THE ACADEMiEs VOiCE

Review, comment and news from IAA

sEPTEMBER 2011 introduction by David Wootton - iAA Chair

This years GCSE results have shown further substantial improvements in Academies, in many cases at rates at least twice the national average. Our congratulations go to the students and teachers who are clearly succeeding in bridging the gap and building real educational success for their communities. The clear benefits of strong sponsors, great leaders and academy freedoms are once again shown to make a real difference in lifting standards in areas of real disadvantage, often with a history of failing schools. The DFE has yet to collate all the results for academies, but early indications from some of the chains are extremely encouraging. Harriss Merton Academy improved on the five good GCSEs including English and Maths measure from 49 to 75 per cent, Arks St Albans Academy was up from 50 to 68 per cent, ULTs Lambeth Academy increased from 36 to 58 per cent and Ormistons Victory Academy in Norfolk increased from 38 to 65 per cent. And these, though spectacular improvements, are not isolated cases: improvements across academies have been recorded at rates well in excess of the national average again. These results come at a time when the academy movement is growing at a rapid rate. While there was a lot of media attention for the very welcome opening of 24 free schools in September, we also saw 45 new sponsored academies in disadvantaged areas, with a promise of 49 more early in 2012. The growth in schools converting to academies is such that the Department for Education announced that nearly 1000 schools have already converted, meaning that there are now some 1300 academies in the system. Of course, the IAA will be working hard to ensure the ethos of success that has been reflected in this years results continues to shine through as the movement continues to grow. We will respond to the worrying rise in the power of local authorities reflected in recent government speeches and the funding consultation. We will also continue to reassert the social and educational mission of academies, not least at our October conference in Nottingham when we debate the notion of Freedom for Good. I hope to see you there.

iAA strategy Day Report

IAA President Lord Adonis urged a big expansion in primary academies in his address to delegates at the IAA Strategy Day in London in June. The event also heard from Education Secretary Michael Goves key policy adviser Sam Freedman and provided delegates with the chance to air their views on topical issues of concern to academies. In his welcoming address, IAA Chair, David Wootton, said the re-invigoration of the sponsor-led academies programme with an additional 88 sponsor-led secondary academies in 2011-12 along with 200 primary-led sponsored academies - meant there could now be a holistic approach to academies going forward. Lord Adonis said there was virtually a cross-party consensus on academies as a force for radical educational change. He urged secondary academies to consider sponsoring primary academies, as part of their supply chain. Together with all-through academies, they also provided greater access to specialist teachers at Key Stage 2, enabling a broader curriculum. He also urged the government to consider introducing a Technical Baccalaureate with equal status in the league tables as the English Baccalaureate. He backed new 40% and 50% floor standards and international benchmarking. He urged academies to stay in the vanguard, even as the number of sponsor-led academies increased to 600 or 700, and to continue to push for fundamental reform. Sam Freedman argued that there was a potential synchronicity between the three main strands of the academies movement sponsor-led, converter and free schools. The sponsor academy route was the obvious way to deal with underachieving primary schools. And converter academies had many outstanding leaders with the capacity to sponsor academies, while some were sponsoring free schools. Conor Ryan gave his regular forward look and chaired a lively panel debate, titled Education Reform - The Next Steps, with panellists Sam Freedman, Peter Houghton (DFE Director of Academies Policy and School Organisation), Les Walton (Chair, Young Peoples Learning Agency), Hassan Al-Damuji (Deputy Director of the New Schools Network) and Ros McMullen (Principal, David Young Academy and former IAA Chair). The IAA were asked to take on a series of actions following Rondeval sessions on key topical issues. Please see the website for further details.

The strategy day is an annual event held for iAA members only. The date for next years event will be confirmed shortly, check out the next newsletter or the website for more information.

iAA AUTUMN CONFERENCE - We look forward to welcoming so many of you to our Autumn Conference on 6th and 7th October at National College in Nottingham Freedom for Good. As ever we look forward to having your valued contribution to what will undoubtedly be a stimulating and informative event. Please see our website for the full event programme and contact Rosemary Hunt if you require any further information.

www.iaa.uk.net

iAA Member satisfaction Questionnaire

Many thanks to those members who completed our 1st Annual Members Satisfaction Survey over the summer term. This was conducted in partnership with Kirkland Rowell as part of our commitment to continuous improvement. The results were very encouraging and will be invaluable in improving our understanding of what is important to our members and informing our future action plans. Although we are delighted to report that the majority of respondents were very satisfied with our benefits package and the services we offer, areas for improvement included greater opportunities for involvement and increased support for Chairs of Governors and Finance Directors/Business Managers. It was interesting to note from the feedback that the main reasons for joining the IAA were to be part of an academy focussed support structure as well as networking with other academic professionals at events and meetings, and having real opportunities to influence the direction of education policy. Of lesser importance were the commercial benefits we currently offer. Overall, respondents were satisfied with the information provided on the IAA website, with most accessing it either weekly or monthly, an increasing trend which we have seen reflected in regular monitoring of our website hits. Improving the website continues to be an area for development for us to ensure we continually provide up-to-date, relevant and useful information to our members. We were also delighted that most members who responded would recommend joining the IAA to other academies. We now routinely send out information packs to all new academies when they open/convert but if any of your colleagues locally require any further information regarding the Association, particularly newly converted academies, please let us know. Moving forward we intend that this questionnaire will be conducted on an annual basis to enable us to track members levels of satisfaction with our offer and to enable us to pick up suggestions for further improving our offer. Should you have any comments on the process we used which we can build into the re-run next year we would be delighted to hear from you.

Please see the website for a more detailed report of the findings.

A New Members Experience

We are a new model Academy. Glyn School is proud to have developed through various mutations since its start in 1927 to the fully comprehensive school it is today; a school of 1200 boys Our new Food Technology Centre in the main school with a 6th form of nearly 500 students which is also open to girls. Glyn is an Outstanding school (Ofsted 2009) and in 2010 was designated a National Support School. In short, it is gaining a national reputation through its examination results, sporting success and achievements in the arts. Locally the community recognises its open door policy and values the schools overt supportive and pastoral care commitment for all students irrespective of where changing fashions may at any one time put the emphasis. Why then become an Academy? Governors noted the political and abstract ideological aspects and the success of the earlier Academies. We found the freedoms inherent in becoming an Academy attractive yet a bit illusory. What cut the mustard was getting rid of the middleman and financial freedoms. Given the economic climate it is plain that schools will face swinging cuts. Academies will, however, be able to plan their own economies rather than local Authorities (themselves strapped for cash and cutting services) second guessing. We saw Academy status an opportunity to take achievements to a new and higher level. We knew that money alone would not help. The enormous achievements by the first Academies were achieved by money combined with modernisation of systems, working practices and incentives. Although we have started at a different place from the Mark 1 Academies we can learn from them and their leaders. Even in leafy Surrey we have areas of acute deprivation. The pioneers championed aspiration and assumed excellence is attainable. In other words, they believed failure is not inevitable but avoidable. If there were failure points they did not blame the background of the students or inadequacy of the parents. We are new boys on the block. We have, however, already benefitted from the IAA. It provided a half days free consultancy just what we needed, with practical advice on governance and management tools to put in place. The IAAs Strategy Day in June (free to members) was another plus. Obviously, networking was a benefit. It was so valuable to hear first hand of the IAAs agenda to promote the expanded Academy movement and how they make representations to Ministers and the Department. More importantly, their views are clearly respected. Most of us can draw on professional associations to lobby, and there is still the personal letter! It is so much more comforting to know that there is an independent and well respected body like the IAA putting reasoned arguments formulated by expert practitioners on our behalf.

Denis Ward, Chair of Governors, Glyn school, Ewell, surrey A member of the Glyn Danetree Partnership

The Academies Voice - september 2011

CONORs COMMENTARY
Conor Ryan is an independent education writer and consultant, contributing to national media and providing strategic and communications advice to education organisations including IAA. He has written and edited several books and pamphlets on education. He is a former senior education adviser to Tony Blair and David Blunkett. He also blogs regularly on education issues at www.conorfryan.blogspot.com.

What Happened To Fair Funding?

In the iconic TV series The West Wing, there is an episode about Take out the Trash Day, a Friday used by the White House to dump embarrassing news that it would rather was not too closely scrutinised. July offers ministers similar opportunities as the public and professional minds is filled with perhaps misplaced thoughts of balmy summer days. This was when the coalition released its school funding plans. And while some were persuaded that they represented a big shift towards national funding, the consultation paper suggests exactly the opposite. Local authorities are to retain a substantial say in the distribution of school funds and plans to allow academies to adopt a national formula before moving to a different formula for all schools have been shelved. The new document rightly observes that the money the Government gives to local authorities to fund schools relates not to the needs of pupils but to historical decisions about spending. But while pledging a new more transparent and fairer system, the document adds we will also enable local circumstances to be taken into account in the setting of schools and Academies budgets. In reality, there will be some shifting in resources between areas, with transitional protection for schools, and a bit less local discretion. But strong pressure from local authorities who seem more powerful than ever under the coalition has meant that many local disparities will remain. There is even a possibility that academy funding could be decided directly by councils, within national limits, rather than the new Education Funding Agency. Tony Blair wanted to move to a National Funding Formula; when he was opposed by Gordon Brown and John Prescott, the compromise of the Dedicated School Grant was born. But while around 90 per cent of schools funding is now devolved to schools, decisions on which schools get the money are made by the local authority with the schools forum (where there are, at least, some sensible suggestions to strengthen school and academy powers). As more schools have moved to academy status, the effect of this local mediation has become increasingly apparent, with LACSEG providing the new academies with net gains of several hundred thousand pounds, money they would have had through a more straightforward distribution system. When the coalition first talked of a national formula, many assumed that it would mean a straightforward national sum per pupil, with the pupil premium allowing for poverty, separate special needs funding and some extra allowance for staffing costs in London and the South East, and small rural schools. Of course, there would have been damping to avoid any school or academy having to take too big a hit in any one year. But politics has intervened. On the one hand, there is a particularly strong Local Government Association and many Tory councillors publicly critical of the widening of the academies programme, including in big authorities like Kent and Birmingham. On the other hand, ministers have (not unreasonably) been worried about the cries of cuts that would come from schools that lost out in the move to a national formula, complaints that were evident after more modest changes by Charles Clarke as Education Seecretary. Perhaps it was too much to expect that such a difficult move could take place in an era of austerity. But by failing to give a genuinely national formula a proper trial, the Government has surely missed an opportunity it will not have again. Read the consultation paper here http://bit.ly/mTDOJV. iAA will be responding, but individual academies should do so too.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the IAA and its directors.

Date for your Diary

iAA Annual Conference and Best Practice Awards, Riverside Plaza, 23rd & 24th February 2012.

The Academies Voice - september 2011

Your views
In this edition we are particularly keen to hear your views on current funding issues, together with examples of any specific problems this may have caused your academy. Please get in touch via the Executive Office. We are also keen to hear members views on topical issues and receive potential contributions to future newsletters.

stop press
The IAA are planning an expanded Best Practice awards programme for 2011/12 that will identify areas of excellence from the Academies world. The Awards will open for entries this month, find out more by attending the Autumn Conference, visiting the website or contacting the Executive office. The ceremony will take place during the February Conference.

issue sponsor feature

GL Performance is a new division of the Granada Learning Group that is dedicated to effective self-evaluation and school improvement. Our portfolio of management tools and resources is designed to help academy leadership teams maximise the impact of their school improvement, providing the systems and support to ensure that academy data and stakeholder opinion is used to its full potential. The success of academies depends on many factors, one of which is undoubtedly effective self-evaluation. While the landscape of self-evaluation is changing, the need for effective self-evaluation remains as strong as ever. After all, the quality of a schools self-evaluation evidence base will continue to come under scrutiny during inspection - not an easy task when you consider the changing perceptions of stakeholders, the documents that need updating and the measures you need to implement. To make the whole process more manageable, GL Performance offers academies the following tailored self-evaluation solutions and services: Kirkland Rowell Surveys stakeholder surveys that provide you with a clear understanding of what parents, pupils and staff really think of your academy. Schoolcentre - a tailored online solution to carry out selfevaluation, gather evidence and identify actions to monitor and drive improvement at the academy. Professional Development Services - a wide range of professional development programmes that ensure selfevaluation findings are fully embedded into ongoing school improvement processes. GO 4 Schools - a website that allows schools to bring together the most up-to-date information from their management information system, in particular pupils attainment, attendance and behaviour data, and analyse it simply and securely online.

We would be delighted to speak to you about how our portfolio can help your academy. For more information, simply call us on 0845 602 1937, email info@gl-performance. co.uk or visit www.gl-performance.co.uk.

Lead sponsors Other Partners

Finance Directors Forum (afffiliated)

Contact us
Executive Director: Caroline Whitty
0115 933 2200 07881 826 182 caroline@whittyconsulting.co.uk

Administrator: Rosemary Hunt

0115 942 1238 iaainfo@iaa.uk.net

Membership: Jane Wilkinson

01642 736 541 j.wilkinson@macmillan-academy.org.uk

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