The coalition government has invited all outstanding schools to become academies. Is it an opportunity to innovate for the good of all students? Or will it drain money from the system and leave other schools isolated? We asked ASCL members for their views.

Rolling up for academy rewards?

Humouring a collective approach

Academies were originally set up to support under-achieving schools in disadvantaged areas. This made sense. The new push for more academies is an ideologically driven attempt to usurp comprehensive principles with those of the free market. The victims will be fair admissions, funding and all the advantages that stem from collective responsibility.

The danger now is of an unseemly, self-interested scramble towards academy status by individual schools.

Perhaps, to off-set this divisiveness, we should all become academies together. As new academies we will need to re-group (I suggest borough-wide) and employ an organisation to ensure that the advantages of a collective approach are retained. We could call it the ‘Local Authority for Admissions, Responsibility and Funding’. LAARF? I nearly cried...

Peter Campling
Head of Deptford Green School, London

Appropriate accountability

I am in favour of ‘academy style freedoms’ for all, provided that appropriate accountability systems and measures are in place. If more of the money gets to schools, it will be for schools to decide how it can best be spent in the interests of their children. Get decision-making out of Whitehall and County Hall and nearer to the learner.

The argument about “good schools disappearing into the distance” is not true. Schools will still abide by admissions codes and the pupil premium will at last be a way of fairly ensuring that schools that predominantly serve an area of socio-economic disadvantage are given additional funding in perpetuity to support their additional needs.

Mike Griffiths
Head of Northampton School for Boys

Question and answer session

I am excited by the opportunity to pursue the question: Why are we doing things this way? In the past the answer has too often been because the DfE/Ofsted/LA has told us that we have to. We now have the opportunity to move to a system where what we do is dictated by the needs of our students, not by the diktat of local and national government.

In this sense I see the argument for academies as an intensely moral one, since academy status offers the freedom to develop a truly personalised curriculum that meets the needs of every student.

Peter Kent
Head of Lawrence Sheriff School, Rugby

Inverse interference as success increases

We have a LA which intervenes in inverse proportion to success – the more we succeed, the less they interfere. So I would have lots of questions about how our PFI (private finance initiative) contract could be transferred to the governors and what we would gain from additional ‘freedoms’.

However, if the government used additional funding to attract schools to become academies, it may be an opportunity which one couldn’t ignore, particularly if cuts elsewhere are severe.

David Grigg
Head of Lord Lawson of Beamish School, Gateshead

‘Outstanding’ opportunity?

In principle more autonomy for schools sounds wonderful, as does more money – intelligent accountability personified! But I worry that it will mean less cooperation between schools, no support from the LA when a school finds itself in difficulties, no more money in reality, and fewer schools sharing hard-to-place pupils. And what happens if a school loses its ‘outstanding’ rating?

Rachel Bertenshaw
Deputy head, Shavington High School, Cheshire

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