Confused me.
My local comprehensive, that I and my son both went to, went academy a few years back. Think the then head proposed it, and it was agreed.
And it is a terrific school. Really brilliant teachers, great exam results, and it seems to deliver rounded, well behaved, (mainly), well educated kids.
Why is that bad?
Becoming an academy won't necessarily make it a bad school - nor will it automatically make it a good school (and, indeed, there is now a wealth of evidence to prove this - if anything, it could be argued, academy status has a slightly negative effect on how well a school "performs").
A bit of essential context:
Academy status was introduced by the Labour administration as a way of providing extra help for failing schools. The theory was that if a school existing and functioning within Local Education Authority control (as all schools, up to that point, were) was failing within that system then "freeing" it of this control would allow the school to look beyond the LEA for the help that it needed. It also, rather conveniently, got a cash injection for its troubles - no bad thing when you're trying to raise standards.
Of course, when you think about it, the idea that "freeing" a failing school (or any school) from it's support network (LEAs provide expert advice and in-school support via their School Advisors - almost invariably ex-teachers with bags of experience and creative ideas - and organising pan-borough cultural and sporting events), not to mention negotiating the price of its bog-roll and photocopier contracts, is slightly absurd in one sense. And "freeing"
all schools in this way seems to be utterly bonkers.
until you consider this:
Traditional schools like my own are currently served and controlled by local democratically elected boroughs - local people chosen by local people. They also have democratically elected Parent Governors on their governing bodies. They are non-profit, accountable organisations providing an often "Good" or "Outstanding" service to their communities (and let's be clear here - 82% of the Primary Schools that the government wants to force into Academy status are currently seen to be "Good" or "Outstanding" by Ofsted).
In the Academy Era, "Trusts" (Multi Academy Trusts, to give them their official title - for which, read: For-profit organisations) have emerged, with indecent haste, oddly enough, and suddenly a creeping-privatisation agenda starts to emerge.
These trust are, of course, non-elected and therefore not locally (or in any way) democratic). Furthermore, the Tory idea of scrapping Parent Governors (elected by the schools' parents) is an additional nail in the accountability coffin. Essentially, the Tories know that Parent Voice may well get in the way of its dodgy agenda.
Ultimately, the Academy system outsources education to private profiteers via the back door. Teacher morale within these school is notoriously low - not a great environment in which to fire young minds, I wouldn't have thought - and the
raison d'etre of the institution has shifted, rather troublingly, from "educating our children" to "make money for entrepreneurs."
Even Tory activists in the shires are screaming that this is a disastrous idea.
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Over to Bruce......
