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Academy schools have been around for a while now, but the coalition Government seems to have its heart set on academy status as the way forward for the state education sector, and they appear to be doing everything possible to make it happen.
Education specialist at Randall & Payne LLP, Ian Selwood investigates what this may mean for Gloucestershire schools.
Historically school budgets have been paid to the County Council Education Authority. They take a top slice of the allocation and use it to provide services to the schools. Services paid for include audit, payroll, Human Resources, school advisory services and teacher training services.
The remainder is then passed on to the schools to pay their staff and other direct costs.
Under academy status, companies limited by guarantee are formed and registered as charities to take on the running of a school or a group of schools.
Michael Gove, the education secretary seems to be enticing schools to become academies and removing barriers that might have been concerns. An example of this is the proposed change in VAT legislation to enable academies to recover their actual VAT rather than rely on a grant towards it.
There would certainly seem to be a financial advantage at this stage (though there are no guarantees for the future) because it is thought that the additional top-slice income that would have been paid to the local authority should be sufficient to replace the services they previously provided and leave surplus funds – certainly in larger schools. Schools will however need to take into account costs that they may have taken for granted previously such as certain insurances, software licences etc.
The local authority pension scheme (of which most of the school support staff are members) also concerns me as in my research of existing academies there are huge pension deficit provisions appearing in accounts.
Academy schools will enjoy freedom from local authority control. Whether this is an advantage or a disadvantage will depend upon the strength of leadership within the Trustee body of the charity and the school itself. With a greater degree of autonomy comes greater risk of error, and bear in mind that the trustee body that the charity launches with will change over time. Recruitment of sensible trustees will become of vital importance to ensure the continued wellbeing of the school.
Certain freedoms on curriculum and school term dates may also make the conversion appealing.
Of great concern to the teaching unions is the potential freedom on staff pay and conditions. To
date, teachers have been paid according to national pay scales, and academies will not be forced to recruit on this basis.
Again in my research on academy status some of the academies formed under the Labour Government are now in the hands of huge charities such as the United Learning Trust which now operates 20 academy schools following its merger with the Emmanuel Schools Foundation. These schools are across England and this forces me to pose the question are we truly seeing greater autonomy in schools or are we seeing the privatisation of schools under charities that are equivalent to big business?
Whilst there may be significant benefits of leaving local authority control for larger schools, those that remain within may see a weakened local authority less able to support their needs due to the top slice that has been taken away from them. For example the closure of the Hucclecote Centre (Teacher training centre in Gloucestershire) will change the nature of teacher training provision. The winners will be the largest schools who have the biggest budgets and hence the most to gain from the percentage top slice. It may be that the smallest schools, for example small village primary schools may eventually end up under the same control as the secondary schools that they feed.
The decision of whether to convert to academy status and whether to change alone or as a group remains a difficult one.
For more information call Ian Selwood on 01242 548600 or go to
www.randall-payne.co.uk
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