Our local school an academy?
Well, it’s been whispered about for months, and now it’s finally hit the papers that Peers School are thinking about bidding for academy status. Peers certainly needs something to change - I reported last month about some encouraging progress in GCSE results, but that still means just over one in four of their pupils getting 5 good GCSEs.
As you might expect, I have pretty mixed feelings. I can see how young people’s self-esteem and pride in their school would be boosted by a relaunch, in new buildings, with a new uniform and ethos. After all, most of Peers’ intake come from the Rose Hill, Blackbird Leys and Greater Leys estates, and I’m not convinced that attending a secondary school with a desperately bad reputation and buildings in disrepair has shown those young people that their education is thought to be of importance by the powers that be. And it’s not as if nothing has been tried to turn it around: Peers was in an Education Action Zone until few years ago and has been in special measures for the last year.
But I’m infuriated by the whole concept of academies - handing over that degree of control to a private sponsor in return for a paltry amount of cash, while the government stumps up the rest, over and above what would have been available to a school opting to remain a community comprehensive. I just don’t see why leveraging that government cash has to be tied to private money, and the loss of accountability that goes with it.
Hvaing said that, whilst I don’t support the concept of academies, I think I could have been reconciled to this one, though, if one of the big employers in our city - perhaps BMW, with its pretty well-paid unionised workers, or Unipart, with its commitment to employee learning and health - were the sponsor. But no. Who’s the proposed “business” partner for Peers School? The Church of England. Pah.
The bloody church!? There is no place for the virus of religion in our schools! They should all be secular, like the French system. How are all the pupils who have a faith other than christianity or, indeed no faith at all, going to like it?
Whatever happens, I wish good luck to Peers School.
Apparently, it’ll have no effect on who can attend. But then, once the contract is signed, there’s no democratic control over the admissions policy anyway, so they could change it if they liked.
I think you should grasp the opportunity of an academy school in your area. I know I spoke to you a few months ago about the situation we had in Merton and in my own area where the secondary schools were getting similar results to the school in your own area and I know the doubts that you have. The level of attainment at Peers School is similar to the situation we faced locally, we have a duty and responsibility as elected councillors to drive up standards. Turning two of our local school into academies in Merton will I believe drive up standards and improve results, coupled with the extra investment you will get I believe that going for it would be the right choice. The status quo is clearly not working for you in relation to this school.
Martin - as I said to you before, there is no proof that this particular solution will drive up standards. The record of academies is mixed; the ones in Merton have been open three weeks, so you can’t possibly know. I’m in favour of evidence-based solutions, not ideological or blind faith (sorry for the pun!) ones.
You’ve got this one right Antonia.
It is clearly a good thing that serious investment into new buildings and facilities, resources to attract top quality senior staff and flexibility in curriculum deliver are all good things.
But why should control of the school have to be handed over to a private or religious sponsor in order to access this investment?
Wouldn’t it be better if the Government allowed a number of Local Authorities to do this sort of investment, but not on the Academy model? We would then be in a position to compare like with like. (BTW - I think I know the answer to this one ;-))
The usual complaint against academies - apparently voiced by Charles Clarke when he was education secretary - is that they might well end up sucking resources from other local comprehensive schools. What is not in doubt, however, is that such institutions, with extra funds to finance better-than-average equipment and higher-than-normal salaries, are going to be set up in areas of particular deprivation. One view is that as long as academies remain in the depressed hearts of the old towns and cities and,perhaps most importantly of all, maintain their all-ability intake then egalitarians should not worry too much.
So are academies the answer? It is just possible that in the setting up of so many of these new academies in areas of significant social and economic deprivation, that the Government has re-found what many used to call “compensating measures”.
There is, ironically, also the possibility that the creation of the academies will bring to an end one of the remnants of old-fashioned selection. Although some city technology colleges have all-ability intakes, they do not have to observe the admissions code of practice, which prohibits selection by ability. If they choose to become academies they will be required, as part of their new financial settlement, to sacrifice the freedom to select. Together with the apparent refusal to allow selective schools to expand, the possible end of technology colleges’ special status isevidence that the comprehensive ideal still flourishes - in parts of this government.
It is far too early to judge how effective - or not - the new academies will be in tackling the culture of low expectations and under-performance in too many inner-city secondary schools. Can, as Fiona Millar has argued, spending £5 billion on just 200 of England’s 3,500 secondary schools really aid the many and not the few? It is also hard to disagree with the Education Select Committee’s call for reflection and analysis of existing academies before further expansion.
Yet should we not just give existing academies a chance? In the short-term the answer has to be a qualified yes. There are, after all, some encouraging indicators. Ofsted has stated that academies are having “remarkable” effects but there is more work to do to ensure that they all successful. A PWC report said that academies had largely won the support of pupils and parents but still faced problems, including widespread bullying and inappropriate buildings.
The 2005 GCSE results showed several academies doubling the number of pupils achieving five Cs or better at GCSE. The Greig City academy, in Haringey, increased the proportion achieving five good GCSEs from 26 per cent last year to 52 per cent this year. At the City academy in Bristol, the figure rose from 33 to 51 per cent , and at Djanogly City academy in Nottingham, it rose from 52 to 57 per cent.
For communities trapped in a cycle of failure such schools can offer new energy, new purpose and new opportunities for the young people who deserve better. But it is beholden on us all to ensure that such ambitious and expensive programmes benefit the communities that they are intended for.
I live very near Greig in Hornsey, and Mike Ion’s marvellously pompous comment suffers a little from being composed on the back of that variety of research which is limited to reading press releases and not knowing what you are talking about.
Greig’s results were indeed much better last year than in previous years. That leap however was not the immediate outcome of Academy status, which initially brought little or no improvement (I believe results initially dipped, or at least did so for one year since the status change), and it remains unclear whether Greig wouldn’t simply have done as well with a new head and new buildings, both of which it now has. Which is errmmm, exactly the point Antonia makes. Greig too is not exactly an inner-city school - although there are many kids from north Hornsey and western Tottenham there, about half its intake is from Muswell Hill and Crouch End, neither of which areas are famed for their poverty. It was a truly dreadful school failing bright well-off pupils before: turning it round is not that majestic an achievement.
In defence of the poor Church of England, at least SOMEBODY seems to care about those kids.
That said, I don’t know if academies are the solution either, and something about the idea of private businesses running schools gets my back up no end (the same way that talk of students as ‘customers’ irritates). I wish Peers all the best…
Just to back up my earlier point about Greig, the results since it was refounded are available as a graph on the DfES website here.
Over the same period, as the graph shows, GCSE results for the local authority have tracked steadily upwards at a rate considerably faster than the national average, a point made not without pride by the local authority, here (”Progress since 2001 has been at over twice the national rate. The borough’s results jumped a massive 5% this year alone.“), and by the borough’s ruling Labour Group in their manifesto for re-election earlier this year (”We’re determined that by 2010, Haringey’s GCSE results – already improving faster than the national average – will be better than the national average“). The results at Greig do not in any sense bear out the notion that the Academy model is the most effective, let alone the only possible, way of improving school results in deprived areas.
Tim
I simply make the point that rather than criticise the exisiting Academies give them time to see if they really work. I argue - pompously or otherwise - that the Common’s Education Cttee were right to insist on a more extensive surevy of the benefits of Academies before they are expanded.
You may well be right and I may not know what I am talking about but I would be interested in your suggestions as to how we shift schools that have for years been characterised by poor performance and under-achievement.
That’s fine, except that nowhere in your initial post is there any evidence that you understand the difference between “ploughing money into these schools, rebuilding and relaunching them with a new head and a new name” and “hiving off control of key aspects of their policy and ethos to variously sane partner organisations as part of doing the same”, which is after all the point Antonia makes.
It isn’t enough to retreat into a barren empiricism and say that we must wait till further evidence becomes available: there are some things we do not regard it as incumbent upon us to await further evidence on before deciding whether or not they are things that Labour governments should do (we do not, for example, believe in lowering the minimum wage).
It is a complete tragedy that the government is insisting that a fresh start for some of our most deprived schools has to be associated with taking them out of democratic control and handing them over to Church or Mammon.
Obviously these schools are likely to benefit from all the resources that have been thrown at them: no-one is doubting that. WHat people are doubting is whether (i) this is the best way of spending the finite resources available for the improvement of schools in deprived areas, and (ii) it is necessary or should be acceptable that the way to do this is
(apologies, computer pressed button halfway through)
through surrendering control over aspects of academic policies to nutcases various.
The issue isn’t whether or not city academies work, although it has to be said the evidence is mixed. The issue is whether making them work is the best way of using the money available (whether they are an effective use of resources) and whether it is acceptable to surrender control of the education of our most deprived children to anyone with the cash and in search of a peerage. Both your answer and that of the Committee are Lib-demmery - wait for the evidence, review in due time, etc. The performance in isolation of academy schools is not as good as the government proclaims and no evidence has been adduced or could be, given the absence of a control, for the importance of outside governance in changing these schools. My view is not only are they empirically unproven and without prospect of being so, but that there are also good Labour reasons for suspicion of them as an effective use of resources.
As an Anglican, I’d like to voice an indignant ‘OY!’ to the rather offensive ‘nutcases various.’ Furthermore, C of E schools do get consistently better results on average, suggesting that said ‘nutcases’ might have some idea of what they are about, education-wise.
Tam - sorry - had in mind the evangelicals at my local City Academy and the sort of people who are always trying to get creationism on the curriculum, not the CofE. I don’t like faith schools and I don’t like the CofE running schools, but I accept they’re not nutcases, by and large.
As to the results of C of E schools, there is as I understand a healthy debate in the academic literature on whether the better performance of the kids is actually anything to do with the faith or rather whether it is an artefact of governance, resources, governor time, and the tendency to have parents who are committed enough to getting a good education for their children to be prepared to pretend to be a Christian for long enough to get little Jocasta in, so I’m not at all convinced that comparative statss should be taken at face value.
Tim
You still have not offered an alternative. What would you do to raise standards in these schools? How would you ensure that the kids in these schools are given the life chances they need and deserve? What practical policies do you offer to riase standards in hard to shift schools?
If Academies are not the answer what is? Have you visited any existing Academies and spoken to the staff and students?
“If Academies are not the answer what is?”
New head, new buildings, more money is what Tim and Antonia are suggesting. This seems to be a solution with a pretty good record of success, after all.
Visit the new Anti Academies Alliance website at http://www.antiacademies.org.uk .