Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Heartlands School is consulting on becoming an academy
Heartlands School, which is not yet full and which was built at great public expense, is consulting on whether to leave Haringey local authority and become an independent school which answers directly to Conservative Michael Gove rather than elected local politicians and local people.
Elected local politician, Karen Alexander, who represents Harringay ward, is a local authority rep on the governing body. The decision will be made on December 4th. Karen will no doubt want to listen to local views for and against before she votes. Can we have your views Karen?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Kerry-Ann Goode on
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Is this the school that only opened a couple of years ago? The worrying thing about academies (and free schools) is that they don't have to sign up to the Government's nutrition campaign (turkey twizzlers all round!!)
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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No, Kerry-Ann, the betrayal inherent in "academisation" is rather more tragic than a diet of turkey twizzlers. A school's function and essence don't subsist mainly in its kitchen or canteen.
"Academies (so-called) are publicly funded independent schools, free from local authority control . . . "etc. Presumably among the other "freedoms" the HH website lists they forgot to mention "the freedom to unblushingly dump all that eyewash and whitewash we fooled the local community with only yesterday or the day before - the rubbish about Heartlands School being a COMMUNITY SCHOOL, whatever the f..k we thought we meant by that".
"Ah yes, there it is on the Haringey Website: "Heartlands High School is a NEW COMMUNITY SCHOOL in Haringey . . ." etc. Jeez, we must have meant something by that claim at the time, but that's ancient history, a lot of New River water has flowed under its bridges since then - all of two years ago. Let's boldly go forward to the goves of Academe - after all, it's not as if we were going to accept blood money from sponsors like Tipico or Betfred, is it??? Well, for the moment, we'll say we're not. Two years down the road, who knows?"
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Permalink Reply by Karen Alexander on
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As a governor my number one priority is making decisions that are in the very best interests of the children at Heartlands. My decision will be made once I have had a chance to consider all the evidence on both sides of for and against.
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Permalink Reply by Julie on
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As a local councillor, though, you may have to balance this against the needs of all children in Harringay and Haringey. All other LA maintained schools lose £8.50 per child for every secondary school that leaves the LA . Academy conversion takes money from other children and schools that remain community schools. There's also the question of the local authority which is being run down. If the Lib Dems get elected to run the council in 2014, there won't be a local authority left and there will be no control over schools. There's a lot to think about.
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Permalink Reply by DavidJ on
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Julie - can you explain that point about other schools losing £8-50 per head?
thanks
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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And the one about there will be no local authority left if the Lib Dems gain control of the Council ?
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Sloppy drafting, sorry. I meant that there will be nothing left by 2014 if the secondary schools go. My point to Karen is that I'm sure she would want a Lib Dem administration to have some say over schools. I find it really disappointing that the Labour council is just letting it all happen.
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Academies are given the funding that the government says is 'held back' by the authority but they have overestimated it so that each school leaving the local authority actually gets more than its share. This is a bribe.
Worse than this, the funding that the authority 'holds back' is needed for things that genuinely are central costs such as admissions, funding for Bruce Castle museum, transport costs for pupils with disabilities, residential placements for children who are not educated in mainstream schools, insurance, the legal team and some other things. (Google 'LACSEG' for a full list.) Some central costs are about risk-sharing. There is a central redundancy pot and a shared maternity pool. The local authority will reach tipping point and collapse if all the secondaries leave. Secondary schools can cope because they hire business managers and HR specialists and they have big budgets. Primaries don't want the responsibility and will struggle without a local authority.
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Thank you - so I can see why this might be attractive to school managment teams: they are perhaps getting more money than before (but this might well be a short term advantage) but they are also getting to decide how they spend that money, rather have the decisions made by the LA?
I can certainly understand the case for having having more collective resources at LA level - but also I can imagine some decisons are better made locally.
I would certainly like to try and understand more about this.
The anti-academy allliance put the case for the belief that academies are creating a funding gap here:
http://antiacademies.org.uk/2012/08/the-continuing-mystery-of-the-m...
I can't help believing that the 'funding gap' is a political decision - government can either fund schools at decent levels or not.
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In practice, schools have been able to buy most services from outside the LA for a very long time and the freedom to take decisions about a lot of things was devolved to schools from 1988. Research has shown that the main beneficiaries of academy conversion are school leaders whose pay takes a hike of up to 30% because of the additional responsibilities of purchasing services and the extra work involved.
It's mainly about politics. The anti academies people believe that schools and education services are being opened up to the market, just as hospitals and medicine have been. My personal view about Heartlands is that it's a real shame. We all campaigned against it being set up as an academy, and we won fair and square because Haringey's bid was stronger than anybody else's. The school has depended upon the LA while it was growing and for being set up in the first place. It's a beautiful public building on public land.
The teachers are emphatically against it becoming an academy but they've been told their views won't count. However, it does sound as if Karen, who has a vote on December 4th, is open to persuasion and will listen to the arguments, so there is hope.
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Why doesn't the Department for Education take all schools out of local authority jurisdiction and treat them equally. That way the administration would not depend on post code lottery and the department itself would be directly respobnsible for the league tables!
I have no children, so this is a speculative comment!
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Good on them for actually consulting.
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