Posts Tagged ‘funding’
How Labour could respond to the Coalition’s education reforms
Some months ago I was asked to deliver a lecture to Labour Party members, and others, in David Cameron’s constituency of West Oxfordshire about how Labour should respond to the Coalition’s education reforms. The lecture was part of a series and in memory of local activist, campaigner and educationalist Brian Hodgson. It was chaired by […]
Academy ‘spin’ not quite as it seems
So the Tory government’s academy movement has apparently reached a ‘’tipping point’. Well not quite. Unlike many friends and colleagues, I thought last week’s announcement about the apparently extraordinary number of academies opened since the General Election smacked more of mild desperation rather that triumph. Isn’t it only six months since there were going to […]
A national funding formula would make academy status irrelevent for many schools
Originally posted on the Local Schools Network Michael Gove must be getting desperate. His latest letter to chairs of governors practically begs schools, whether good bad or indifferent, to consider academy status. Presumably this is because so few of the initial 1900 potential converts finally came good. But why would we now? If every school […]
When it comes to school funding, read the small print not the spin
Five months ago I wrote this column for Guardian Education and was chided by various friends and colleagues for being cynical about the overblown promise of a pupil premium and the effect it might have on schools in a risky, fluid school funding environment. Having followed the various, often conflicting versions of where school budgets […]
Unaccountable bureaucrats to run new academies and ‘free’ schools
There has been a lot of loose talk in the media about academies receiving their funding directly from the Secretary of State for Education. Though this was true under the last government it is no longer the case. That responsibility has now been transferred the Young People’s Learning Agency for England, otherwise known as the […]
Policy on the back of an envelope
Three cheers for Mary Gibson, the Islington head whose robust defence of her school’s community school status made headlines in her local paper earlier this month. She has taught in the North London borough of Islington for 40 years, runs an outstanding school, was awarded an MBE recently and is defiant: ’This school will become […]
How much extra money will academies really get?
There is currently considerable confusion in relation to the funding that schools that become academies under the current bill before parliament will receive compared to what they currently receive. This confusion seems partly the result of comparisons with what happened when the Conservatives were last in power and Grant-Maintained schools were considerably advantaged both in […]
