities. Can't see that happening under the current regime.

In case anyone wonders why it happened if there was no problem with the extisting school, the (Tory) council wanted to merge two schools so they could sell the land, they no longer wanted the responsibility of running the school and (it is alleged) they were swayed by a councillor with strong affiliations to the religious group in question.

That's really disgraceful cory. Awful.

Cory - that sounds dreadful.

Twinset - yes, absolutely: for the right pupils BTECs etc are a real boon but there has to be an element of choice rather than all pupils shoe-horned into taking them because the pass rate may be higher than more traditionally academic subjects.

The other thing worth mentioning (that the press, unions etc on the whole have ignored) is that not all schools that may become academies are failing schools.

The thing is when it comes to choosing options many students and parents think a high number of GCSEs is a good thing. These days some students end up with 15!

But actually in terms of Russel Group Unis someone with good grades in, say:
Maths
English Lit
English Lang
Triple Science
History
French

looks far more promising than someone with fistfuls of GCSEs garnered from the diploma tree, or COPE courses, or NCS, or BTEC performing Arts.

The new Media Studies course at our place is going to be worth 2 GCSEs!

How can schools persuade students to follow courses like Geography and German when they know they are much harder work, and 'worth less' at the end of it.

Geography seems to be a bit of a dying subject. A shame.

And you're right of couse: colleges and unis really aren't interested in that course in Motor Mechanics 'worth' four GCSEs!

Next year our spanking new Academy is going to be teaching "GCSE Humanities". Sixth Form College haven't yet decided whether they will accept this dumbed down course as prereq. for A level History or Geography!

Roisin are they not teaching History and Geog as well? DD's school offer Humanties GCSE but only to students who have taken the options in both Geog and History at GCSE they can do it as an extra GCSE how they intend to teach it I'm not too sure.

We already have no History or Geog GCSEs, only Travel and Tourism BTEC etc.

They do have History and Geography, but only restricted - ie in a single option block, so you can't do both, and you can't do either of them with, say, German! But GCSE Humanities is in lots of blocks.

(It's a stupid options system. I would go nuts as a parent. My son is only yr7, but if he chose options today he would choose History, German and Geography in that order. At my school currently he could only do one of those three!)

LOL there all called Academies here, must mean something different elsewhere.