Academy spending

The other wild card that goes into this statistical minestrone (to mix metaphors, if I may) Is that some schools get a lot of "additional admissions" between 11 and 16. Children moving into area, mainly, or kids chucked out of other schools. Could be a dozen or more per year, LAs are obliged to find places for them and if you are an LA school with theoretical spaces you get leaned on, heavily.
So if you are a less popular school to start with you get all the poor little disrupted kids whose parents are moving in and out with partners or parents - from across the borough (not just your catchment). Ditto ones arriving from Europe, Africa and troubled middle eastern countries like Afghanistan. Many of these don't speak English. The worst ones we ever had were Afghani asylum seekers who were, we believed to be over 18 (and who were accused by a 13 year old of sexual assault outside school) and one young man that was probably an ex child soldier who obviously had some severe mental health issues. And kids taken into care - which included the unaccompanied asylum seekers.
Of course the most popular schools tend to be full and don't have to accept all these additional problems. In the case of the last boy, the alarm bells were ringing so loudly from the first visit, that he was only allowed in on trial (not officially on roll at all). It did not work.
Even if they don't appear on the exam statistics they require a lot of resources.
I think academies are probably better placed to fend off LA pressure - but not sure of their legal position.

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Major academy chain is stripped of 1/3 of its schools. Had to end in tears that mad rush to make "failing schools" all become academies. We were looking for our own sponsor (kindly allowed to choose, rather than have one imposed by The Department).
I met some outfits that were obviously completely ill-equipped to step into the shoes of the local authority.
Such was the scramble, about 2-3 years ago, that a few academy chains grew from a handful of schools to having as many schools as a small local authority, within a couple of years.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10659289/Academies-chain-stripped-of-10-under-performing-schools.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10659289/Academies-chain-stripped-of-10-under-performing-schools.html

Thanks for the link, Jess. I'm very concerned about the machinery for accountability, or lack of it, in the academy programme. And about the motivation of some of the sponsors.

Accountability - the minister can't run the education system! This kind of problem should be dealt with at a very local level but academies are divorced from local democracy. www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/11034126.Gove_fails_to_find_answers_over_missing_Worcester_head_teacher/?ref=eb

An interesting article by an under-rated former Secretary of State.

It is appalling. Yet the people who are allegedly so interested in the misuse of public funds don't seem to have very much to say about any of this. Funny, that.

I am aware of an academy that was totally of the rails - budgets, standards, everything. It was only when it got a bad OfSted and the head vanished that people started to take notice. But, as others have said, no accountability. The governors (or "board of directors") were, as always not education professionals and they believed what they were being fed by the head.

Yes Estelle was the only Sec of State that I recall, who actually had a teaching background. Unfortunately Blair reshuffled that role nearly every year he was in office (Blunkett, Clarke, Kelly and Balls to name the others that I remember...) Unfortunately Cameron did not take a leaf out of his book.

While I was a school governor - about 20 years - there were, as far as I can remember, eleven secretaries of state!

Another financial scandal involving a federation that runs four academies and a free school

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-26262957

Another good account of what is happening:
www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2014/02/academy-chains-a-scandal-that-needs-to-be-ended/
A scandal that needs to be ended, indeed.