A couple of people have emailed me to ask my opinion of Academies and the governments project to increase the number of them. I'm probably going to upset loads of people with my response. I don't give a S**T one way or the other. There are several reasons for my complete lack of interest.
My nephew who currently is living with us went to Edgware Academy. I've not actually asked him, but I don't think the experience has harmed him. Maybe what did harm him was being in the playground when one of his mates was stabbed to death, but that isn't really anything to do with the fact that the school was an academy, that was the world we live in. That is something I care about.
Being a registered thicko, I read all of the reams of articles, blogs etc and think to myself "I really don't know what the hell this is all about". Two of the Schools my kids attend will become academies if they get their way - St Michaels and Mill Hill County. Does this mean my kids will get better grades. Does it mean they will be more rounded individuals. Does it mean that when they look back on their schooldays, they will have more positive feelings than they would otherwise?
Now I'm not personally too interested in giving my kids a huge advantage at the expense of everyone elses. The big problem is that if there is an underclass which is disaffected, then even if my kids are all geniuses, they will live in a City full of social problems. The Headteachers of both St Michaels and Mill Hill County miss no chance to tell us how marvellous their schools already are, so I don't understand the need to change their status. I'm not convinced that it isn't really just an excuse for a bit of headmastorial willy waving "Look how big my one is". No one at the school has asked me if I support it or not, even though I guess I'm a stakeholder. No one has said "we must do this because it will be good for these reasons". I'm naturally suspicious of anything I don't understand, which I'm a stakeholder in and which I'm being excluded from the decision making process.
But having said all that, raising the average grades of the Pupils of St Michaels at A Level from 100% to, um, er , 100% is a strange priority. Tomorrow a blog will magically appear about the Sound Skool project which I helped put together. This is a music project for kids aged 14-18 not in education or training. These are the kids who would be the priority in any civilised society. A couple of weeks ago I got my childrens reports. They were all good and I was rightly proud. Will it surprise you to hear, will you think I'm a bad father if I say that actually in some ways I was far prouder of the Sound Skool kids who spent 10 weeks at the studio on the Sound Skool courses? It's not that I'm not proud of my kids, but they really have ha every opportunity. Most of the Sound Skool kids have had none.
We did a workshop for some naughty kids and we had a huge posse of "support workers" appear with them. I wasn't around at the time. My staff told me they were shocked at what happened. Not with the kids but with the support workers. It wasn't what they did or didn't do, but their attitude. When the naughty boys returned home, we had a call from one of the mums. Her son was saying that the workshop was the best thing he'd ever done and he wanted to enroll on sound skool. We also got a call from one of the supervisors of the "support workers". They had complained that we'd no provided an adequate area for them to sit down and we should have provided free refreshments for them.
We replied that we hadn't been informed that nine support workers would be attending and we hadn't been asked to provide an area for them to relax. We'd assumed that they would accompany the boys into the studio. As it was they didn't because it was too noisy. As to the free refreshments, we'd only been asked to provide this for the boys. We then asked whether the boys had enjoyed it. The response "They seemed to".
I was left with the distinct impression that it was all about the "support workers". I suspect that the academies is "all about the schools" not the pupils. But to be quite honest, until someone can sum up in two or three sentences, why acadmies are good, bad or indifferent for the general population of Barnet, quite frankly, I don't give a damn about the whole issue. No one has asked me and no one cares about my opinion on it
3 comments:
I'll stand correction, but I think I heard on Today that there's a government Academies Website.
Go to the front page, and just clicking to go to the next, more detailed, page means that Michael Gove (thirteen-and-three-quarters, and still in short trousers) has been able to say:
"An interest in becoming an
academy school has been
expressed".
He has therefore over one thousand
"expressions of interest",
presumably all just by a mouse-click like that.
One of the big issues with academies is that they do not have to follow all the same rules and procedures before expelling a child. Children who are permanently excluded often spend long periods out of education, making it all the more difficult for them to settle. I don't think schools should be able to write off kids too easily, even if they are trouble(d).
@ Jaybird - on exclusion, they all do that too easily. easier for them than modifying the curriculum or giving children 1-2-1 tuition. I think the academy route would free schools to provide for all children despite their needs, so exclusions would become less common. I think even primaries should be on academy status. Head teachers have such good ideas about providing for all pupils but LEAs frustrate them and delay things with too much red tape. I know from experience of teaching SEN children - LEAs make the assessment procedure so tortuous and long winded. the poor parents end up under so much pressure and the poor child risks exclusion anyway as facilities haven't been set up to help him/her. Academies are better for SEN and all mainstream children.
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