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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-33944203
one of labours great ideas and now being implemented wholesale by this shower, great for the kids who learn new subjects and skills and at last makes schools answerable to employers who want well trained and educated kids, eg by actually haveing a chance to fund schools.
Well at least it might mean we could break free from the ridiculous County IT system which limits the control we have over all sorts of stuff (despite having the capability on hand).
Once you have privatised one school, you may as well continue.
Thankfully it wont happen in Scotland.
Thankfully it wont happen in Scotland.
not yet, but will happen
It is a fully devolved power, so unless Conservatives get in soon in the Scottish Parliament...
I have worked in onebif the first academies, normal schools and a more recent academy. I cant see the difference apart from academies having more in house finance departments and "school managers" whatever the **** they do.
Scotish parliment may well decide to follow englands lead, its going to make sence to them
Bit of leeway in admission doesn't hurt either, anagallis_arvensis, does it? The wrong sort of kids can really bring a school down, so no one could criticise an academy for using some gentle social engineering to achieve their desired complexion.I have worked in onebif the first academies, normal schools and a more recent academy. I cant see the difference apart from academies having more in house finance departments and "school managers" whatever the **** they do.
Academies have same admissions criteria dont they? Not sure what your point is.
Backdoor privatisation. Many academies far from controlling their finances don't have the capabilities to manage their facilities so this is contracted out to private management companies. It's nuts. I'm pretty pro privatisation jn general but even I think this is a step way too far.
Bring back grammar schools I say. But then I'm old and dribbling over my keyboard.
Scotish parliment may well decide to follow englands lead, its going to make sence to them
The school system up here is completely unrecognisable from darn sarf, And long may it continue.
Mrs MC did a study of academy chains and she couldn't find one teacher who could outline the benefits of being in a chain or in an academy. They do seem to extract rather a lot of fees out of the school's budgets.
I see academisation as a way out of nationally negotiated pay and conditions and as a way to undermine local authorities who are not Tory.
http://schoolsweek.co.uk/academy-ceo-pay-how-the-biggest-trusts-stack-up/
..all of that tax payers' money without any democratic control.
I've done a few conversions from a legal perspective.
Just to be clear, it can be fantastically expensive to convert to academy status if it's a PPP/PFI school, since funders want to due diligence it, meaning you've got three sets of lawyers (minimum) to pay (authority, contractor, banks).
The actual conversions are relatively straight forward from a legals perspective, but highly lucrative.
It also passes some risk back to the authority which I'm not completely sure they are best placed to manage. I'm keen to see how this all ends up in the next 10 years.
Follow the money: http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/michael-gove-ideological-vandalism.html
My old school (in David Cameron's constituency) went from 'outstanding' to 'special measures' and talks were started to force it to become an academy. In July this year Ofsted graded the school as 'good' once more.
Meanwhile, the academy sponsors pulled because the school needs a chunk of money spending on maintenance. To me, that just shouts 'all we care about is profit'.
What a surprise :/
Doesn't the evidence from Sweden - who have had academies longer - show that it is waste of money?
I do find it hard to believe that having finance etc done in house is more cheaper than it being done by the county council.
Instinctively it would seem not, but then that depends how inefficient the county council is. I'm certainly not generally in favour, but as I mentioned above I'm convinced we could get better value for the IT by doing it in house than paying the council for their services (internet access pricing is a complete rip off, but we're locked in).
Yeah but like you said its about individual cc's or providers. IT is shit in schools because they cant afford it.
One of Academies main purposes is to allow a really bad schools to be "reset". I.E. new management, bring in a super head to get things rolling and set up systems them pass it on down the line, get rid of bad teachers reshuffle the rest, refurbish the buildings e.t.c. This is one of the reason there is the stats of "vastly improved" academies, because so many of them before had were failing schools, good normal comps don't become academies!
This is just the tories following their idealism of getting the private sector more involved. The public will except the company boss whose only revenue stream is government work earning £500k but not a LEA boss in charge of the equivalent system. Very odd.
The school system up here is completely unrecognisable from darn sarf, And long may it continue.
Yup, we've found entirely different ways from England to f@ck it up.
Academies have same admissions criteria dont they? Not sure what your point is.
Actually I think they are allowed to select a certain proportion of students based on their 'specialism' or on faith - will try to find a link. There have also been stories of academies using 'soft' techniques to select, e.g. lengthy, wordy admissions forms or social events for prospective parents - ways of ensuring they only get the nice middle class families to apply.
It's ideological, pure and simple. Privatisation of the education system. And there's no evidence that turning into an academy boosts school performance any more than the local authority putting in extra investment, e.g. if a school falls into 'special measures'. My mum recently took slightly early retirement because her (good-performing) school was being bullied into a joint academy with a neighbouring, poor-performing school, against the wishes of the staff, governors and parents, and she'd simply had enough of the government's interference.