Q&A section

Friday 25 May 2012

Undoing academy status

12 answers – add yours below

1. alasdair said:

   This is a murky area – An academy funding agreement can be cancelled with 7 years notice. But as yet there does not appear to be a method of returning to the Local Authority maintained sector. So an academy could only be replaced by another academy.

   8 June 2012 at 9:15am

2. alasdair said:

   It appears not, at least in current legislation. If an academy fails, or is given the 7 years notice to quit by the Secretary of State, it can only be replaced by another academy.

   27 June 2012 at 11:35pm

3. Karen goodwin said:

   I was wondering if you could offer us any advice please. I with a group of parents are trying to campaign against pur school being forced into an academy. We have started petitions and are setting up an online petition also. We have involved the local paper& plan to contact local tv stations. The union nasuwt are also helping but your name was mentioned in the hope you could help. We have three wks to campaign is there anything other than petitions we can do? Is it worth the parents putting in a legal challenge? Radcliffe primary school radcliffe, manchester had a poor offsted report but have not been given any time to improve. Michael Gove will not speak to us about why this valued school is being cut off like this. I also have a child who is statemented and im very concerned how this will affect him. How do we fight this decision? Please can you advise us.
   Regards
   Karen Goodwin

   6 November 2012 at 11:53am

4. Lea Hurst said:

   I directed the question of “the way back” to the civil servant in charge of the glossy and seamless presentation of academies and all their wonders at the Academy show London earlier in the year. I had to repeat the question twice ; “is there any route planning for a school that wishes to return to Local Authority responsibility?” Finally came the answer “No”. I hope a number of the audience were still listening

   15 December 2012 at 2:36pm

5. JBDINGLEY said:

   I appreciate I am not going to be popular on this impartial website but do people really believe that the LEA will do a better job of managing theses schools?

   Not likely given the last 50 years record.

   17 January 2013 at 8:26pm

6. Pauline Allies said:

   LEA’s have provide invaluable support to schools in the last 50 years. Schools, however, have not been supported by successive governments with a political agenda.

   25 January 2013 at 9:36pm

7. Jane said:

   JBDingley: LEAs vary but local authorities are voted in and can be voted out. Academy trusts are private organisations and unaccountable to anyone else. When things go wrong in an LEA school, the LEA can intervene quickly; parents can complain to the LEA; the LEA can put in advisors. When things go wrong in an academy (and frequently they have), the LEA cannot do anything but stand by and watch, nor can the parents do anything.

   Under the Academies Act 2010 new schools have to be either academies or “free” schools. It has been seen that academies which are failing continue to fail. The Government seems loath to do anything about them, presumably because taking action would be an admission that the academies programme is not the way to improve education.

   So the answer to the original question is that the Funding Agreement for an academy does allow for the agreement to be broken after 7 years (or earlier in the case of the academy trust becoming insolvent or the school going into special measures). In practice, this is not happening.

   The Model Funding Agreement also simply says that in the event of the Agreement being terminated, the school would cease to be an academy. However, it does not say what happens then!!!

   14 February 2013 at 11:38am

8. John Viner said:

   The answer to this is no, not at the moment. It will require a change of primary legislation – so we need to be canvassing opposition education spokesmen It was the same for the Grant Maintained schools debacle. There was no going back but, as soon as New Labour came to power, primary legislation was passed to bring the schools back into the system. Now, of course, it is a whole lot more complicated – there is a devilish logic behind the government’s neo-con idealism.

   6 March 2013 at 8:46am

9. Kevin Lowe said:

   Let’s not forget that there was no mechanism for Grant-Maintained schools to go back to LEA control, but when Labour won the 1997 election, they immediately brought in legislation that switched all those schools back to the LEA. The fear is that when Labour wins the next election, will they have the courage to do what is right? The one thing Labour should surely learn from the Tories is that you can do whatever you like, regardless of pre-existing agreements. Thatcher once famously said (as she [unwillingly] closed more Grammar schools than the 1975-79 Labour Government did), “You don’t spend 4 years undoing what the previous government did, no matter how much you disagree with them, or you never get anywhere”. This Government have ripped that up, and the next government must, for the sake of education, health, prosperity, etc. think the same way and undo everything that is wrong.

   9 March 2013 at 2:27pm

10. Decimal said:

    Perhaps a possible alternative model could be to become a Co-operative Trust, perhaps as a hybrid academy-trust school, or other options: http://www.co-operativeschools.coop

    18 March 2013 at 10:52pm

11. Veronica said:

    My sons’ school sent out letters at the end of last year that they may be considering becoming an academy and now they ARE an academy! Wow!

    20 March 2013 at 6:29pm

12. Paul Bright said:

    It is vital that we all Support local State schools and ensure they are better than any private School. This is TOUGH with a government that is deliberately wrecking the UK and is a massive RISK to our Society that Needs to Stop. Local parents Need to celebrate their School and Résistance is the only way to Stop this EVIL REGIME that is pretending to be a government.

    22 March 2013 at 1:53pm

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