Focus on funding What’s the best solution?
None of us know who will win the upcoming election, or what that government will decide about funding for schools.
But there are some lessons that every school can learn.
Academy status provides freedom from local council control, and the potential for delivering excellence.
But this carries big issues for school governors. Conversion to Academy status creates a limited company for which every governor is a director, with all the responsibilities and liabilities that go with that. That’s a big ask for volunteer governors.
Most of those early converters were identified by Ofsted as ‘outstanding’ or ‘good with outstanding features’. Too often, this meant that they were getting less local council funding than their neighbouring under-performing schools. Those early converters have reaped the benefits of greater freedom and greater funding, and now have stronger balance-sheets than more recent converters.
Right now, however, the factors are different for schools which have yet to make the switch to Academy status: and those factors are different for secondary and primary schools.
Secondary Schools
Two thirds of the UK’s secondary schools have already converted to Academy status. After the upcoming election, the remaining third will probably be encouraged to make the switch. That is not a certainty, of course, because some often Labour-run city councils have been less enthusiastic about promoting the switch to Academy status. Other councils, however, recognise that their reduced funding means that their schools will be better-placed as independent Academies.
There is now less financial incentive for secondary schools to make the switch as stand- alone Academies. If they lacked the confidence to make the switch when the rewards were greater, it would be unlikely that they’ll have the
confidence to make that switch now, when things are less certain.
But there is no question that making the switch can bring greater freedom.
Primary Schools
Most Multi-Academy-Trusts have been created by primary schools, which are usually much smaller than secondary schools and attract much less funding.
So far, only around 10% of primary schools have made the switch to Academy status, so 90% are still under local council control. This is where we’re likely to see the biggest move to Academy status, but almost certainly within MATs.
Primary schools have four main choices at the moment: • Do nothing, and remain in local council control; • Join an existing local MAT; • Join a MAT created by the secondary school for which they are a “feeder school”;
• Form a new MAT with nearby primary schools In the future, we are not expecting many primary schools to switch to Academy status on a solus basis.
A stand-alone Academy gets maximum freedom and control, but loses the safety-net of being backed by its local council – and doesn’t get the shared-benefits of being part of a MAT.
Nonetheless, our experience with more than 150 Academy schools proves that Academy status is usually a huge benefit for pupils. Multi- Academy-Trusts can be even more beneficial. One of the biggest benefits of MATs is that they can afford to employ more skilled finance people. It is much easier for a MAT of six schools to employ a qualified accountant than it is for a stand alone Primary School.
That makes the difference between an unqualified member of staff doing the accounts as an extra task and having a professional to do the job properly.
MATs make that possible – just as they provide other ways of sharing skills, resources, and buying power.
One of the early reasons for creating MATs – creating buying power – is something of a red herring. It’s already the case that ‘clusters’ of local schools have been formed to create bulk- buying capability, so that formula does not require the creation of MATs.
Indeed, this formula of local schools sharing costs extends to employing a groundsman to service several schools and to purchasing of school meals.
So bulk-buying is available without needing to switch to Academy status or join a MAT. But there will be a continued growth of switching to Academy status, with all future switchers joining or creating a MAT. The big difference will be that these are much more likely to be local MATs, many of which will link secondary schools to their feeder primary schools.
Given the experience of recent years, and the bad publicity, I predict that we are seeing the death of national MATs. More local MATs are the way forward.
28
www.education-today.co.uk
March 2015
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44