Poor Prospects For Academy Schools

[Gromit]

Another of Mr Gove's pet projects seems to be in difficulties. Academies were supposed to raise standards, and more importantly take them into private ownership (well trusts) that were out of the control of local authorities. Instead they are still poor schools, run by well meaning, but hopelessly useless ex-Local Authority Officers with no business acumen, as in this case. They have had disproportionately more money spent on them so they are a poor deal for the taxpayer, and standards are no better than the local authority controlled schools they replaced.

// An academy chain in charge of running six state schools became the first in the country to fold today - forcing a sudden hunt for new sponsors to take them over.

The Prospects Academies Trust, which runs six schools in Paignton, Bexhill and Gloucestershire, was one of 14 chains told by the Government it could not take on any new schools because of concerns over standards.

Two of the schools it ran were in “special measures”, having been declared “inadequate” by education standards watchdog Ofsted.//

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/first-academy-chain-closes-leaving-the-fates-of-six-schools-in-the-balance-9398957.html

Do you agree that our children deserve better than this fiasco of a failed policy?

[factor-fiction]

I am not sure academies are the pet project of Mr Gove, and if they are he isn't the first to support them- they were established by Blair government through the Learning and Skills Act 2000

[emmie]

not all doom and gloom, and what was surprising that this was started in 2002 according to the BBC piece. So long before the coalition came to be.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25654776

[emmie]

FF, indeed

[emmie]

and much of our state run education has a lot to answer for. not in a good way

[Gromit]

Blair's Academies were a mechanism to turn araound failing School.

The 2010 Academies Act expanded that to ALL schools could opt out of Local Authority control. Rather than failing schools, the act specically fast tracked the best schools out of local control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academies_Act_2010

[emmie]

you just want to have a go at Gove, you don't like him or the party, its still the initiative of the Labour party under Blair. As to those that have failed, at least its been picked up on, as opposed to any number of state run establishments left to fail.

[emmie]

the unions in teaching are not happy with large scale change, just like the union that Bob Crow was in charge of. Not all change is good i grant you, however many comprehensive, secondary modern type schools have not proved to be good at the basics. Our education system has been lax, lagging behind other countries, what a sad state of affairs that is.
I know from past experience that some West Indian families, close friends, sent their children back to their homelands like Barbados, Jamaica, to be educated, as they didn't care for our educational establishments.

[ToraToraTora]

yes the kids deserve better, pity noo Laybore abolished the grammar schools and condemed our poor bright kids to mix it with the yobs in the asbo academies. This initiative may not have worked but the real distruction of education is a labour party project.

[Peter Pedant]

An academy chain in charge of running six state schools became the first in the country to fold today - forcing a sudden hunt for new sponsors to take them over.

I think it is OK to say the govt/council runs schools in a completely crap fashion, can you do any better

andit is natural for someone to say - yeah we can actually, no probs

the bit that perhaps is unexpected is for the third party to say
oops I cant, sorry, AND I am going bankrupt.
especially as public fee-paying schools dont go bankrupt every year.....

and as AOG might say - is this a hidden argument that local govt really ISN'T that bad at running skoolz? I mean look at how many local govts have gone out of business this year.....

[emmie]

local governments going out of business not sure i understand that.

[youngmafbog]

It's a little bit deeper than Mr Gove Gromit, as I suspect you know full well.

I dont agree it is all the fault of Unions either, they certainly have Luddite tendencies but control of schools by the teachers was lost years ago under labour in their rush for right-on liberal view of the children have 'rights'. This means making any school a success is very difficult.

TTT, you are very right. I have never understood labours obsession with removing an institution that helps bright, but poor kids into a great future. Very odd.

[emmie]

me neither.

[Peter Pedant]

thx emmie I was worried about Manc C C
big spenders on themselves if ever I have seen any

[emmie]

Camden council have just got themselves some shiny new office space, a small fortune by the way, in a prime location, not sure its finished yet, but one artwork alone was 100 k. nice work if you can get it,

[emmie]

they don't always run things well, ours wastes money like dripping water,

http://www.lgcplus.com/news/minister-dismisses-bankruptcy-warnings/5063859.article

[Gromit]

The 2010 Act was not about raising standards, it was about taking schools away from locally elected control and transferring them to centrally Government control.

Of the Primary schools that have been acadamised, three quarters were not failing, and two thirds were prospering under local authority control.

// // Figures showed a total of 1,983 primaries in England have now been awarded academy status – an increase of a quarter in just six months – teaching more than 500,000 pupils.

In around two-thirds of cases, primaries rated as good or outstanding by Ofsted have been granted academy status as a reward for high standards. //

[Quizmonster]

The Prospects Academies Trust was founded in the summer of 2012, so it has not even lasted two years and it began long after the system had anything whatsoever to do with Tony Blair or Labour.
It's useless to point out the truth, Gromit, that the Labour and Tory policies underpinning the idea of academies were and are utterly different. The usual suspects simply won't get it, I'm afraid.

[Gromit]

QM
Gove turned Academies into one of his pet projects with the 2010 Act. It seems there is reluctance to credit Gove with this huge change in Education Policy, or to accept it might not be working.

[ToraToraTora]

None of it would have been necessary if the education system had not been all but destroyed by Labour tinkereing between 1997 and 2000.

[ToraToraTora]

*2010!