Will becoming an Academy save your school from cuts?

Introduction & Posting Guidelines - Please Read First

One of the only arguments being put for schools becoming an Academy is that they will get more money, and it will protect them from cuts and job losses.

In fact a number of Academies are already making cuts, and more are expected to follow.

Waterhead Academy in Oldham only opened in September, but already faces a ‘significant’ funding shortfall. The Head has told staff that there will be redundancies. There are rumours of significant job losses.

Read the Rest

Garstang Courier - High School in Academy Move

Introduction & Posting Guidelines - Please Read First

Article reprinted with kind permission from The Garstang Courier  

(published 28/03/2011)

GOVERNORS at Garstang High School are consulting over converting to an academy.

The switch could see the school opt out of local authority control and would give governors and the headteacher greater power to manage their own budget, buy in services, set the curriculum and even vary the length of the school day.

Letters have been sent out to parents outlining the process and staff and pupils have been briefed.

Headteacher Phil Birch says that no decision on whether to go ahead with the move will be made until the end of the consultation process, which is expected to be complete by early June.

And chair of governors Tom Ibison says they want the wider Garstang community to also have their say, as the decision could affect not just the current but also future generations of pupils and parents.

After being rated as a “good school with outstanding features” in their most recent Ofsted inspection, Garstang High was invited by Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove to consider applying for academy status.

And Mr Birch revealed that a tough new funding formula, which he says has left Garstang High facing some stark financial difficulties, had been the ‘catalyst’ for the decision to look into academy status.

“We can’t run on thin air” said Mr Birch. “Historically, this school has suffered through a lack of funds, but the new funding formula disadvantages us even more.”

Mr Birch says the new arrangements from the Local Education Authority would leave Garstang £1,000 per pupil worse off than the average school, and he warned that teaching jobs and the “future success of the school” could be put at risk.

Mr Ibison described the ability to manage their own budget as ‘getting back what is ours’ and said the extra money - which is currently held by the LEA for central services shared by all schools - would allow the school to develop and improve.

He added that the governors are charged with running the school as effectively as possible and they were ‘duty bound’ to consider the academy option in the best interests of the pupils, staff and the entire Garstang community.

But he stressed that no commitment had been made and nothing was binding at this time.

Mr Birch added that both he and the governors had many more questions to be answered about the academy move before they would be completely happy with the idea, although he believed the new status would provide “new opportunities that would benefit the school.’’

He pointed out that other secondary schools in the area were also looking at academy status and it could mean Garstang tapping into a new local ‘academy network’ of outstanding schools, sharing expertise and ideas.

Mr Birch also said the freedom to look at the curriculum would allow them to tailor the timetable and subjects to better reflect the needs of the students and the local job market.

He said that the move to academy status would not mean a complete break with the LEA, as the school may continue to buy-in certain services while the LEA would still look after key statutory services including special needs statementing and child protection.

Mr Ibison pledged the school would not start selecting pupils according to aptitude, saying it was their intention to maintain it as a ‘community school for all’ in Garstang, and said that all the existing terms and conditions of staff would be maintained.

The academy schools programme has proved controversial, with critics of the policy - including the main teaching unions - warning that weakening the role of local authorities will mean that some children, especially the most disadvantaged, could lose out. Local education authorities would also be left without the capacity to intervene if problems appear in local school provision, while opponents claim the academies will create a ‘two-tier’ education system.

Mr Birch said he recognised the issues, saying: “I am concerned because my staff are concerned about the possible changes, which is understandable when you are possibly changing employer, but I think the only change they would really notice would be fewer cuts.’’

Anyone who would like to contact the headteacher or governors to express their views on the academy conversion can do so via the links on the school website at www.garstanghigh.com, or by writing to them at: Garstang High School, Bowgreave, Garstang, PR3 1YE.

Academy Funding - 2011/12

Introduction & Posting Guidelines - Please Read First


1. The Department for Education has consulted local authorities,
academies, schools representatives and other partners on academy funding
for 2011-12 via the Academy Funding Sub-Group of the School Funding
Implementation Group. We have also taken into account views expressed on
the School Funding 2011-12 consultation paper in reaching our conclusions.

2. We have decided to retain for 2011-12 the current methodology for
allocating the Dedicated Schools Grant. Therefore, we will retain the
replication methodology for calculating academy budgets for a further year.

3. In the longer term, our intention is to develop a simpler and more
transparent funding system which helps to reduce the funding differences
between similar schools in different areas. We are clear that becoming an
academy should not bring about a financial advantage or disadvantage to a
school but rather, enable academies to have greater freedom over how they
use their budgets. We will continue to work with key external partners to
consider how best to bring this about.

Read the Rest

Related Papers

Why Become An Academy School?

Introduction & Posting Guidelines - Please Read First

The previous post showed that, in the short term at least, there IS a strong financial incentive for schools to convert now: that is, before funding arrangements are equalised across the education sector. Here, a headteacher considers some of those and other issues involved for the benefit of parents.
Read the full article here.

---

A number of parents have enquired, through this blog, about our thoughts around the DfE’s offer to become an academy. The conversion to an academy school, even with sweeping changes made by the new government, remains a complex process. Both in terms of legislation and philosophy it is not a move that should be taken lightly or without due consideration. Recent weeks have seen a very rapid series of changes implemented by the Department for Education and the offer to allow outstanding schools such as ours the opportunity to become academies is at the forefront of these changes.

Why become an academy school?
There is more power to innovate within the current curricular and statutory guidance than many school leaders realise: 95% of the requests to innovate made of the department over the past three years have addressed powers already possessed by schools. This is even more the case for outstanding schools, for whom the OfSTED inspection framework gives even greater latitude to explore creative ways to drive standards higher.

So, despite the rhetoric, the main drive for moving towards academy status is not greater curricular freedom. We already have most of the curricular freedom that we want. That leaves us two other main differences that academy status affords, one of which has some appeal, the other probably less so: funding and admissions.

The Local Authority keeps something in the region of 10% of schools’ funding to pay for centralised services. By becoming an academy we would receive funds directly from the department and so would retain that extra 10%. Our financial consultant advises us that we would gain around £400,000 per year. Initially this seems very attractive: it equates to about 14 new teachers or 28 new teaching assistants, nearly one extra adult per class however you implemented it.

Nevertheless, there are issues to be considered. Services which are currently centralised, such as educational welfare officers, educational psychologists, human resources and so on would need to be paid for from our 10% new funding. Although competition in this regard would be very healthy (and exists already), if many schools in a region become academies then it is possible that Local Authorities simply will not be able to provide the services currently available because staff will have been lost as a result of all the academies’ 10% funding withdrawal.

The Local Authority would also cease to be the employer of staff here and this would need to be undertaken by the governors through an academy trust. This trust would need to appoint a governing body to manage the academy, as well as co-ordinate either the transfer of the land on which the school is sited, or to enter into a 125 year lease with the Local Authority. The current wave of new academies receive £25k from the government towards the costs of these changes, although total costs may be more like £50 – 70k. It is not certain if this initial £25k will still be on offer for later academy conversions. The role as employer will not be easy. An academy would not have to participate in national wage agreements and this would cause high levels of anxiety amongst staff’s professional associations such as the NUT, NASUWT etc. Of particular concern to these associations is the possible future reduction in pension contributions that an academy employer might make, so any re-negotiation of the terms of employment by governors of the academy trust will be hard won.

That said, in schools we have had 10 years of unprecedented funding. It is unlikely that we will see similar funding within the careers of our current teachers. This is why we have been able to employ so many teaching assistants, create new buildings, buy new technology and create new facilities. We are in a very different place now, with a much more bleak budgetary future and our expectations need to be managed accordingly.

Therefore, seizing control of what amounts to a 10% slice of our budget is very appealing and would safeguard many of the aspects of our school life that we value, such as our ability to keep investing, pushing the boundaries of what we can achieve for our children and innovating in our relentless pursuit of excellence.

Furthermore, we manage our finances very well for current spend and future plans, but each year we operate under threat of having some of our surplus balances ‘clawed back’ by the Local Authority if they are above a small percentage figure of our overall budget. Academy status would prevent this distorting action on our long term financial plans. However, it should be noted that if the new financial year brings further cuts to schools’ budgets, then the 10% may increasingly become a means to simply maintaining the status quo. This is obviously not a bad thing, but it is a different understanding of what we may have to use the 10% to achieve.

Admissions would change too, with academy status, as the school would become its own admitting authority. In comparison to the financial issues of academy status, this aspect has received less attention, however, it is equally important. The school could establish its own admissions criteria, much as foundation schools do currently and admit children on this basis. However the administration and appeals process would again have to be managed by the trust and governors, rather than by the Local Authority. This is a return to how we used to operate as up until 2 years ago we managed the administration of admissions rather than it being handled by central services at the LA. However, administrative changes are procedural and do not change admissions criteria. Becoming an academy would allow the school to reconsider and set new admissions criteria and many parents and prospective parents would have very strong views on any proposed changes such a trust would make in this regard.

Academy Funding

Introduction & Posting Guidelines - Please Read First

It has been stated that "there should be no financial advantage or disadvantage for a school converting to academy status."

It is difficult to square this statement with the following information taken from a consultation document prepared by Preston Business and Enterprise College in Somerset.

I include THIS LINK to their full consultation outline document which is very instructive and seems to me to be exemplary in its approach.

Funding:

Funding is payable by the Secretary of State


Academies receive the same funding as maintained schools with the additional funding for services that the LA would have provided – it is clear however that there is currently a financial incentive to convert now and the quicker the conversion the greater the financial gain


A school converting on or before 1st August will receive additional funding of £539 per student, based upon current student numbers the school would receive an additional £506,121 per annum.


A school converting on or after the 1st September will receive additional funding of £239 per student


Initial indications are that the funding difference will reduce over time, we are still waiting for exact details although initial enquiries suggest a drop of between 10-20% in the second year


An additional £25,000 grant is payable to support the school's conversion to an Academy


The introduction of a new national funding arrangement is expected for 2014/15, I would anticipated parity for all Academies as an outcome of this process


All costs associated with running the school become the responsibility of the Academy Trust – increased liabilities include maternity leave, redundancy costs, pension provision, legal costs, insurance and indemnity requirements.

Scottish MSP's call for greater head teacher autonomy.

Introduction & Posting Guidelines - Please Read First

A report from an education committee consisting of members of the Scottish parliament has rejected reforms such as the English academy programme, the USA charter schools or the Swedish free schools movements, while suggesting that heads should be given greater freedoms.

Read the Article

Reformation?

Introduction & Posting Guidelines - Please Read First

The impetus to save money by the reform of publicly funded bodies hides, in my view, the ideological drive of this government to use the rhetoric of deficit reduction to drive through massive privatisation of public services including education.

The widening of the academies programme, from its initial aim of bootstrapping failing schools, to the ‘offer’ that all schools should now convert to academies is strengthened by the demands of the Education Bill that all new school commissions must preference academy or free school status before grant maintained schools.

This involves a massive centralisation, contrary, it seems to me, to the notions contained in the Localism Bill and the ideas behind the ‘Big Society’.

As evidence, I cite the many public bodies that are to be axed whose functions will be subsumed within the relevant state departments. A large number of these specialist bodies contain highly skilled staff whose duty it is to support, promote and maintain education standards.

The list of public bodies to be axed includes:

General Teaching Coucil for England
HM Chief Inspector of Education, Childrens Services and Skills (Ofsted)
Office of Qualifications and Examination Regulation (Ofqual)
Pensions Regulator
School Support Staff Negotiating Body
School Teachers Review Body
Training and Development Agency for Schools
Young Peoples Learning Agency for England
Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service
Charity Commission for England and Wales
Equality and Human Rights Commission
Health and Safety Exutive

Edit:  I forgot the Audit Commission in that list.  The body that looks at the spend of £180bn of public monies every year.  They're going too.