Collapsing Wakefield Academy Asset strips it’s schools.

Some school choose to become an Academy to avoid being taken over by a MAT. One I was working at felt that if they were one of the few LEA schools left in the city, they would be compelled to accept challenging pupils who had been excluded from other local Academies. So, the governors decided to become a Cooperative Academy with no money grabbing company involved. It works well for that school giving some measure of independence without funds being siphoned off. However, by choice, we would have remained an LEA school but the writing was on the wall!

I don't agree with separate schools according to your faith.

I mean England

Most faith schools in this country are either LEA controlled, or, as in the case of our village CofE school, joining a trust run by the diocese.

Morgana, Faith schools in Scotland ARE totally accountable to LEAS.

Schools are indeed pressured into joining MATs - multi-academy trusts - against the wishes of the governors; and many join voluntarily because at least they have a choice, which they would not have if pushed.

What really gets to me is that many schools that feel forced down that route are functioning just fine thank you and have no need of change - a change that involves huge wastage of money in legal fees etc.

Parents much prefer a school with real accountability on the spot. I am aware of several MATs where schools find themselves with changes of teachers that have been decreed from above with no reference to what is best for that class, school or indeed the pupils. It is just someone at the top playing with a sliding block puzzle.

There are several ongoing investigations into financial mismanagement and also downright criminal fraud in academies. There is one such in my area. How can it be right that in the old LEA, the director of education who was in charge of over 80 primary and secondary schools, PRUs, colleges etc, got paid £120k. Now the “executive director”of an academy chain of 9 schools is paid over £350k? All out of taxpayers money.

And faith schools too. They should all be banned. Money going into greedy pockets and no accountability. Wonder how much some Members of Parliament are making out of it all.

From what I've read, at least in our area, many head teachers and schools have felt they were "bullied" into agreeing to becoming academies and threatened that if they remained under local authority control they would not have access to the same level of funding.

For many reasons, I totally disagree with the academy and free school systems. One major concern I had was about who would be overseeing the running of these schools - how they used their finance, etc. It seems that responsibility for what is happening in these schools is vague. This is not the first group of academies where there have been issues regarding finances and it seems like nobody seemed to be aware of things going wrong until there was a complete meltdown.

It really is a disgrace.

Free schools even worse, and May has said she'll have more Free schools.

"The new academic year has started with a bang from the ministry of propaganda, otherwise known as the Department for Education. A fishy-looking, self-congratulatory press release, proclaiming the arrival of 52 new free schools, is a case study in statistical jiggery-pokery, of which the department responsible for overseeing the search for truth among our nation’s children ought to be ashamed." From the TES.

The Academy system is just a crazy money making device. What was really wrong with the old LEAs?
One struggling school in our area has had three different Academy chains in charge in the last few years. They pull out if they can't get the results (or can't make enough money).
New school name, new uniforms and new rules each time. And each time an Academy chain pulls out, school numbers drop. Must be so de-motivating for staff and children,

Neo-liberalism does not believe in rules and regulations M0nica so why would the put them in place for the trusts or, if they have, why would the trusts feel they have to obey them?

The pigeons are beginning to come home to roost quite rapidly at the moment. Sadly there are real people being damaged by the ethos of the Tories.

What will the trust being doing with the money?

Why did not the state authority that negotiated the trust document not ensure there was a legacy clause as to what would happen to any assets if the trust failed.

I have been involved with the establishment of one charity and the closure of another and the Charity Commission insisted that we have clear legacy plans that ensures the money the charity has acquired goes to a charity with similar aims on its demise.

Yes - reading the Observer today, it makes depressing reading - money that school governors had prudently put aside and earmarked for a predicted rise in the local school population, and money that had been raised by a primary school from fundraising efforts - both syphoned off into the "Trust" - what an unfortunate and inappropriate title.

It all sickens me. I am constantly amazed at the integrity and resilience of teachers who still try to put the children and their education first, whilst being shat on from a great height.

Get on board with www.weownit.org.uk to do what you can to stop privatisation, and stop the Tories selling off anything else we have left.

How can people be allowed to legally walk away with public money?
Another sign of Tory economic failure.

What we have to take on board is that Tories are not in favour of successful business they are in favour of someone getting rich. They are not in favour of businesses run for the sake of society. Neoliberals - who now control the Tories have an ethos that includes the sort of economic liberalization policies requiring the very deregulation that leaves us with situations like this.

Their intention was to wipe out the mixed economy the majority have supported to some degree or other in the past - even if only the NHS - by privatization, austerity, deregulation, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society - to make some people rich. They are not about business they are about getting rich and that - because it can only happen at the expense of others - will only for a few who will feel justified in stripping out things that should be left for children.

Disgapraceful and I can only see more of this happening
I have hatethe way the right have removed our public services to private very surruptiously many people don’t realise how much of the NHS is private because they still use the NHS logo Look at the prison and prison services the police the fire fighters nurses and teacher, all being eroded away to make way for big business

Political philosophy overriding professional considerations, children's education and just plain common sense.

As a governor I have listened to various law firms pitching to provide legal input to the process of "academisation" and am sickened by these people making a mint out of the process, when schools are strapped for cash. It is all a disgrace.

Tory business plans gone awry then. A disgrace that they need to remedy learn from.

Taking away schools' accountability to the local authorities to give vast sums and valuable land to individual trusts who employ their relatives and give huge salaries to "executives", selling services to their own companies, all disgusting waste of taxpayers money.

I think the whole idea of academies was crazy. there have been a number of bad reports from these organisations such as near financial collapse.

Then there are the free schools. God help us.

This is an interesting post about some of the pitfalls of Academies.
www.newstatesman.com/education/2012/03/academy-schools-academies

That will teach me to preview. Its not it’s , it’s its. See what I did there! iPad auto correct strikes again.

Something, of course!