Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay28jay2
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  |
...(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...