Every school to become an academy

Azza

Azza

Azza

Caporegime
Joined
6 Dec 2005
Posts
37,966
Location
Birmingham
Is the plan in case you haven't seen it - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35814215 / http://www.theguardian.com/educatio...ol-to-become-an-academy-ministers-to-announce




Days after Wilshaw (I know boo Ofsted grr!) criticised 7 trusts for pay and under performance.


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Time to get on those £150,000 executive salaries.
 
Ok, so why is this a bad thing? Sorry, I have no kids and I left school 16 years ago so I'm not hot on topics like this.
 
malachi said:
Ok, so why is this a bad thing? Sorry, I have no kids and I left school 16 years ago.
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It's not a problem per se, but there are areas of the country covered by academies that are still below the national average, and there is no backup plan. They are not in the national curriculum (which leads to various problems in some cases - but positive results in others) and they are not subject to the national pay scales either.

The trusts aren't set up to receive the influx of numbers they would need to cover (and are already struggling under the weight of some of the transferring academies) and nor is the DoE.

It's not a huge problem, so long as everything around is changed right from the roots to the very top, but that's unlikely.
 
It's okay, though: some of our National Curriculum is utterly bizarre and detrimental to half the kids that have to endure it, and we undervalue our teachers hugely already so who cares?
 
Edrof said:
It's okay, though: some of our National Curriculum is utterly bizarre and detrimental to half the kids that have to endure it, and we undervalue our teachers hugely already so who cares?
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AFAIK teachers at academies can get higher wages than usual, the pay isn't as structured/banded

edit - for example:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/educatio...-heads-earning-bigger-salaries-NAO-warns.html

The National Audit Office said that one-in-10 academy principals were paid more than the maximum normally allowed for their region. This is typically £105,000 across England, rising to £112,000 in inner-London.
It also emerged that leaders of six academy chains – groups running up to 20 of the schools – were paid at least £200,000 last year, significantly more than the Prime Minister.

Under the reforms, academies are run independently from local council control and have more freedom to alter the curriculum, staff pay rates, teachers’ contracts, the length of the school day and shape of the academic year.
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OldCoals said:
Is there any evidence to show that schools which switch to an academy perform better?
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Difficult to tell since academies are usually free to select their pupils while LEA-controlled schools aren't. You'd be pretty dumb as a Head of an academy to select dumb kids for your school.
 
scorza said:
Difficult to tell since academies are usually free to select their pupils while LEA-controlled schools aren't. You'd be pretty dumb as a Head of an academy to select dumb kids for your school.
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I didn't realise that. The High School near us became a Technical College and then an Academy, it still just takes kids from the feeder schools it did before.
 
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