^^ They've gone nuts recently on the academies (the non-academies struggle a bit though in terms of investment/budget) - not so bad if its a wise long term investment though it must be costing a fair penny at a time when we apparently don't have a lot of money to go around.
3 Junior schools near me have gone through the whole academy make over in the last few months which must be into the millions each - complete rebrand, uniform, logo, outwards building appearance even renamed 2 of them to more sophisticated sounding names, complete new IT suites, new music suites, brand new sports facilities, etc. plus a raft of new policies i.e. much stricter about uniform, food they can and can't bring, etc.
While I can kind of see it being money well spent if its a good long term investment most of them were doing well enough - just needed a little bit of a lick of paint so to speak to bring them back to scratch and maybe a little bit of work to bring teaching standards up seems completely the wrong time to be throwing millions at them to me.
3 Junior schools near me have gone through the whole academy make over in the last few months which must be into the millions each - complete rebrand, uniform, logo, outwards building appearance even renamed 2 of them to more sophisticated sounding names, complete new IT suites, new music suites, brand new sports facilities, etc. plus a raft of new policies i.e. much stricter about uniform, food they can and can't bring, etc.
While I can kind of see it being money well spent if its a good long term investment most of them were doing well enough - just needed a little bit of a lick of paint so to speak to bring them back to scratch and maybe a little bit of work to bring teaching standards up seems completely the wrong time to be throwing millions at them to me.