Every school to become an academy

[copella]

Brilliant Have to admire how Nick Gibb kept on in the face of overwhelming evidence against the government plans.

[Amber]

Brilliant Have to admire how Nick Gibb kept on in the face of overwhelming evidence against the government plans.

I am busy carrying out a critical analysis of his words to discover whether he would pass his own SPaG test. It isn't looking good...

[yoyo123]

[wonderwoman]

Very bad news for education - academies, as stated in the video, are free to plan their own curriculum and set teachers' pay. In reality this means a narrow, cheap curriculum and cheap teachers - unqualified and lacking experience.

Please ask your children's teachers what their qualifications are - I have. (And what subjects they teach. Common sense might tell you that an Sport science graduate should teach sport, but you may find them teaching history, maths, English anything actually or indeed all of them.)

[Eccentric]

If any one is interested the Association of School and College Leaders are running events all over the country on what it means to schools to become Academies (You don't have to be a member to attend). http://www.ascl.org.uk/events/calendar_ ... ssion.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Tolstoy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzW3afEXCf8

I think this speaks for itself. Television interviewing at its absolute best.

Brilliant and thank you for posting it. Oh the contradiction of praising the success of the national curriculum as improving standards and yet reasoning the benefit of an academy is it allow heads not to follow it. That and employ unqualified staff of course.

[Amber]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzW3afEXCf8

I think this speaks for itself. Television interviewing at its absolute best.

Brilliant and thank you for posting it. Oh the contradiction of praising the success of the national curriculum as improving standards and yet reasoning the benefit of an academy is it allow heads not to follow it. That and employ unqualified staff of course.

The only point missed by the excellent interviewer was that the converter academies from the last tranche had to be either outstanding or good already to be allowed to convert. So the fact that their results are now 7% (big wow!) over average should hardly be used as evidence for the wonders of conversion. Nick Gibb has a history of making ridiculous statements and this interview is fairly characteristic of the man. You have to admire his tenacity I suppose. He is the only person I have ever seen get booed at the Cheltenham Literature Festival!

[um]

Is there really an opportunity for an academy chain to make a profit? The funding will get lower still.

Well, there's an opportunity for many to make a profit so unlike LA education departments, the money can go into the pockets of private business rather than toward children's education:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35775458" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"The average pay of the chief executives in these seven trusts is higher than the prime minister's salary, with one chief executive's salary reaching £225,000.
"This poor use of public money is compounded by some trusts holding very large cash reserves that are not being spent on raising standards.
"For example, at the end of August 2015, these seven trusts had total cash in the bank of £111m.
"Furthermore, some of these trusts are spending money on expensive consultants or advisers to compensate for deficits in leadership. Put together, these seven trusts spent at least £8.5m on education consultancy in 2014-15 alone."

LA education depts were not perfect but they did not make £millions in profit - money was spent on the children and schools - and in many cases, particularly for smaller localities, LAs are now decimated to almost nothing. I guess the demise of the LA doesn't hugely affect grammars who don't have a great need for support services, but it is the weaker schools in the poorer areas who will suffer most.

[salsa]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzW3afEXCf8

I think this speaks for itself. Television interviewing at its absolute best.

Brilliant and thank you for posting it. Oh the contradiction of praising the success of the national curriculum as improving standards and yet reasoning the benefit of an academy is it allow heads not to follow it. That and employ unqualified staff of course.

The only point missed by the excellent interviewer was that the converter academies from the last tranche had to be either outstanding or good already to be allowed to convert. So the fact that their results are now 7% (big wow!) over average should hardly be used as evidence for the wonders of conversion. Nick Gibb has a history of making ridiculous statements and this interview is fairly characteristic of the man. You have to admire his tenacity I suppose. He is the only person I have ever seen get booed at the Cheltenham Literature Festival!

What I noticed was the repetition that the academies had to help the failing schools. Now, I have few queries on this subject.

1.- Can't schools help other schools with the current set up? Do they need to be academies?

2.- When these schools help, do they get extra pay, resources or time for the help given?

3.- Won't the helping of other schools take the teachers and head away from their own school?

4.- Will the helping result in the academy teachers being overworked and therefore less able to work at their own school?

Am I missing something?

[Amber]

Salsa, your questions assume that there are rational and honest reasons behind this. There aren't. It is politics at its worst and has to do with privatisating something which many people believe should remain in public hands. To answer your questions would involve accepting that there are schools which are 'failing', that other schools can and should 'help' them and that there are no existing mechanisms for addressing issues with these schools.

To have been honest, Nick Gibb should have stood up and said, 'we are a Government which essentially doesn't believe in anything at all being in state hands, preferring to allow the market to decide which schools/hospitals/transport companies should succeed and which should fail. We will not get involved in actual provision and will let private companies run by shareholders do that; we won't tell anyone how to run their services, for we believe in freedom; but we will regulate with an iron hand, we will 'name and shame' and publish league tables to allow consumers to make a choice between providers. We will require failures to improve or else be shut down. And we don't care at all about those people who are not in a position to exercise this choice, for we believe in the survival of the fittest, as manifested in the marketplace. That is life - a competition - everyone has a chance to succeed, though some have more of a chance than others. Suck it up'.

I think there may be a reason why he didn't take this line, don't you?