Grammar schools and academy status?

[mitasol]

Unless there is LEA control, we will be back to square one over admissions

No academies still work using the CAF/SCAF in a centralised fashion. I think it is about schools taking financial and educational control.

[hermanmunster]

from the DFE site this afternoon:

• There will be no expansion of selection but grammar schools and other schools which select or partially select pupils will be able to continue to do so;

[Marylou]

The point is that the admission rules are already fragmented. It is true that they are governed by overall regulations which means that many practices are no longer allowed, for example interviewing prospective students, asking questions about parents' occupations, and only giving priority to students who list the school first on the CAF form. However, within what is allowed, there is still much variation even within the same LA - which is where I would hope that the new arrangements might benefit schools by allowing them to respond more closely to the needs of the families that use them.

[Looking for help]

Admissions policies may be fragmented at the moment, but will be far more so in future (if this is in fact the future). Not only that if everyone and anyone wants to start up a school, there just won't be enough money to go round, so everyone will suffer. There has to be order in the education system, and I believe these new policies (if in fact they are new ) will create chaos, and far more social exclusion than exists at present.

[sherry_d]

Having read the articles on academies I think I now have a clearer idea. Its about making the outstanding schools (which are mainly grammars in my neck of woods) even much better. Fair enough.

How about the c-r-a-p schools, it seem nothing much will be done and this is what the rest will get according to the education bill

The main benefits of the Bill will be:

• To give all schools greater freedom over the curriculum
• To improve school accountability
• To take action to tackle bureaucracy
• To improve behaviour in schools

It seems this really will benefit outstanding schools. I wonder what the picture is across the country, in my area its really the grammars that get outstanding and there is one comprehensive which got it and its much more socially exclusive. You need to live under a mile of it to get in and it was the second most oversubscribed school in Kent.

Maybe the pupil premium (wonder how much it is but heard figures of around £90 000?? max for heavily disadvantaged schools) is what the other lot are going to benefit from.

I also noticed that primaries can also become academies, in my area again all the outstanding ones are in really expensive areas so we shall languish at our local authority controlled one.

[Just1-2go]

Unless there is LEA control, we will be back to square one over admissions

No academies still work using the CAF/SCAF in a centralised fashion. I think it is about schools taking financial and educational control.

Our local academy still uses the caf for admissions:

"Arrangements for applications for places at The ******** Academy will be made in accordance with Kent County Council’s Co-ordinated Admission Scheme and will be made on the Kent Secondary Common Application Form provided by the local authority."

Is this not the case with others then?

[Looking for help]

It is at the moment, but under any new proposals, who knows? If the idea is to divert the education budget direct to schools, why would the local authorities spend their own money to administer admissions

[Cats12]

Having read the articles on academies I think I now have a clearer idea. Its about making the outstanding schools (which are mainly grammars in my neck of woods) even much better. Fair enough.

Academies were devised by Labour to help the low achieving schools achieve by creating 'new' schools that could gain LA funding in addition to private funding (often used to rebuild from scratch). Many seem to have greatly improved.
The new Bill seems very different - they're offering already achieving schools an LA opt-out, but I question whether they need it. Being able to tweak your admissions criteria is 'small cheese'.

What about the poor achieving schools. The original aim of academies seems to have been bastardised beyond belief. I'm not condemning the new bill outright and will read more, but so far am not impressed.

[DarkEnergy]

I have a very negative view on the academy and grammar school mix. I have seen so many government education initiatives develop over the years and seen how radically they can change... not forgetting the old Grant Maintained fiasco... this seems to be similar.

OK, here goes with some issues (from a paranoid viewpoint)

Initial big funding is great, what happens 5 years or 10 years down the line? I remember many GM schools having serious money problems. Some schools got themselves into very embarassing positions financially.

If a grammar goes academy, then government may bring in rejigged admissions standards in 5 years time that effectively turns grammars who are academies into ordinary schools (e.g. only allowing 25% of entrants to be selected etc). This would suit many politicians (Cameron) who want to get rid of grammars and this back door method would be easy to implement. Would grammar academies renounce academy status to retain entrance exams?

Exactly where is all of the academy money going to come from? I do not see industry stumping up the billions it would cost to turn over 2000 schools into academies. So money comes from gov (tax payer). I still rememeber some silly GM heads who thought they were now heads of big corporations and gave themselves huge pay rises, made a duff job of it, and got paid off with big pension pots... at the end of the day, we, the tax payers paid for it.
If you think I am off my trolley, just you wait, you will start to see heads awarding themselves luxury company cars and the like.

OK. Paranoid rant over.

[Snowdrops]

I do know some teachers who are very worried about the HT's ability to award pay rises/set rates of pay if this goes ahead. They couldn't get their heads around the fact this is what happens in the 'outside world' and are feeling very uneasy that things could become competitive between themselves (I did try to point out the postives, but they really are running scared).

Anyhow, yes, there are lots of things to worry about with regards to schools possibly/maybe/might be becoming acadamies, but I really think until it happens and/or we know how things are to be implemented then why worry? It may never happen ............................. and if it does, there's not a lot we can do about it, apart from set up our own school.

Now then, where's that thread from many moons ago when we all allocated ourselves jobs within 'our' school?