Primary schools increasingly likely to join drive to become academies
Village primary school joins converts
PRIMARY SCHOOLS across Yorkshire are embracing the academy programme and converting at a higher rate than ever, The Yorkshire Post can reveal. The number of primaries becoming academies in the region has almost doubled in the last three years. And more and more primary schools at the heart of the community are choosing to become part of academy chains.
Yesterday The Yorkshire Post revealed that one third of schools in Yorkshire are no longer controlled by local authorities – showing the startling growth of the programme in the county.
And new research shows that there are now 488 primary schools that have converted to academies in the region, with 254 opening in the last three years.
Primary schools have been eligible to become academies since 2010.
Campaigning parent Nicky Rhodes, who is fighting to save the tiny Horton-in-Ribblesdale School in the Yorkshire Dale, has called it a “safety mechanism” for smaller primary schools.
She said: “I don’t know if it’s the best option educationally, but it is certainly one that means you are less under the gaze of the local authority.”
SHARING RESOURCES and having more financial control are just some of the benefits of becoming part of an academy chain, according to the headteacher of an ‘outstanding’ village primary school in North Yorkshire.
Hampsthwaite Church of England Primary School, near Harrogate, is now part of the Yorkshire Causeway School Trust (YCST), a group of five high-performing primary schools and one secondary school – St Aidan’s High School.
Since 2010 primary schools have been eligible to become academies, with some voluntarily converting and others being forced to do so because of poor Ofsted inspection reports.
Many top performing primaries are now choosing to become part of a multi-academy trust (MAT), with the conversion rate of primaries now overtaking secondaries for the first time, according to the National Foundation for Educational Research.
Headteacher at Hampsthwaite School Andrew Phoenix said: “The local authority will always have its role of operating and being available for schools, for example child protection, results and standards.
“It will have an overseeing role but in terms of our day-to-day support, it will now be coming from the trust rather than North Yorkshire.”
Mr Phoenix admitted the school was initially reluctant to join a multi-academy trust and it took several years before the right opportunity presented itself.
He said: “The context for us was the shifting educational landscape and academy conversion was something we kept looking at.
“Initially we decided against it because three years ago the local authority was providing every opportunity we needed and we didn’t want to academise on our own.
“When YCST was established there was an innovation there in the way schools could work together in the group.”
Mr Phoenix said there was a pressure on academy chains to take on schools that had particular needs, with some expanding dramatically in a short space of time. He said: “YCST is a small group of schools which are able to support each other very closely and all share a similar ethos without becoming another local authority.”
The headteacher said it could feel quite a “lone situation” in the future if schools don’t have close collaborations they can work within. However, being part of a group of schools meant that they were on hand to support each other.
He said: “We can share skills and expertise in a very supportive way.”
With funding for multi-academy trusts coming directly from the Government, Mr Phoenix said there was the benefit of added financial security.
He explained: “The funds don’t depend on how they charge at a local authority level. Local authorities have always had the ability to take an element of every school fund and use it as a central resource. But we have much more say in where our funding can go than we did before.
“There are quite a number of schools converting to academies. Failing or small schools have a very heavy subsidy from North Yorkshire in order to keep them running. This has to come from other schools’ allocation of funding. Therefore there’s a risk in the future that funding could be very tight for local authority-run schools.”
Mr Phoenix pointed out that although some academy trusts may have chosen a more corporate branded route, YCST doesn’t work in the same way.
“The decisions are very much made at school level, rather than from the top,” he said.
We can share skills and expertise in a very supportive way. Headteacher at Hampsthwaite School Andrew Phoenix