Labour U-Turn on Free Schools and Welfare

academies are pretty much the same idea as grant maintained. It is all becoming a bit of a free for all and there will be tears before bedtime.
in order to hack it as an independent academy you need a very good leadership team and GB.
In order to hack it as a sponsored academy you need a good sponsor that is going to support in the way and LA did. When I was shopping around (with my arm behind my back) for a sponsor, they were not a very preposessing bunch in the main.
In order to hack it as a free school you need lots and lots of things and I suspect many are going to crash and burn when they have their first OFSTED. Should be an interesting year next year as OFSTED work their way through last year's big batch.

I share your anger annodomini. I feel our LA's have been much maligned, yet they provided a real framework for so many positives in schools. Safeguarding being a key. Our local training department offered excellent training to everyone working with children, who may come across safeguarding issues. The training helped, but so did the way in which positive working relationships formed as a result of training, and sharing experiences together.

Whatever happened to the grant maintained schools - a precursor of academies? As a local politician, I campaigned locally against these, successfully, as parent bodies were very satisfied with our provisions. When some of the Lib Dem hierarchy seemed to be leaning towards supporting them, Conference held them back by voting overwhelmingly in favour of keeping schools under local democratic control. So you can imagine how furious I am that the Coalition (or perhaps Gove and Law) are going full steam ahead to make LEAs a thing of the past. So furious that I no longer call myself a Lib Dem.

Oh right. Why not a free school I wonder? Or are they just confused.

uk.search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A7x9QXvrHl1SDEMA7TFLBQx.;_ylu=X3oDMTE0dTZndWowBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMgRjb2xvA2lyZAR2dGlkA1VLQzAwMl83Mg--/SIG=14gt1bg4o/EXP=1381863275/**http%3a//www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4405028/Ailing-private-schools-to-become-state-academies-in-bail-out.html

Sorry, I was wrong about who set up academies. I was getting mixed up between that and PFI.

However I was not wrong about private schools becoming academies as the above link shows.
Yes, POGS, I believe in comprehensive education. It would work if anyone let it. Unfortunately private schools becoming academies is not the right way, as it means that they still end up with a non-comprehensive intake.

The original academies, that had fancy new buildings, sometimes partly funded outside the state sector, was an Adonis idea, to accelerate the improvement of failing secondary schools and their awful buildings (allowed to decay under the previous Tory administrations)
SInce then there have been several versions of "academy" with different rules. The situation we are in now is that some secondaries are forced to become academies with a "sponsor" ie a substitute for the LA , usually an educational trust. In these examples the extra money gets used to run the sponsors offices etc. Other secondaries can elect to become academies in their own right, with their own governing bodies in total control and only answerable to OFSTED. They get to keep the extra money.
Thus we have a lot of academies, some self governed, some not, some with new buildings and some not. What they have in common is that the LA is not in control of them.

I thought the private schools were becoming Free Schools , not academies jen . There is not a route for them to become academies. In the first round of a few dozen free schools there were several prep schools which I presume were struggling financially...

Jendurham

O.K. You don't like Academies. You do not agree with free schools. You don't agree with private schools. You probably don't like grammar schools. Am I wrong in my assessment that you would only allow state schools. ??

To be honest I did not know, as you state, the Academy system was started under the Tory's. I have always thought it was a proud boast by Labour, Lord Adonis and Tony Blair, Balls, etc. etc. At least that's what I have seen and heard.

As for 'Everybody in education and the health service should be seen to be free of undue influence in the system', I simply do not get it. There will always be an influence, by whom ever is running the show. As you said in your first sentence 'taking the 'power' away from councils. That is asserting influence surely.

Yes, POGS, it does matter. I do not agree with the whole Academy and free school system, whoever set it up. The Academy system was started by the Tories, then continued by New Labour. It's a way of taking power away from local authorities.
Everybody in education and the health service should be seen to be free of undue influence in the system.
If Lord Nash wanted to put his money into education, he could have an endowment in a private school. His wife actually gets to sort out the history curriculum in the school. That cannot be right. Actually, I do not believe in private schools either but that's another story.

Academies are more worrying now because they have more money than state schools, from central government, so their pupils are given an advantage. In fact there are private schools that are turning into Academies because the parents do not have to pay fees, so they can give the school more money for extras that ordinary school parents cannot.

Corruption matters.

Jendurham

I am sorry I have only just posted, Granny duties. You did not say Hunt was going to close down Free Schools. For that I apologise, I read your first sentence and misread it's meaning with regard to my OP.

Can I say something with regard to your point about a Tory donating £300.000 and the post which calls it toadyism.

If the school was under special measure in 2006 and became an Academy in 2008 that would have been whilst Labour were in government. I am sorry but if it is a choice of a school failing it's children just to keep a wealthy Tory in his 'box' or taking his money to provide a better education I think I know which I would prefer.

Does it matter? Cash for Honours comes to mind!. They all do it but if is done for good intentions does it really matter whether it is Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Monster Raving Loony money.

I love to see that toadyism is alive and well!

A free school run by the academy on whose site it sits, with the same chair of governors who has now been made a lord and is an education minister, after he and his wife have given over £300,000 to the Tory party.

No Jen, it is a free school not an academy. It is on the site of the secondary academy. Free schools can indeed appoint who they like, though. As far as I know primaries can convert to academy status, but I haven't heard of any new ones being created.

I agree, JessM. I think that Pimlico Primary is one of the few Academies in the primary sector and can therefore appoint whoever they want without needing to go through any Department.
Unfortunately in many primaries, the head has to teach as well as do admin. It would be interesting to know who was supposed to be her mentor.
It happens in secondary schools that there are non-teaching heads without qualifications. You never hear what happens to them. I wonder if the information would be available through a freedom of information request.
When I was teaching, I used to have people coming in to my classrooms, just like Hunt did. I would think that any school would want a historian to come in and teach the kids, to give them some idea that you do not just learn from teachers. In history in particular there were often grandparents coming in to talk about the war, etc. He probably made a mistake in using the word teaching, but that's what he was doing. I was often asked if I regretted giving up teaching, and I always said I still was, just about different things, like food and nutrition and vegetarianism instead of English and maths.

Mamie

I stand corrected. I have just read about Pimlico Primary as you suggested, thank you.

It is interesting that Pimlico Primary is connected to Pimlico Academy. The site I read said Pimlico Academy was formed in 2008 after the original school was placed under special measures in 2006. In 2010 the Pimlico Academy was rated as 'Outstanding' by OFSTED.

Mamie

I stand corrected. I have just read about Pimlico Primary School as you suggested, thank you.

It is interesting that Pimlico Primary is connected to Pimlico Academy. The site I read said Pimlico Academy was formed in 2008 after the original school was placed under special measures in 2006. In 2010 the Pimlico Academy was rated as 'Outstanding' by OFSTED.

Yes quite - a visiting person like that is not employed. And if you do take non-qualified staff in a big secondary school, there are the resources to support them.
Appointing an unqualified head was patently batty and I am surprised the Department was happy to let this go through. It is symptomatic of the mad rush over the last 2 years to maximise the number of free schools and academies to keep the sec of state happy.

Here is the link to the story of the 27 year old unqualified head of a Free School, who has resigned after six months.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24466928

There is a huge difference between appointing an unqualified teacher to teach full time and using an expert in a particular field to give voluntary, occasional, special lessons, with the full support of the school.

Mamie.

No I was not quoting from the Telegraph, I remembered watching Hunt blush when he was attempting to accuse the government of bad practice by using unqualified teachers in Parliament, he was rightly shown to be a hypocrite as he had done exactly what he was criticising. That happens often.

I agree with your last post entirely! I have to say that I do not think however a 27 year old with no experience of education would become a Head of a primary school though.

Absent
Enter 'Rachael Reeves on Welfare' in your search engine and you can read The Guardian on her comment.

I must get out more.

Point of interest; does anyone know if all MPs have to have police checks?

I think you need to read what I wrote again, POGS.
I said that Hunt said he was NOT going to close down free schools.
I do not need to read the DM. Here is the Guardian one.
www.theguardian.com/education/2013/oct/13/tristam-hunt-labour-free-schools
There is nothing wrong with Tristram Hunt going in to schools and taking lessons on things he knows a lot about. Parents do that quite regularly. I would love to see Gove being left in charge of a year 9 class.
However, the teacher would have been there in the primary school and the secondary school. You did not need teaching qualifications for FE, not sure about now.

Pogs, I assume you are quoting from this Toby Young article in the Telegraph.

"Perhaps the reason Hunt has maintained a dignified silence is because he has taught in various state schools himself, in spite of not having a PGCE. As the Daily Mail pointed out earlier this year, Hunt boasted in a Guardian interview that he regularly drops in to the schools in his constituency to deliver history lessons. "I teach in schools in Stoke when they allow me, to make sure I know what's going on," be said. "I do a class at the FE college about Cape Town as a city of empire. And I do an industrial revolution class at the sixth form. And I taught a class on the Spanish Armada to a primary school."
Nothing wrong with Hunt doing some teaching, of course. I'm sure he's very good at it – just as I'm sure David Miliband was when he taught a class at Haverstock Comprehensive. It's just a tad hypocritical for Kevin Brennan to condemn David Cameron for "allowing unqualified teachers into our classrooms" when those "unqualified teachers" include Labour's Shadow Education Secretary and the brother of the Labour leader."

I think you will agree that a highly qualified academic historian teaching occasional "special" history lessons and a former Foreign Secretary working with sixth formers studying politics, can only be beneficial. I am sure that both were working with the full support of the teachers in the school.

I think you must surely be able to see that this is quite different from a 27 year old with no experience in education becoming head if a primary school.

It's true pogs that some schools use staff without teaching qualifications. In my experience this is for vocational subjects such as building, where the qualified teachers are pretty hard to come by, or people who are employed as TAs but are training as teachers.
I also know that getting 1/5 of a qualified maths teacher, English teacher or science teacher who will slot into your time table is extremely difficult. But maybe slightly easier if you only have to timetable "one class" ?
There may be lots of people out there who have the subject knowledge, but understanding how to teach within the confines of todays requirements is another thing altogether. I would not need to go on a refresher course for the science, but I would need to go on a refresher course for the methods that are currently deemed essential by OFSTED, if I was even to get a sniff at a satisfactory rating for a lesson.

Just watching Meg Hillier on Daily Politics and she was turning on a sixpence on Free Schools. Agreed one minute and then against the other, very confusing. They reiterated Tristram Hunts views, listen for yourselves.

I will stand by my OP. If you want to hear what Hunt said watch Andrew Marr, Sunday 13th. Also read the interview with Tristram Hunt in the DM Sunday Oct 13th., I have no idea how to 'blue' the doo da.

Absent.
It was Rachel Reeves, Shadow Works and Pension Secretary, who has said Labour will be tougher on Welfare than the Government and I believe Liam Byrne said it during the Labour Party Conference. Yes, surprise, surprise I did watch ALL the Conferences.

Jendurham. Which news channel showed Tristram Hunt saying he would close down Free Schools?

As for the matter of using non-qualified teaching staff I find this highly amusing. Tristram Hunt did/does exactly that. This is not a new phenomenon surely.