Well I suppose transferring funding away from local authorities may be one way to ease the transition to tuition fees for schoolchildren. Give ’em a nice big loan to leave school with.

IMHO left wing local authorities which have done all they can to obstruct government education policy and reforms have brought this upon themselves.

Those bloody town halls throughout the country, stuffed full of Trots and Maoists eh? Abusing their massive powers to frustrate an enfeebled Westminster Government, who are merely trying to do their level best to make life more bearable in the provinces, but remain powerless to change anything.

What this country is crying out for is more central control!!!

😆

That needs to be watched very carefully.

too late mate.

Already happened round here – within weeks of converting to an academy (as part of a ‘chain’) a local school told all kids with a statement and funding were to sling their hooks.

No doubt their stats v other local schools that took these children in have improved and everyone with an agenda can point to the academy as providing the best education locally ‘look at the outcomes’.

Academies have been better funded and failed to provide a better outcome so the evidence points to a more successful delivery of service under LEA controlled schools.

I’m talking about MAT’s

I see this as problematic in the following ways.

1). There is no balance of evidence to suggest that the ‘acadamisation’ of schools, brings improvement. So why take the action?
2). If you want to improve any organisation private, public, cooperative or otherwise provide stability. Allow time for investments (People, money etc…) in improvements to deliver results. Don’t sponsor change for changes sake and under normal circumstances, don’t stop commitment to the change before the payback period completes. Unfortunately, that type of long-term investment in change does not play to quick wins and fast bucks – so is out of favour in the approach of many corporates.

An interesting view on the future for those children with additional needs;

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/how-send-achilles-heel-mass-academisation

Petition away
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/124702

The latest is abolishing parent governors….the last semblance of any kind of democratic control over public resources and services. Look at school’s accounts at Company’s House and you will see what it’s all about, 2/3rds down the page you get the head teacher’s salary. In my last school during the year the school became an academy (argued on the grounds of not giving access to the school to poor families being shipped out of London as they would reduce results)the head gave herself a 50% pay rise. The frontline staff in real terms got a pay cut. I am sure this is not exceptional.
I had an email from an academic last week who’d resigned being a professor at a Russell group university on largely the same grounds that I took early retirement from teaching in schools. It’s almost as though they have a scorched-earth policy, do as much permanent damage as possible.

It’s almost as though they have a scorched-earth policy, do as much permanent damage as possible.

yep, get as much out of public ownership as they can and then sign TTIP so that it can never be re-nationalised.

Whatever shambles people think Labour would have been in government they wouldn’t have done the irreversible damage that this ideology led attack on public services and ownership is doing.

I hope history judges this government harshly and anyone who voted for it should hang their head in shame.

The ending of the TPAC is all very well when you have a surplus of teachers. Currently there is a shortage and training courses are not being filled eg 40% of PGCE art places were not filled last year. Experienced teachers are leaving in droves. A chemistry teacher I know negotiated a highly inflated daily rate and later, when asked about planning and meetings, he told them that would mean more negotiations and a 50% per day rise. They didn’t get back to him. This will bite them in the bum but inevitably the kids who will suffer the most will be in the poorest areas.
In my area post-16 education is being wrecked by academisation and free schools throwing money away with no clear future and again, teachers leaving the profession (me included, retiring again in May). Progress 8 will further reduce the curriculum offer and departments like DT will disappear. Academy heads are interested in pupil outcomes, not pupils. Wellbeing is out the window and English and Welsh kids have been found to be 40th out of 42 countries for having a miserable childhood and education (apparently it’s even worse in Poland and Macedonia). This generation coming up will have nothing but ordure in education, work, pay and housing. It’s a good business model though!

It’s ok, if your academy goes tits up Nicky Morgan will be able to run it!

crazy, expensive ideology driven nonsense.

the overspend on financial help to “academise” is in the billions (at least the lawyers are benefiting. 🙄 ). LA’s who’ve been working hard with OFSTED to raise standards are being pushed aside in months for no real gain to pupils. This will affect mostly primaries, and along with rising pupil numbers, changing curriculum, shortage of teachers, just adds one more thing to a list of “things that get in the way of making a difference to kids”

I note the plans to change to the make-up of Governing Bodies to exclude parents has gone largely un-discussed.