E-Act chain loses control of 10 academy schools

[unixman_again]

BBC News - E-Act chain loses control of 10 academy schools

 

I found this quite shocking news as my last job was with an E-Act academy and it was all fine.

[elsiegee40]

Yours may have been, but Ofsted inspected a number of academies in this chain in a very short period of time... probably because Mr Gove told Mr Wilshaw that it wasn't appropriate to inspect academy trusts, only the academies themselves... and found things consistently not right.

 

Whether pulling those academies out of that chain will help the young people studying at them, or whether this is a political move, I would rather not speculate.

[LosOjos]

I get the impression that they have been doing something a bit off with their finances but that the education hasn't been called in to question, which gives weight to the HT quoted in the article that "the problem is with the sponsor, not the school."

 

It raises an interesting question though, with 60%+ schools now Academies in this country, what happens when a sponsor gets caught doing something unscrupulous, as big corp. sometimes do? It'll tarnish the [potentially] good name of the schools they sponsor rather unfairly.

[elsiegee40]

Mr Wilshaw of Ofsted has been trying to get to inspect Academy Trusts in the same way that they inspect Local Authorities, but Mr Gove refused. Maybe he'll get his way now.

[synaesthesia]

I don't think I could care less about the chains, but blimey do I feel sorry for the schools involved. OK it may be management at the particular schools that are just as much to blame as E-Act (of course I'm sure we're not being told the full story) but many of us know what it's like going to an academy. How much worse has it got to be to have to find a new sponsor and all the related stuff involved? It's bad enough for the IT folks involved and the licensing, but all the financial guff, legal guff etc. The business managers at those places must be either excreting bricks about the idea or looking for a new job.

[elsiegee40]

I don't think I could care less about the chains, but blimey do I feel sorry for the schools involved. OK it may be management at the particular schools that are just as much to blame as E-Act (of course I'm sure we're not being told the full story) but many of us know what it's like going to an academy. How much worse has it got to be to have to find a new sponsor and all the related stuff involved? It's bad enough for the IT folks involved and the licensing, but all the financial guff, legal guff etc. The business managers at those places must be either excreting bricks about the idea or looking for a new job.

 

I imagine the business management, etc in these big academy chains is centralised. The schools are being taken out of the chain, so there are central IT and finance staff, etc at the chain who are likely to face redundancy with a smaller number of schools to administer.

 

The schools themselves probably won't have any of these staff, certainly at management level, dedicated to their school and are literally at the mercy of their new sponsor. All the school staff will have to go through TUPE again which is very unsettling.