What was the advantage of academy schools again?

From paying less to long time served average teachers.
But long time served average teachers get the advantage that if they want to move they are not priced out of the market.
The only Teachers who win under the LA system are people who are senior managers and good enough to get another senior management job or who want to stay in one school their whole lives.

This is not my experience. Been given more money to stay in a LA school. In academies I’ve taught in the pay scales are the same. All schools can be extra to recruit or retain if they want to

3) Academies and Free Schools seem to get given huge capital budgets to ensure they have modern, efficient, premesis that need significantly less ongoing expenditure on maintenance and running than the typical LA school.

What seems to happen round here is that the school is modernised or rebuilt by the LA, then it converts to an academy straight afterwards.

This is not my experience

Interesting, so what percentage of newly recruited (non-management) teachers have more than (say) 15 years experience in your school as opposed to new recruits with less than 3 years?

And just to be clear you’re saying that in your opinion negotiable salary is not an advantage of Academy Schools? If not what do you think the most important advantage is?

If not what do you think the most important advantage is?

I think the tone of this thread is that people can’t see an advantage beyond the ideological one of them not being accountable to Local Authorities and elected councillors [edit] and for a lot of people that’s not an ‘advantage’ more a ‘difference’?

Interesting, so what percentage of newly recruited (non-management) teachers have more than (say) 15 years experience in your school?

Damn as you were telling us that the LA [ sic] employed sorry you meant recruit NQT’s and i asked for prove i was rather hoping you had actual figures to hand rather than you were just saying things that you had no evidence nor statistics to base the opinion on

Surprising considering how logical and consistent your post are 😉

FWIW his point was that your point about getting lower pay in the LEA was wrong. Not sure why you had to ask.

Nope, no numbers just experience of two schools and anecdotal evidence of a lot of teachers from different schools.

Entirely possible I’ve got the wrong end of the stick from the subset of “data” available to me.

Having said that, negotiable salary is deemed a good thing in almost every walk of life world wide, I’d be interested in understanding why it’s wrong for teaching.

negotiable salary is deemed a good thing in almost every walk of life world wide

Except in this case you seem to be saying that the negotiation will be only downwards to make staff cheaper, not upwards to reward excellence?

wwaswas, are you saying negotiable salary *is* an advantage, but my examples of why its good are flawed? Or are you saying negotiable salary is a disadvantage?

I think your justification of individually negotiable salaries being a good way of reducing wages for experienced, dedicated staff is a bad thing.

I also think for a national public services (like police, nurses, teachers etc) there is a big advantage for all concerned to have nationally negotiated wage settlements.

Interesting, so what percentage of newly recruited (non-management) teachers have more than (say) 15 years experience in your school as opposed to new recruits with less than 3 years?

None, the same as at 2 academies I worked in.

None, the same as at 2 academies I worked in.

Interesting, I can understand why LA schools don’t take on teachers with longish service, it’s pretty openly complained about.

Why don’t academy Schools take on older teachers?

I also think for a national public services (like police, nurses, teachers etc) there is a big advantage for all concerned to have nationally negotiated wage settlements.

Understood.

Interesting, I can understand why LA schools don’t take on teachers with longish service, it’s pretty openly complained about.
Why don’t academy Schools take on older teachers?

Speaking as a science teacher its because 1 there arent any and 2 there arent any with a 3 significant point being therw arent any. This is what happens in the south of england anyway. We employ nqt’s as they are the only people who apply. Most only last 2 or 3 years. Experienced teachers have either quit, moved to the private sector or been promoted.

One advantage of academies is they own and run the buildings so have a reason to make them energy efficient. LEA’s run the buildings maintenance and upkeep but schools pay the energy bills which means who pays for insulation or more efficient lights etc?

Well councillors dont run the departments so no surprise there.
No idea what your point is

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, here’s the full quote (I only used the last seven words on p1)

When MrsMC was researching academies she could not find a single teacher who could point to the benefits of being in one. It’s all about handing over a big chunk of taxpayers’ money to people who are not accountable to the electorate.

You seem to have got my point though, which was that local authority education departments are no more accountable to the electorate than academy trusts

outofbreath – Member

Why don’t academy Schools take on older teachers?

By your own earlier argument, because academies will want to pay them less than they are currently earning?

I was at a conference today with a lot of other school heads of department! The main discussion was the recruitment crisis! Almost every science department had open positions that simply could not be filled! Forget pay scales etc there are simply not enough staff for the jobs required and very few new teachers coming in to replace those who are leaving!

Academies are now so numerous the DfE can’t cope with centralised monitoring of them all. So they are setting up more regional teams that will monitor academies in local areas………..you know almost like what LAs were in place to do, but these are better because ermmmmmm

For schools considering academy status at the moment (lots!) I think it’s a case of jump before being pushed. Good schools can stay under LEA control, but they are only one OFSTED away from a “requires improvement” whereupon an “appointed” accedemy chain can be imposed on them.
I fully support schools being able to pay to attract (and retain) the best, and also to not allow coasting mediocre teachers to get high salaries based on length of time in role, but culturally I am not sure education works like this. Giving good head teachers and local COOP groups control over their area of schools is potentially a good thing, but the real driver for the changes is driven by a misguided Tory ideology.

I was at a conference today with a lot of other school heads of department! The main discussion was the recruitment crisis! Almost every science department had open positions that simply could not be filled! Forget pay scales etc there are simply not enough staff for the jobs required and very few new teachers coming in to replace those who are leaving!

Very few schools round here seem to have a physics teacher.

You seem to have got my point though, which was that local authority education departments are no more accountable to the electorate than academy trusts

I hadn’t and now you state it i disagree

Its obvious that when the education system is controlled and delivered by the agencies that elected individuals are responsible for that the electorate has more influence over them than they do with ones run by private charities who they never ever get to vote on. this influence may not be much but it still more than nothing

1. Academies don’t have to comply with nutritional standards so they can supply cheaper, poorer quality meals to pupils.

This has happened at my 8 year olds school. In fact they are now so poor quality that he asked to take sandwiches to school for lunch. Then they have the cheek to police their sandwich boxes to make sure they are not eating junk food.

Also, they have lost so many good quality teachers since changing over to academy status, and they have got rid of all TAs even though they are clearly still needed in some classes

Not sure how to put this but most academy’s in my part of the world appear “a little right wing Christian fundamentalist” search on Peter Vardy – creationist nutter funding schools