The government is to complete the Small Government Free Market Economy change to schools

I agree....

Have you got a link to this please?

I heard the Education Minister mention 10,000 Academies. I'm not sure whether he was saying that number was their aim or whether they were about to reach it.

No, taxes will not come down for the average person - just the higher rates.

So the Government have recently admitted that they are unable to curb excessive pay for the CEOs of academy trusts. They therefore want more academy trusts. How perfectly sensible!

GrannyGravy13

Have you got a link to this please?

www.gov.uk/government/publications/opportunity-for-all-strong-schools-with-great-teachers-for-your-child

Spot on, Ilovecheese..

GrannyGravy13

Have you got a link to this please?

To what GrannyGravy?

Ah GrannyGravy I see Maizie has sorted it out for you. I shouldn't have assumed that everyone else is glued to the news and knows that the government has announce that all schools are to become academies by 2030. Sorry.

It all makes my heart sink. I am a governor at a highly successful and very happy village school of around 100 pupils.

Some years ago we studied all the options for the way forward when the head retired. We tried linking up with a local senior academy and paid a regular fee to them for executive head functions. What happened? They took our money and did bugger all - so we sacked them.

We decided to go with the plan of staying as an LA school and employing our own part-time head. Since then the school has more than doubled in size and has a waiting list. It is very much a part of the local community and is responsive to the needs of the local children.

We have good links with other schools in the county that are similar and there is a lot of shared professional development and support.

The children are part of a small secure community; they know all the staff and the staff know all of them.

My DGD goes to a village school that has become part of a MAT - a Multi-Academy Trust. There is no sense of cohesion; staff are moved around within the trust, being moved from school to school like pieces on a chess board without the veto by the school. Another local primary that found itself in this situation actually managed to extricate itself from the MAT as they had lost control of what was happening in their school.

The latest edict by the government looks as though we will have to join a MAT or at the least have plans in place by 2030. Our head will go if that is what is in prospect. So much dedicated hard work to create an exceptional and highly successful school to be swept away by the broom of political dogma.

As the OP has pointed out, this dogma has created so many problems in other services. At the time when these came in I was in a professional role which straddled the health service and social services. What happened?
- lines of responsibility were broken within the hospital system - no-one would own anything - it was always someone else's fault.
- commitment to the hospital was lost - the idea of all working as a team towards the same goal was lost - cleaners and food providers were farmed out, so personnel kept changing and continuity was lost.
- the gradual loss of LA residential homes meant that we could no longer have confidence in their service. Before the LA homes were properly controlled and staffed with properly trained people who received proper support. We could have confidence that people we sent there would be well looked-after and communication with us would be good.

There is no evidence that academy schools confer any advantages on pupils - an lawyers and private companies aer pocketing their cut - what a waste.

A plague on these bloody Tories!

I have no personal experience of Academy Schools, I have close links with one of our small local primary schools.

It would be a great shame if all schools are forced down this route.

As a former employee of the Education department of a Local Authority I would not in any way support a policy for all schools to become Academies.
I would say that the quality of teaching and learning in existing Academies can be as variable as in Local Authority schools. My granddaughters chose to attend a local academy with a very challenging intake, turning down places at the local grammar schools. They received an excellent education with outstanding teaching. One is at a Russell Group university, the other on her way to medical school.
The Conservatives have tried to enforce academisation before, but failed because of pressure from Conservative led LAs.
We shall see what happens this time. Hopefully a change of government will put paid to it.

GrannyGravy13

I have no personal experience of Academy Schools, I have close links with one of our small local primary schools.

It would be a great shame if all schools are forced down this route.

I don't think you need experience of Academies GrannyGravy. It's the government model of success that will make the difference.

The white paper itself is deeply underwhelming. Apart from having another bash at forcing academies there is nothing new at all. Everything that it is saying about standards of teaching and learning, literacy and numeracy, leadership and management has been around for about 30 years.
The academy trust status stuff is ill-defined and pathetic in the absence of any defined strategy for implementation or success criteria.
Bleurgh.