School governors and academies

It's not unheard, of when schools are given charge of their whole budget, for the staffing structure to be changed (including fanciful job titles and salaries to match for some) and existing staff made to apply for their own (or indeed others') jobs. I have witnessed term time senior staff jollies to the USA and Scandinavia to observe their school organisation (no change when they arrived back). Admin teams with no educational background are suddenly necessary and money is found to pay for them. Money is clawed back from the people who are supposed to be central to the existence of the education system - Yes! It's the children who lose out. I even know of a school that became a 'Christian' academy where money was saved by axing a number of special needs assistants. This was explained to the children by reassuring them that, if they had problems accessing the curriculum, God would help them!

Interesting thread. Feel much better informed. Thank you all.

Writing as grandmother of four, ages ranging from 8 to 23, I am quite happy with all the local authority schools that my children and grandchildren have been to.
The only problem school was the academy.

Writing as a resident grandmother of a 3-generation family and as a parent governor when my two children were at school, my grandchild is now happily established at a free school and, parents and grandmother, we are highly delighted at the great quality of teaching and care. Our Local Authority let us down on finding a płace for our 4 year old, and we are grateful for a remarkably excellent alternative. Free schools are not a cause for despair or anger.

Exactly parallel with care homes - they are all private now and staffed with the cheapest people they can get hold of in order to maximise profit.

When schools were owned and supported by their county councils we knew where we were. In my county we had good grammar schools and I worked in my last one for 13 years. Then we became an "academy" despite the fact that the staff opposed this and our head teacher assured us that it would not happen. Within weeks I had been sacked as they chose to replace me (BSc, MSc, Dip LIS) with an unqualified person willing to do my job - badly - for peanuts!

I've since done some private tuition and am now on full-time granny duty since being widowed last autumn but still miss the job I enjoyed in various local schools for over 30 years and regret that the pupils in my last school are not getting from my replacement the education which they got while I was in post...

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/124747

This is the petition on the government website.
Nearly 140,000 signatures now.

Bear, I mentioned that book of Michael Young's, The rise of the Meritocracy, on a different thread.

There is a petition to sign on www.change.org - search for "Stop all schools being turned into academies."

Any Conservative voting gran who disagrees with this latest plan should really make their feelings felt just like other Tories have, as it may well help to stop this latest plan and the government to u-turn.

I'm not connected with the education sector but have two DiLs who are teachers.

So I have been trying to learn more about the benefits/disbenefits of academisation. It seems to me that this government is simply following its traditional agenda of 'smash the unions' on the one hand whilst giving free rein to business at the same time.

Does not the present drive to make all schools academies do both in one fell swoop?

By the way I am most appreciative of the informative posts on this thread by people who are more in the know than I. Great stuff, everyone.

I hope someone can tell me how to recruit all these highly qualified people to sit on the GB of which I am chair. Sadly they are not rushing forward to support our small primary school.

The school where I have been a Governor for a great many years opted to become an Academy two years ago. The HT plus his closest allies determined who would form The Board. Those left are now referred to as the Associates who actually have no powers at all, merely a talking shop though regularly in school to support school life. Staff and pupils largely do not understand how things have changed and we are of course a convenient peg to hang unpopular decisions such as redundancies on. It concerns me greatly the amount of power 5 self selected people wield including dispensing with a governor who had served the school faithfully for many years simply because he asked the right and sometimes uncomfortable questions.

I think that sometimes parent governors are not clear what they are taking on - indeed all of us governors get a bit of a shock!

I can understand the need to fill the governor boards with people with valuable skills - i.e. the best person for the job, regardless of whether they are a parent or not - but I do also think that at last one place should be earmarked for a parent where possible. Parent governors should not have a majority on the board - and the idea of individual parent governors with an axe to grind (e.g. the uniform example above) should be counter-balanced by a more objective view from the other governors. Having said that the parent governors on our board are objective, thoughtful, skilled and sensible people and enhance the decision-making.

Remove councils and parent governors and who will know what is going on in the schools

I used to the a teacher governor in a large secondary school. Of all our governors the parent governors were the most prized. Several of them were very successful in their own sphere and unafraid to take on the local politicos who often voted on party lines. It's true that they wanted the best for their children, but I always found that to be a positive thing. They wanted the school to run smoothly and efficiently.

I well remember one of them causing a stir when he actually visited the Department of Education to try to get some money out of them. He ended up berating them for the luxury of their premises when the floors our portacabins were caving in.

I think parent governors will be sadly missed.

It's a plot do bring a halt to spending on school building IMO. (which may be the explanation as to why it was in the budget)
Remember what the buildings were like at the end of the last period of Tory rule? Many were leaky, cold, and disintegrating and the Blair government worked hard and spent a lot of money to replace and refurbish.
A big secondary with generous funding can manage fairly large refurbishment projects out of their budgets. But new building costs beyond their means.
A primary school does not have that kind of budget and they have always been supported by the pot of education money in the LAs.
Underhand austerity, that's what it is.

I was a Primary VA School Governor for over 15 years, starting as an elected Parent Governor and progressing to a Foundation Governor. We were always told that a Parent Governor is representative of the parents but doesn't represent them. We found that too many joined the Governing Body to try to further their own child's interests rather than what was best for the whole School community. One had a darling child who the parent only wanted to wear natural fibres rather than synthetic so joined the GB to try to change the whole uniform policy to suit their personal taste. Others tried to use GB meetings to get 'closer' to teachers in an attempt to ingratiate their child.

It's all in the plan for a top-down Government led Education service where schools become businesses run by unaccountable bodies whose main aim is to make money. You are right to be concerned about the democratic process. The loss of governing bodies which, in their way are great levellers, will remove any hope of local influence and lead to a "one size fits all" approach. Schools will be cherry-picked leaving the disabled and the challenging in a worse place than they are already. We need to fight this. The best way is through the ballot box!

School governors should have first hand knowledge of how a school is run in my experience some haven't and are busy bodies from the local community who want to be important I agree parent governors are vital in the operating of a school and it gives them a voice and also lets them see the other side of education.

It cheers me to see how many of you know what is going on in our education system. I taught for donkey's years before I became a novelist, read 'The Rise of the Meritocracy in 58, Durhamjen, and it makes me so angry to see what lies are told to convince people to accept these money making academies. And even angrier to watch the new owners selling off great chunks of the playing fields, sacking staff with impunity and replacing them with untrained staff, imposing new expensive uniforms - that's a money-making scheme if ever I saw one - and now aiming to have a governing body composed entirely of their friends and colleagues. Spread the word. People need to know what's going on.

That's it in a nutshell.

Good and accurate blog about academies disidealist.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/the-mysterious-case-of-the-disappearing-schools-how-state-schools-will-be-privatised-without-anyone-noticing/comment-page-1/#comment-6811

www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/21/nicky-morgan-under-fire-over-mumsnet-post-on-academisation

Mumsnet got into the Guardian over this.

I have thought from day one that GO and DC looked like they were playing at being in government.

DC seems to have grown more into his role, but Osborne never has and continues to look uncomfortably like an overgrown schoolboy.

That happened at my son's school, Penstemmon, a catholic secondary. They were told that if they became an academy, they would get more money and staff would not have to be made redundant.
The governors lied to them. It became an academy, then more staff were made redundant than was mentioned beforehand.

Democracy, whitewave?
I have been teaching my grandson about different forms of government, from a book by Andrew Marr. I find it difficult to use that word with this government.

I mentioned Michael Young earlier. He wrote a book about the rise of the meritocracy in 1958. It was a satire, about life in the future but it actually doesn't look like it now.
It talks about the civil service and how the education service is not run on the right lines. People who have connections but not the intelligence get to run the government, even though really they are only suitable to be postmen.

I think I ought to read it again.