...Ruby..:laugh:..

No whistleblowers thank you...

Parent governors are to be scrapped from school governing bodies in favour of professionals with the “right skills”, the government has announced.

Until now there have been places reserved for elected parents on school governing bodies, but under plans outlined in the education white paper published on Thursday those roles will now disappear.

The new emphasis will be on the skills an individual brings to a school governing body, rather than stakeholder representation. The government says it wants to change the way parents have a voice in the school system.

http://www.theguardian.com/education...qualifications

Hehehe... The petitions have begun, and the weight of public opinion is unavoidable.

Hold a public inquiry and referendum over turning all schools into academies.
Including both petitions, that’s a rate of over 2,000 signatures an hour, counting the time most British people are sleeping. Both petitions reaching 100,000 signatures means there will be double the mandate for this policy to be debated in parliament. It is government policy that all petitions reaching 100,000 signatures must be ‘considered’ for debate.

And the pressure is mounting.

These petitions are accelerating exponentially following an uproar on Twitter, strong condemnation from the Labour party, and the UK’s teachers and pupils themselves. This unrest is spreading like wildfire, and coalescing within the Anti Academies Alliance – a campaign group made up of parents, pupils, teachers, MPs, councillors, and trade unions.

As The Canary reported, this forced move away from local government and local accountability amounts to widespread privatisation of schools nationwide:

http://www.thecanary.co/2016/03/21/b...us-turbulence/

Two schools in my town are both academy's and out of about 20-25 schools in the local area, those two have the worst reputation by quite some way. I think both were forced into academy status though after the government called funding off due to depleting percentages in pass rates, so I think they already had a bad reputation before hand.

Teachers will descend on Westminster to march in protest against the Government's plans to force all state schools to become academies.

Members of the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said they would stage the demonstration outside the Department of Education on Wednesday.

Mary Bousted, general secretary for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “Against all logic, and evidence, the Government is promoting its ideology to fragment the education system.

“There is no evidence academies improve children’s education. All the evidence shows the quality of multi-academy trusts (MATs) is highly variable.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ed...-a6944431.html

Grim, with a bit of luck we'll have a different government by then that'll abolish that crap. Academies are a terrible idea.

..they would get some government funding, even if they were Academy Schools, Daniel but it sounds as though they maybe should have considered being in a multi academy, rather than stand alone ones..if they're stand alone academies, then yeah I do think that they're going to struggle a lot, regardless..as you say, they sound as though they were under-performing before and I think that multi academy trusts can be specially good in that situation..the whole purpose in them really, to be able to pool and draw from resources/staff etc of those higher performing schools and raise the standards of the under-performing so that all children in the trust from varying individual school performances are given the same, equal opportunities...

..if done well Dezzy and with full support and dedication/commitment from higher performing schools, multi academies can really help under-performing schools, which is really what it's all about, the children and raising standards for them...giving them opportunities that they would never get as a stand alone school...

How about they don't tie funding to educational attainment of students which keeps inner city schools in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation underfunded, should the answer to this be to share teachers? :/

Two points about the staffing of academies:
1 They do not have to use the School teachers’ pay and conditions when appointing staff.
2 They have more flexibility to appoint unqualified teachers.

Teachers will be expected to undertake activities, like accounting, admin, basic HR, contract management and myriad other things – for which they have received very little training, had not chosen to do and had no special skill to undertake.

No one thinks stand alone academies can work. The economics of them just do not make sense. So all this is really about is creating the opportunity for academy chains to be created from which in due course profit can be extracted. But as there is no profit extraction now that must eventually be at cost to our children. - See more at: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2....E1qtptjY.dpuf

Thanks for that DR will have a good look at that tomorrow :)

I go to an Academy currently, and it changed from a Community School to an Academy the same year we joined in 2012. What does it even mean and what is the difference? I have never known.. Is it a bad thing or what :umm2:

...(just a quick reply Jay because I don't have a lot of time../work day etc..)...it would be impossible to say any differences to your own school because I have no idea what the hopes of achievement were in changing to Academy status ...but a general thing..?...schools will still have government funding as they do now/those who aren't academy schools atm...but they'll have more control over how their funding is spent...there are certain things for instance, that schools have no choice in/that are provided centrally by their local education authority..even though they may not 'offer best value/or a good service', they still have to use them in knowing that they're not providing the best...and the crazy thing as well, is even if they choose not to use them because they don't believe in them, they still have to pay that annual subscription to not use them out of their very limited budget.../crazy, crazy....they're also often longer contracts as well to keep schools tied into them as opposed to having more flexibility over things like that...'well we'll try this for a year etc and see what we feel about it, if you've offered us what you promised and if not we'll see what else is available to more suit our school's needs'.../that type of thing...because quite often as well, local authority 'no choice' contracts are changed at will and schools just have to accept those changes/they're given no choice but aren't being given what was first promised as it were....

...as I say, in terms of your school specifically, I have no knowledge but personally I'm more in favour of multi academy schools than stand alone academy schools because for instance..?...our school is a high performing school and always has been...so if we became a stand alone academy, I doubt anything much would change in terms of it's performance, we would probably still perform well and still be a school which has waiting lists...but if we became part of a multi academy, we would have so much to offer some of the under-performing schools in our area in terms of resources/teaching staff...they also would have things to offer us because just because they're overall under-performing as a school, doesn't mean that they may not have great resources in specific areas that we don't have...maybe in Science equipment/IT or etc..?...so it's basically helping each other in trying to raise standards and making schools more equal...teachers who specialise/excel in specific subject areas, will more be able to concentrate on those areas so giving the children more in their lesson....anyways, this is just a very quick answer because of time, but I hope that it's explained it a little bit/in a bite size way, type way...

Nicky Morgans eyes...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...-a6947671.html

It's catchy! "Jizzing in Nicky Morgan's eeeeye, nehnehneehnehneneneh neh neeehhhh". Is that it? :shrug:

That's what she said..... #inbeforeLT

That's what he said.

On Thursday afternoon, just as most people were getting ready for the long Easter weekend, the government quietly published the findings of an inquiry into a chain of Academy schools in Birmingham.


The story was an embarrassment because the Tories are planning to turn all primary and secondary schools into Academies, claiming this will raise standards.

But if the Birmingham investigation is any indication, it also illustrates what happens when schools face less scrutiny, as Academies do.

The investigation found that a Birmingham academy trust, which runs five secondary schools in the area, paid nearly £1.3 million to a business which then paid a “second salary” to one of its headteachers.

It revealed that the Trust made payments of £1.297 million over two years to a business called Nexus Schools Ltd, which itself sub-contracted another company called Liam Nolan Ltd, whose sole director is Liam Nolan.

Liam Nolan is also one of three executive headteachers at Perry Beeches The Academy Trust, and its Accounting Officer and Chief Executive.

http://politicalscrapbook.net/2016/0...dal-yesterday/