Everything about City Academies totally explained
Since 2000,
"Academy" in
England can mean a type of
secondary school which is
independent but
publicly funded and publicly run. As such, Academies are outside the control of the
Local Authorities in which they're situated. This type of school was known as a
City Academy for the first few years but the term was changed to "Academy" by an
amendment in the
Education Act 2002 (External Link
).
City Academies were legally created by the
Learning and Skills Act 2000 (External Link), which amended the section of the
Education Act 1996 relating to
City Technology Colleges
(External Link). They were first announced in a speech by
David Blunkett, then
Secretary of State for Education and Skills, in 2000
(External Link). One of the major architects of the policy was
Andrew Adonis in his capacity as education advisor to the
Prime Minister (now Lord Adonis, a junior Minister at the
Department for Education and Skills) in the late 1990s.
Academies are intended as a method of dealing with the problem of historic and entrenched failure of schools in England that don't achieve academically (or in areas of little educational aspiration). Whilst still in the fairly early stage of development (with 46 Academies open and only three for more than four years) the emerging evidence so far is positive with substantial rises in attainment results at KS3 and GCSE occurring each year. Academies are currently subject to an independent five-year evaluation by the consultancy
PriceWaterhouseCoopers who have to date published three annual reports consisting of both 'hard' and 'soft' data concerning the open Academies. In the Department for Education and Skill's Five Year Strategy (published in 2004) the Government committed to there being 200 Academies open or in development by 2010.
(External Link) At September 2006, 46 academies were open with another 48 planned to open in 2007.
Features of an Academy
Academies are established in a way that's intended to be 'creative' and 'innovative' to give them the freedoms considered necessary to deal with the long term issues they're intended to solve. Each Academy has a private sponsor who can be an individual (such as Sir David Garrard, who sponsors
Business Academy Bexley) or an organisation, such as the
United Learning Trust or
Amey PLC. They are intended to bring 'qualities of success' to the school, again to help it change the long-term trend of failure of the school the Academy replaces. Academies that have already demonstrated strong success are the
City Academy, Bristol and
Mossbourne Academy in Hackney.
In return for an investment of 10% of the Academy's capital costs (or £2m, whichever is less), the sponsor is able to input into the process of establishing the school including its
curriculum,
ethos, specialism and building (if a new one is being built), and the power to appoint
governors to the Academy's governing body. Academies typically replace an existing (predecessor) school, although some are newly established. The remainder of the capital and running costs are met by the state in the usual way for UK state schools through LA funded grants.
Academies are expected to follow a broad and balanced curriculum, but with a particular focus on one or more areas. Current specialisms include: science; arts; business and enterprise; computing; engineering; maths and computing; modern foreign languages; performing arts; sport; and technology.
(External Link) Academies can select up to 10% of pupils by
aptitude for the school's specialism in a way similar to
Specialist Schools (although very few of them exercise this ability.). Although they're independent they've to have regard to the same code of practice of admission as maintained schools, and so can't select beyond the 10% aptitude rule. Academies are not bound to follow the
National Curriculum (another freedom to innovate), although they still participate in the
Key Stage 3 and
GCSE exams as other English schools (which effectively means they teach a curriculum very similar to
maintained schools, with small variations).
In terms of their governance, Academies are established as companies limited by guarantee with a Governing Body that acts as a Trust, the governors also acts as the Trust's
Board of Directors (they are legally accountable for the operation of the Academy, but not financially so). The Trust serves as the legal entity which the school element is part of and the Governing Body is the group that actually oversees the running of the school (although the day to day management of the school is, as in most schools, conducted by the principal and their senior management team whom are appointed by the sponsor).
Opposition/criticism
Academies are considered controversial and the policy questioned from their inception, both politically and educationally. Even after several years of operation and with a number of Academies open and reporting successes there are frequently calls made in the media and education sector to either scrap the programme or radically reduce it. The Academy policy is often attacked for creating schools that are (for example) a waste of money, selective, a negative impact on the schools and communities around them, forced on parents who don't want them and a move towards privatisation of education by "the back door".
The
House of Commons Education & Skills Select Committee reported in March 2005 that it would have been wiser to limit the programme to 30 or 50 academies in order to evaluate the results before expanding the programme, and that "the rapid expansion of the Academy policy comes at the expense of rigorous evaluation."
(External Link) This view is also held by the
Liberal Democrats who stated in their 2005 election manifesto that they'd suspend the creation of any new Academies if they came to power (although they didn't commit to abolishing the programme). On the other hand,
David Cameron, the
Conservative Party's Shadow Education Secretary at the time, backed the establishment of academies, but said that "to date [October2005], the academy programme hasn't gone far enough."
(External Link)
The Select Committee was concerned that the good results achieved by some Academies may be because they excluded harder to teach pupils and reduced the proportion of those from deprived backgrounds, whom they were intended to serve. They noted two
Middlesbrough Academies had expelled 61 pupils, compared to just 15 from all other secondary schools in the borough, and in one Academy the number of pupils entitled to
free school meals had fallen to 47% compared to nearly 60% at its predecessor school.
The programme of creating Academies has also been heavily criticised by some for handing schools to private sector entrepreneurs who in many cases have no experience of the education sector - most famously, the Evangelical Christian car dealer, Sir
Peter Vardy, who has been accused of promoting the teaching of
creationism alongside
macroevolution in two academies he sponsors in
Gateshead and
Middlesbrough (the latter being
The King's Academy). This is also linked to the wider debate in the education sector as to the benefits or otherwise of the growing role of religion in the school system being promoted by the New Labour government in general, and Tony Blair in particular, with many Academies being sponsored either by religious groups or organisations/individuals with a religious bias.
The past failings of the
Unity Academy in
Middlesbrough and the
West London Academy in
Ealing have been highlighted as indications that the programme isn't wholly successful.
(External Link) However since these claims were made, both schools have started to improve after intervention from the DfES, and West London Academy's recent OFSTED inspection commented on how much the school had improved in a very short space of time. It is also widely held that sponsors "run" or control Academies, although in reality this falls to the governing body and the principal (however the majority of the members of the governing body are initially chosen by the sponsor giving the sponsor a strong role in the direction that the school takes).
The programme has further been attacked for its expense: typically it costs on average £25m to build an Academy (more in London) much of which is taken up by the costs of new building. It is frequently cited that this is more than a new school although these comparisons are often drawn between the total cost of building an Academy including start up grant and all initial outlay, and the cost of a new school
building for a maintained school. That said Academies are not cheap in real terms, although the Government and sponsors maintain that it's money well spent.
In Newcastle upon Tyne the City's deprived West End is to see the replacement of West Gate Community College by Excelsior Academy. Its wealthy sponsor, Lord
Irvine Laidlaw, lived as a tax exile in Monaco for almost two decades, thereby avoiding the payment of at least £50 million in UK taxes. He is now to receive £25 million from the Exchequer in order to fund this venture. Some observers on Tyneside have asked how many schools a UK based Laidlaw might have provided through normal payment of taxes, and are perplexed that this arrangement isn't considered a national scandal.
Comparisons
The city academy programme was originally based on the programme of
City Technology Colleges (CTCs) created by the
Conservative government in the 1980s, which were also business-sponsored. One of the proposed city academies is Dixons CTC, once sponsored by the retailer
Dixons. Currently the Government is encouraging CTCs to convert to Academies; several have already done so (for example, Djanogly CTC is now
Djanogly City Academy). Academies differ from CTCs in several ways; most notably, Academies can't select more than 10% of pupils by ability (whereas CTCs can). However, although academies are limited in the number of pupils they can select, there's no bar to them excluding as many pupils as they like: while other schools in an academy's area lose funds if they exclude a pupil, the academy keeps the funding promised for that pupil, and the excluded pupil is sent to another school which receives no extra funding for taking them. The academy can therefore 'select' after admission by finding excuses to exclude poorly performing pupils, and so artificially boost their league table scores. Also, Academies are designed specifically to be part of the overall education provision in the areas in which they're built, and have consistently been stated as part of the wider strategy on education; CTCs were not built with local provision or need in mind and were mostly "parachuted" into areas with little thought as to the effect it would have on other schools.
In some respects comparisons may be drawn between city academies and US
charter schools.
Further Information
Get more info on 'City Academies'.
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