Education

Schools ‘nod’ to academy status

By Hugh Fort
July 20, 2010

Two “outstanding” local schools have registered an interest in becoming specialist academies but a political party has cited research which says there is no proof such a move would have a positive effect on performance.

Ranelagh School in Ranelagh Drive, Bracknell and Charters School in Charters Road, Sunningdale, have received “outstanding” grades in recent Ofsted reports.

If the new coalition Government’s Academies Bill is passed, schools which have received the grade would no longer have to consult their local authority for permission to become academies and could instantly apply.

Once a school gets academy status, it receives its funding from central government and is independent from local authority control.

It can also raise money from business sponsors and is in control of its own staff and budgets.

Such schools can alter the term dates and length of the school day as they see fit.

Academy schools can set their own curriculum but must include the “core subjects” of English, maths and science and usually have specialist status.

They are also still inspected by quality watchdog Ofsted.

Neither of the schools have put in a full application, but have written to the Government expressing interest.

If they decide to go ahead, they could be fast-tracked into academy status by September.

Neither wanted to discuss the matter further with the Bracknell Forest Standard but the application from Charters has met with opposition from the East Berkshire Green Party.

The school which is run by the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidehead but takes pupils from Bracknell, is one of nine in the borough to register an interest.

However, the party says there is evidence to suggest academy status does not necessarily improve the school.

A party statement said: “A study from researchers at the London School of Economics found that there was ‘no evidence of general positive effects on academic attainment from academy status’.

“Academy status allows schools to be put in the hands of private sponsors who may have little or no experience of education provision.

“This form of privatisation can reduce the influence which parents, teachers and pupils can have on the running of their schools. Academy schools are also given more freedom to select the students they take in; in some instances this has led to unfair admissions policies with academies selecting pupils with high levels of academic attainment.

“This can have a negative effect upon schools in the surrounding area then have an increase proportion of pupils with lower attainment.”

Ranelagh is the only school in Bracknell to register an interest.

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The National Governors Association and the National Grammar Schools Association have both warned of the need to be very, very cautious before schools rush into applying for academy status. The bill in Parliament has been rushed through and major amendments have been being made.

There is no provision for a school which becomes an academy and realises it has made a mistake to return to the local authority. Although the Government talks about "freeing" academies, the freedoms that schools mostly want are not freedom from the local authority, but freedom from central Government restrictions.

The dangers of schools becoming academies are huge. One school in Sandwell was graded "outstanding" before it became an academy but has now, after 3 years of independence from the local authority, gone into special measures.

Any school which did become an academy in September cannot possibly have had proper discussions at Governor level and certainly won't have been able to consult parents and staff. One of the amendments to the Academies Bill has been the requirement to consult parents, although they may well be ignored.

PriceWaterhouse Coopers in their 5 year review of the academies programme concluded that there was no evidence to support academisation as a way of improving school performance.

This latest idea of allowing "outstanding" schools to become academies runs the risk of damaging some of the best schools in the country. The results of a far higher proportion of academies dropped last year, than community schools.

If the Government wants to break the power of local authorities or unions, they should find another way of doing it than playing with the education of all our futures.