The Coalition of Expensive Chaos

[silkyman]

So the PTA becomes an organisation to fill in the gaps and prop up the school so the trust can afford it's six figure salaries to top brass.

 

[Simmo]

I don't usually post in this section but I feel compelled to after watching the budget being laid out by Osborne while Theresa May sits behind him, half asleep, with her breasts hanging out.

Steve, its where the goverment are hiding the budget deficit !

 

[Pyeman]

Currently you can become an academy without having to join a trust. Our school has recently become an academy and initially we were going to be an isolated academy with no intention of joining a trust. However our governors felt that in future it's likely that all schools will be made to join a trust, so we ended up starting our own.

There is evidence to suggest some academies do better than some state run schools. There is also evidence that some state run schools outperform some academies. There doesn't seem to be any real causal link between academisation and success. Things like the quality of teachers and the competency of leadership have a much great impact on a school's performance.

Turning schools into academies is nothing really more than an empty gesture designed to make it look like the government are doing something to improve standards in education. In reality it achieves very little.

 

[silkyman]

That will be helpful for me. As will a few things in the budget as a middle class business owner.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...lf-of-britain-but-the-austerity-a6934501.html

I'll still not vote for you, you Tory bastards.

 

[silkyman]

Currently you can become an academy without having to join a trust. Our school has recently become an academy and initially we were going to be an isolated academy with no intention of joining a trust. However our governors felt that in future it's likely that all schools will be made to join a trust, so we ended up starting our own.

There is evidence to suggest some academies do better than some state run schools. There is also evidence that some state run schools outperform some academies. There doesn't seem to be any real causal link between academisation and success. Things like the quality of teachers and the competency of leadership have a much great impact on a school's performance.

Turning schools into academies is nothing really more than an empty gesture designed to make it look like the government are doing something to improve standards in education. In reality it achieves very little.

But by removing them from LEA control you remove accountability. It's a step towards privatising education. And moving it away from a national curriculum is insane.

 

[silkyman]

Also, I like the idea of this "lifetime" ISA. A good way for the self employed to put £4k a year away and gain £1k through saving and for those that can afford to do it to add on their pension. It was kind of sold as a self-employed mans pension, but why is it stopped when you hit 50? Surely it should be 65?

So they can make some of their money back by investing it and taking the benefits.

 

[Pyeman]

But by removing them from LEA control you remove accountability. It's a step towards privatising education. And moving it away from a national curriculum is insane.

I don't disagree with either of those points. Although I would add that some LEAs can be as bad as some of the dysfunctional academies.

I think our school is now in a better position for being an academy than we were in as part of the LEA. But you could well argue the better solution in our case was to improve standards at the LEA rather than push academisation.

 

[silkyman]

The LEA is accountable to voters. Many academies are run by absentee trusts who are accountable to no one.

And now, if this goes through, no one has a choice.

 

[Tilbury]

I am glad of the backing for HS3 in the budget. The problem we have in this country, regardless of who is in governance, is it takes too long from when a project is announced to the day building work is carried out simply takes too long.

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

No accountability, as the people fucking up local schools can no longer be voted out. Ending the national curriculum (dunno if that's good or bad tbh) and removing pay scales for schools (meaning teachers' wages are likely to stagnate, and god knows it's a shit enough job at the moment as it is). Those are some negatives, anyway. Suppose the real question is, are they better at educating children? And the answer, I'm afraid, is idk. Someone else?

I think the jury's still out on this. It's probably worth noting that academies can operate in different ways - some schools will be part of a chain of academies operated by a government-approved sponsor, but this isn't a necessary feature of becoming an academy (quite a lot of them are stand-alone schools who voluntarily convert because being afforded more autonomy is attractive to them)*. Quite often an academy conversion won't actually change *that* much about how a school is run and my impression is fairly similar to Pyeman so far as performance is concerned.

Concerns largely stem, as you say, from the lack of oversight, and this can be both financial and academic. I don't think we need necessarily see greater autonomy for schools as being a bad thing but there have been concerns raised about financial mismanagement at a number of academies, some of which have only come to light as a result of investigative reporting or leaks from staff. The Trojan Horse scandal at a group of Birmingham academies and notable failures within the government's flagship free-school programme have, at the same time, raised important questions about academic standards.

The inescapable problem with the government's plan is that there simply aren't enough good academy chains (which I would have though is vital if you want to forcibly convert a bunch of schools into academies). E-Act actually lost control of some of its schools after Ofsted raised performance concerns, and the Chief Inspector of Schools and Ofsted chief, Michael Wilshaw, has recently singled out seven poorly performing multi-academy trusts for criticism, stating that "many of the trusts manifested the same weaknesses as the worst performing local authorities and offered the same excuses".**

*A lot of academies of this type are already successful schools. There's quite a convoluted system concerning which schools can get access to more funding and for what purpose, but a lot of people consider that grammar schools and the like do quite well out of the arrangement. The whole programme, may therefore, only serve to exacerbate existing divisions (it seems doubtful that the academies programme has done much to eliminate a lot of pre-existing problems in the education sector).

**Wilshaw, of course, is the former principal of Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, one of the first "City Academies", which was lauded early on as an example of the success of the academies programme. London itself is a great success story in education, but there is little evidence to suggest that this has much to do with a move towards academies. Whereas a couple of the more successful academy chains - such as Harris and Ark - do control a number of schools in the capital, inner city schools under LA control have also flourished. Ultimately, I think what we should probably be doing is identifying why schools in certain areas of the country appear to be failing, while others excel. I think it's wishful thinking to believe that academies provide some kind of panacea; indeed, I think there's probably considerable risk in allowing academy chains, some of which have already expanded too rapidly, to gain control of yet more LA schools.

 

[Veggie Legs]

With regard to academies, Pyeman and PP have pretty much nailed it. The stereotypical picture of academies is of large trusts running lots of schools, but that isn't the reality for every academy. Many, especially the more recent convertees, are just the individual school forming its own trust to get a bit more autonomy.

I also think that some of the concerns expressed here are exaggerated. The fact that academies don't have to follow the national curriculum doesn't mean that they won't follow it: I can't imagine many secondary schools making wholesale changes to their curriculum, especially at KS4 (I'm less sure about primary). The same applies to pay and conditions; all the academies I know of kept the same pay scales and are still signed up to the same conditions agreements with the teaching unions that they were before conversion.

In terms of outcomes, the bottom line is that there isn't enough evidence because academies haven't been around for long enough. The evidence that does exist seems to suggest that academies perform no better or worse than other schools. It's worth noting that not all academies are created equal, though. I think that the original academies, usually the ones with the big name sponsors, are the ones that have done the best out of conversion, but that's basically because they got the most money (and not all of them have seen sustained improvement). The next lot of schools to convert were ones that were already successful, so it's not really a surprise that they continued to be successful. For the schools that have converted more recently, or will have to in the near future, I can't see there being much change.

Turning schools into academies is nothing really more than an empty gesture designed to make it look like the government are doing something to improve standards in education. In reality it achieves very little.

This is the bottom line.

 

[Pyeman]

Many academies are run by absentee trusts who are accountable to no one.

Don't be silly. They are accountable to the DfES of course.

How very reassuring.

 

[Hooped Wizard]

Like most Tory women she is extremely sexy. Others include Priti Patel, Penny Mordaunt and Edward Leigh.

 

[St Nick]

Iain Duncan Smith has resigned

‘I have for some time and rather reluctantly come to believe that the latest changes to benefits to the disabled and the context in which they’ve been made are a compromise too far.’

 

[Womble98]

Throwing Osbourne under the bus so his mate Boris has a clearer path.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

That's interesting. Earlier on the BBC reported:

BBC Breaking News ‏@BBCBreaking 1h1 hour ago
Planned changes to disability benefits outlined in Budget will be "kicked into long grass", government source says

 

[St Nick]

‘I have for some time and rather reluctantly come to believe that the latest changes to benefits to the disabled and the context in which they’ve been made are a compromise too far. While they are defensible in narrow terms, given the continuing deficit, they are not defensible in the way they were placed within a Budget that benefits higher earning taxpayers. They should have instead been part of a wider process to engage others in finding the best way to better focus resources on those most in need.

‘I am unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self imposed restraints that I believe are more and more perceived as distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest. Too often my team and I have been pressured in the immediate run up to a budget or fiscal event to deliver yet more reductions to the working age benefit bill. There has been too much emphasis on money saving exercises and not enough awareness from the Treasury, in particular, that the government’s vision of a new welfare-to-work system could not be repeatedly salami-sliced.

‘It is therefore with enormous regret that I have decided to resign. You should be very proud of what this government has done on deficit reduction, corporate competitiveness, education reforms and devolution of power. I hope as the government goes forward you can look again, however, at the balance of the cuts you have insisted upon and wonder if enough has been done to ensure “we are all in this together”.’

 

[blade1889]

Throwing Osbourne under the bus so his mate Boris has a clearer path.

And we have the truth. Ain't politics such a farce of selfish individuals

 

[Techno Natch]

I find it very hard to believe he's suddenly found his moral compass.

 

[smat]

How fucking stupid does Iain Duncan Smith think we are? It is not REMOTELY plausible that he is standing up for disadvantaged people.

 

[Cheese & Biscuits]

Nothing to do with Europe at all.

 

[silkyman]

Utter c***. IDS, obv.

 

[GodsGift]

Nadine Dorries: "Stunned at IDS resignation letter. I was about to vote against ESA cuts when he sought me out - he personally and angrily begged me not to.

"I am angry that he made me vote for something I did not want to vote for, bribing me with a promise and now HE resigns."

 

[silkyman]

I suspect that literally no one will believe this wanker on this.

 

[Eamonn]

In relation to academies, its also the issue of funding, there are huge conversion costs involved that the budget isnt going to cover, are schools going to be forced to pay themselves? Most schools are already running budget deficits. The national curriculum freedom is irrelevant as there is no flexibility as schools must do the Ebacc to meet new progress 8 performance measures leaving an extremely narrow curriculum where the arts for example are being forced out. The real issues are the teacher recruitment crisis which the government continue to ignore and the failings of Ofsted and current performance measures.

 

[Jockney]

Nadine Dorries: "Stunned at IDS resignation letter. I was about to vote against ESA cuts when he sought me out - he personally and angrily begged me not to.

"I am angry that he made me vote for something I did not want to vote for, bribing me with a promise and now HE resigns."

fucken seriously? spineless wankers the both of em.

 

[silkyman]

Looks like the Tories are tearing themselves apart through their own self serving nature.

Shame Labour are royally fucking up capitalising on it.

 

[Aber gas]

Looks like the Tories are tearing themselves apart through their own self serving nature.

Shame Labour are royally fucking up capitalising on it.

We'll see about that, I know the current wisdom is that Labour are hopeless, too left wing blah, blah .. But let's see what happens when a settled anti- austerity party finds it's feet.

 

[Alty]

TBH Dorries is probably lying. The woman is scum.

Both Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC and Heather Stewart of The Guardian have said that IDS was not supportive of the cuts. Stewart said as much yesterday before any talk of IDS resigning.

Whatever you think of his politics, this does not appear to be some evil Machiavellian move. The bloke is genuinely pissed off with this shit Chancellor of the Exchequer.

 

[blade1889]

That would explain the pig I saw flying last night then