I mean, hardly a surprise that unaccountable pseudo-charities result in embezzlement? At least Local Authority control meant there was some transparency with this.
The ‘leader’ of my academy , sat behind two locked doors away from the school. As the school descended into Lord of the Flies and some of the best teachers left he told us in a meeting that a high staff turnover was a good thing and the teachers that had left were the rubbish ones. His shared wisdom was that if you found kids fighting eachother you should stand there and tell them what they are doing …. ” You are fighting….”.
If only there was some sort of local, I don’t know, “authority” that could be responsible for running a few schools each. That way you wouldn’t need to DfE to administer all of them directly, and this sort of nonsense wouldn’t happen.
Thanks Michael Gove. You stole our education system and sold it to just the right types eh.
This is a combination of a shitty New Labour policy, a poorly regulated second tier of state education and a Tory laissez faire attitude to public money. If pay of council leaders goes above the PMs Tories spit feathers but when the same public money is dished out to CEOs they drag their heels. These CEOs and their “independent” boards justify awarding themselves above inflation pay whilst their staff, paid out of the same public money, have ther pay frozen or suffer real term cuts. Its a scandal
It is also fake jobs. In my wife’s trust they just employed someone on £50k for a diversity officer.
Now. Not only do the schools get told who is coming from the county but in her school there is 6 in the office. Probably the same over the trust. Surely someone allready employed could do it?
Wasn’t this literally the point of academies – to relinquish control and let schools run themselves?
I mean, it was always a terrible idea, but this pay issue isn’t an accidental side effect of the academy system; it is part of the design.
MP’s groaning about salaries? In other news a pot called the kettle black
The drive to make every public service resemble the corporate private sector is a cancer on UK society.
A classic example of neoliberals criticising neoliberals. They didn’t “fail to control” the salaries, the salaries are deliberately high to reward profits. As with everything else the Tories touch, education has been turned into a racket.
Pretty sure this is one of the many criticisms of academies we had when the tories first announced them that have come true
Has England basically privatised its schools with this academy stuff? it’s always so weird hearing about CEO’s of schools etc on the news.
My dad was a care taker of a school that became an academy towards the tail one of his career. It was a shit school before, but afterwards it was a shit school run like a business.
He had no autonomy when it came to making decisions he knew were needed – apparently 30 years of experience in the school wasn’t trustworthy enough. They cut corners on everything. Tried to make him paint the entire external building over the summer holidays using just a mobile scaffold cage thing. When he asked for the relevant training, he was denied because it got too much. He was the only member of staff that had a minibus licence, so when they stopped paying him over time “because his contract didn’t stipulate he got it” he started doing his set hours, the kids missed out because no one was qualified to drive them places – did they train anyone up? Of course not, cos money.
When he retired, his number two fell of the scaffolding cage thing, because he was painting the external walls without having the proper training.
Worst thing to ever happen to that school, was it became an academy.
How did we get to a set up where one guy gets a stupendous, obscene salary and everyone else gets a sub par wage.
Who are these people? Who are the people who employ them and grant these outrageous salaries? It must surely be bleeding obvious that the teachers deserve the money and the schools need repairs so why does half the budget go to one person?
Weren’t senior leadership of academies able to receive large salaries by design?
I guess now academy administration has been extended beyond Conservatives’ mates, the wrong kind of people are now receiving excessive salaries.
academy schools were designed to get the private sector into education, gove made it clear that profiting from your own business and being part of a chain was perfectly acceptable.
the crazy top wages might get the headlines, but the real nasty stuff is in the entire system.
education now prioritises whats best for the chain, not whats best for the overall group of children.
as with everything in our society, as long as its only the fringes who are affected, people wont care. but heres a true story about a kid dumped out of all local academy schools, aged 9. one year later he was on a county lines drug run.
the more we go US style where we increase deprivation for the minority, the rest will pay the price with increased crime and social issues that you cant gate yourself away from.
16 comments
I mean, hardly a surprise that unaccountable pseudo-charities result in embezzlement? At least Local Authority control meant there was some transparency with this.
The ‘leader’ of my academy , sat behind two locked doors away from the school. As the school descended into Lord of the Flies and some of the best teachers left he told us in a meeting that a high staff turnover was a good thing and the teachers that had left were the rubbish ones. His shared wisdom was that if you found kids fighting eachother you should stand there and tell them what they are doing …. ” You are fighting….”.
If only there was some sort of local, I don’t know, “authority” that could be responsible for running a few schools each. That way you wouldn’t need to DfE to administer all of them directly, and this sort of nonsense wouldn’t happen.
Thanks Michael Gove. You stole our education system and sold it to just the right types eh.
This is a combination of a shitty New Labour policy, a poorly regulated second tier of state education and a Tory laissez faire attitude to public money. If pay of council leaders goes above the PMs Tories spit feathers but when the same public money is dished out to CEOs they drag their heels. These CEOs and their “independent” boards justify awarding themselves above inflation pay whilst their staff, paid out of the same public money, have ther pay frozen or suffer real term cuts. Its a scandal
It is also fake jobs. In my wife’s trust they just employed someone on £50k for a diversity officer.
Now. Not only do the schools get told who is coming from the county but in her school there is 6 in the office. Probably the same over the trust. Surely someone allready employed could do it?
Wasn’t this literally the point of academies – to relinquish control and let schools run themselves?
I mean, it was always a terrible idea, but this pay issue isn’t an accidental side effect of the academy system; it is part of the design.
MP’s groaning about salaries? In other news a pot called the kettle black
The drive to make every public service resemble the corporate private sector is a cancer on UK society.
A classic example of neoliberals criticising neoliberals. They didn’t “fail to control” the salaries, the salaries are deliberately high to reward profits. As with everything else the Tories touch, education has been turned into a racket.
Pretty sure this is one of the many criticisms of academies we had when the tories first announced them that have come true
Has England basically privatised its schools with this academy stuff? it’s always so weird hearing about CEO’s of schools etc on the news.
My dad was a care taker of a school that became an academy towards the tail one of his career. It was a shit school before, but afterwards it was a shit school run like a business.
He had no autonomy when it came to making decisions he knew were needed – apparently 30 years of experience in the school wasn’t trustworthy enough. They cut corners on everything. Tried to make him paint the entire external building over the summer holidays using just a mobile scaffold cage thing. When he asked for the relevant training, he was denied because it got too much. He was the only member of staff that had a minibus licence, so when they stopped paying him over time “because his contract didn’t stipulate he got it” he started doing his set hours, the kids missed out because no one was qualified to drive them places – did they train anyone up? Of course not, cos money.
When he retired, his number two fell of the scaffolding cage thing, because he was painting the external walls without having the proper training.
Worst thing to ever happen to that school, was it became an academy.
How did we get to a set up where one guy gets a stupendous, obscene salary and everyone else gets a sub par wage.
Who are these people? Who are the people who employ them and grant these outrageous salaries? It must surely be bleeding obvious that the teachers deserve the money and the schools need repairs so why does half the budget go to one person?
Weren’t senior leadership of academies able to receive large salaries by design?
I guess now academy administration has been extended beyond Conservatives’ mates, the wrong kind of people are now receiving excessive salaries.
academy schools were designed to get the private sector into education, gove made it clear that profiting from your own business and being part of a chain was perfectly acceptable.
the crazy top wages might get the headlines, but the real nasty stuff is in the entire system.
education now prioritises whats best for the chain, not whats best for the overall group of children.
as with everything in our society, as long as its only the fringes who are affected, people wont care. but heres a true story about a kid dumped out of all local academy schools, aged 9. one year later he was on a county lines drug run.
the more we go US style where we increase deprivation for the minority, the rest will pay the price with increased crime and social issues that you cant gate yourself away from.