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This article is about the category of English school. For other institutions with the word "Academy" in their title, see the appropriate title or Academy (disambiguation)

Since 2000, "Academy" in England can mean a type of secondary school which is independent but publicly funded and publicly run. England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational Institution where the final stage of compulsory schooling known as Secondary education, takes An independent school is a school which is not dependent upon national or local Government for financing its operation and is instead operated by tuition charges gifts and As such, Academies are outside the control of the Local Authorities in which they are situated. Local governments are administrative offices that are smaller than a State. This type of school was known as a City Academy for the first few years but the term was changed to "Academy" by an amendment in the Education Act 2002 [1]. Law is a system of rules enforced through a set of Institutions used as an instrument to underpin civil obedience politics economics and society The Education Act 2002 is a United Kingdom Act of Parliament which received Royal Assent on 24 July 2002

City Academies were legally created by the Learning and Skills Act 2000 [2], which amended the section of the Education Act 1996 relating to City Technology Colleges [3]. The Learning and Skills Act 2000 made changes in the funding and administration of Further education, and of work-based learning (or Apprenticeships for young In England, City Technology Colleges (CTCs are independent schools which charge no fees as their recurrent costs are borne by the Department for Education and Skills They were first announced in a speech by David Blunkett, then Secretary of State for Education and Skills, in 2000 [4]. David Blunkett (born 6 June 1947 is a British Labour Party Politician and has been Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside The Secretary of State for Education and Skills was the chief minister of the Department for Education and Skills in the United Kingdom government One of the major architects of the policy was Andrew Adonis in his capacity as education advisor to the Prime Minister (now Lord Adonis, a junior Minister at the Department for Education and Skills) in the late 1990s. Andrew Adonis Baron Adonis (born 22 February 1963) is a United Kingdom Minister of State in the Department for Transport, a role This article is about the government position For other uses see Prime Minister (disambiguation. The Department for Education and Skills (DfES was a United Kingdom government department between 2001 and 2007

Academies are intended as a method of dealing with the problem of historic and entrenched failure of schools in England that do not achieve academically (or in areas of little educational aspiration). Whilst still in the fairly early stage of development (with 46 Academies open and only three for more than four years) the emerging evidence so far is positive with substantial rises in attainment results at KS3 and GCSE occurring each year. Academies are currently subject to an independent five-year evaluation by the consultancy PriceWaterhouseCoopers who have to date published three annual reports consisting of both 'hard' and 'soft' data concerning the open Academies. PricewaterhouseCoopers (or PwC is one of the world's largest Professional services firms In the Department for Education and Skill's Five Year Strategy (published in 2004) the Government committed to there being 200 Academies open or in development by 2010. [5] At September 2006, 46 academies were open with another 48 planned to open in 2007.

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Features of an Academy

Academies are established in a way that is intended to be 'creative' and 'innovative' to give them the freedoms considered necessary to deal with the long term issues they are intended to solve. Each Academy has a private sponsor who can be an individual (such as Sir David Garrard, who sponsors Business Academy Bexley) or an organisation, such as the United Learning Trust or Amey PLC. The Business Academy Bexley is a School for ages 3-19 in Erith, the London Borough of Bexley, England, operating under the Academy The United Learning Trust (ULT is an educational charity in England, created to manage a number of Academies spread across the country They are intended to bring 'qualities of success' to the school, again to help it change the long-term trend of failure of the school the Academy replaces. Academies that have already demonstrated strong success are the City Academy, Bristol and Mossbourne Academy in Hackney. The City Academy Bristol (sometimes inaccurately known as Bristol City Academy) is a non-selective academy in Bristol, England which opened

In return for an investment of 10% of the Academy's capital costs (or £2m, whichever is less), the sponsor is able to input into the process of establishing the school including its curriculum, ethos, specialism and building (if a new one is being built), and the power to appoint governors to the Academy's governing body. In formal education a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of courses and their content offered at a School or University. Ethos (ˈiːθɒs (grc ἦθος ἔθος plurals ethe (ἤθη ethea (ἤθεα is a Greek word originally meaning "accustomed In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, school governors are members of a school's Governing Body Academies typically replace an existing (predecessor) school, although some are newly established. The remainder of the capital and running costs are met by the state in the usual way for UK state schools through LA funded grants.

Academies are expected to follow a broad and balanced curriculum, but with a particular focus on one or more areas. Current specialisms include: science; arts; business and enterprise; computing; engineering; maths and computing; modern foreign languages; performing arts; sport; and technology. [6] Academies can select up to 10% of pupils by aptitude for the school's specialism in a way similar to Specialist Schools (although very few of them exercise this ability. An aptitude is an innate acquired or learned or developed component of a competency ( being the others knowledge understanding and attitude) to do a certain kind of work The specialist schools programme is a UK government initiative which encourages Secondary schools in England to specialise in certain areas of the curriculum ). Although they are independent they have to have regard to the same code of practice of admission as maintained schools, and so cannot select beyond the 10% aptitude rule. Academies are not bound to follow the National Curriculum (another freedom to innovate), although they still participate in the Key Stage 3 and GCSE exams as other English schools (which effectively means they teach a curriculum very similar to maintained schools, with small variations). The National Curriculum was introduced into England, Wales and Northern Ireland as a nationwide curriculum for primary and secondary Key Stage 3 is the legal term for the three years of schooling in maintained schools in England and Wales normally known as Year 7 Year 8 and Year 9 when The General Certificate of Secondary Education ( GCSE) is the name of an academic qualification awarded in a specified subject generally taken in a number of subjects by State school is an expression used in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom to distinguish schools provided by the government from privately

In terms of their governance, Academies are established as companies limited by guarantee with a Governing Body that acts as a Trust, the governors also acts as the Trust's Board of Directors (they are legally accountable for the operation of the Academy, but not financially so). The Trust serves as the legal entity which the school element is part of and the Governing Body is the group that actually oversees the running of the school (although the day to day management of the school is, as in most schools, conducted by the principal and their senior management team whom are appointed by the sponsor).

Opposition/criticism

Academies are considered controversial and the policy questioned from their inception, both politically and educationally. Even after several years of operation and with a number of Academies open and reporting successes there are frequently calls made in the media and education sector to either scrap the programme or radically reduce it. The Academy policy is often attacked for creating schools that are (for example) a waste of money, selective, a negative impact on the schools and communities around them, forced on parents who do not want them and a move towards privatisation of education by "the back door".

The House of Commons Education & Skills Select Committee reported in March 2005 that it would have been wiser to limit the programme to 30 or 50 academies in order to evaluate the results before expanding the programme, and that "the rapid expansion of the Academy policy comes at the expense of rigorous evaluation. The House of Commons' is the Lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords The Education & Skills Select Committee was a Committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. "[7] This view is also held by the Liberal Democrats who stated in their 2005 election manifesto that they would suspend the creation of any new Academies if they came to power (although they did not commit to abolishing the programme). The Liberal Democrats, often shortened to Lib Dems, are a liberal Political party in the United Kingdom, formed in 1988 by merging the On the other hand, David Cameron, the Conservative Party's Shadow Education Secretary at the time, backed the establishment of academies, but said that "to date [October 2005], the academy programme has not gone far enough. David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966 is a British Politician and the current leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of Her Majesty's The Conservative Party (officially the Conservative and Unionist Party) is a Political party in the United Kingdom. " [8]

The Select Committee was concerned that the good results achieved by some Academies may be because they excluded harder to teach pupils and reduced the proportion of those from deprived backgrounds, whom they were intended to serve. They noted two Middlesbrough Academies had expelled 61 pupils, compared to just 15 from all other secondary schools in the borough, and in one Academy the number of pupils entitled to free school meals had fallen to 47% compared to nearly 60% at its predecessor school. Middlesbrough ( IPA ( Received pronunciation) is a Town in the Tees Valley sub-region of the North East of England The term free school meal refers to a sum of money provided for individual pupils in schools throughout the United Kingdom to purchase a lunch time School meal, or

The programme of creating Academies has also been heavily criticised by some for handing schools to private sector entrepreneurs who in many cases have no experience of the education sector - most famously, the Evangelical Christian car dealer, Sir Peter Vardy, who has been accused of promoting the teaching of creationism alongside macroevolution in two academies he sponsors in Gateshead and Middlesbrough (the latter being The King's Academy). Sir Peter Vardy is a successful British businessman from Durham specialising in the automotive retail business "Creationism" can also refer to Creation myths in general or to a concept about the origin of the soul. Macroevolution is a scale of analysis of Evolution in separated Gene pools Macroevolutionary studies focus on change that occurs at or above the level of Species Gateshead is a town in Tyne and Wear, England. It lies on the southern bank of the River Tyne, opposite Newcastle upon Tyne. Middlesbrough ( IPA ( Received pronunciation) is a Town in the Tees Valley sub-region of the North East of England The King's Academy is a Secondary school and a City academy located in Coulby Newham in the borough of Middlesbrough and the Ceremonial county This is also linked to the wider debate in the education sector as to the benefits or otherwise of the growing role of religion in the school system being promoted by the New Labour government in general, and Tony Blair in particular, with many Academies being sponsored either by religious groups or organisations/individuals with a religious bias.

The past failings of the Unity Academy in Middlesbrough and the West London Academy in Ealing have been highlighted as indications that the programme is not wholly successful. Unity City Academy is a City academy in Middlesbrough which opened in 2002 sponsored by support services company Amey plc. Middlesbrough ( IPA ( Received pronunciation) is a Town in the Tees Valley sub-region of the North East of England Ealing is a Town in the London Borough of Ealing. It is a Suburban development situated 7 [9] However since these claims were made, both schools have started to improve after intervention from the DfES, and West London Academy's recent OFSTED inspection commented on how much the school had improved in a very short space of time. It is also widely held that sponsors "run" or control Academies, although in reality this falls to the governing body and the principal (however the majority of the members of the governing body are initially chosen by the sponsor giving the sponsor a strong role in the direction that the school takes).

The programme has further been attacked for its expense: typically it costs on average £25m to build an Academy (more in London) much of which is taken up by the costs of new building. It is frequently cited that this is more than a new school although these comparisons are often drawn between the total cost of building an Academy including start up grant and all initial outlay, and the cost of a new school building for a maintained school. That said Academies are not cheap in real terms, although the Government and sponsors maintain that it is money well spent.

In Newcastle upon Tyne the City's deprived West End is to see the replacement of West Gate Community College by Excelsior Academy. Its wealthy sponsor, Lord Irvine Laidlaw, lived as a tax exile in Monaco for almost two decades, thereby avoiding the payment of at least £50 million in UK taxes. Irvine Alan Stewart Laidlaw Baron Laidlaw (born 1943 in Keith Banffshire Scotland) is a Scottish businessman and a member of the House of Lords. He is now to receive £25 million from the Exchequer in order to fund this venture. Some observers on Tyneside have asked how many schools a UK based Laidlaw might have provided through normal payment of taxes, and are perplexed that this arrangement is not considered a national scandal.

Comparisons

The city academy programme was originally based on the programme of City Technology Colleges (CTCs) created by the Conservative government in the 1980s, which were also business-sponsored. In England, City Technology Colleges (CTCs are independent schools which charge no fees as their recurrent costs are borne by the Department for Education and Skills The Conservative Party (officially the Conservative and Unionist Party) is a Political party in the United Kingdom. One of the proposed city academies is Dixons CTC, once sponsored by the retailer Dixons. Currently the Government is encouraging CTCs to convert to Academies; several have already done so (for example, Djanogly CTC is now Djanogly City Academy). Djanogly City Academy is a City Academy Secondary school in Nottingham, UK. Academies differ from CTCs in several ways; most notably, Academies cannot select more than 10% of pupils by ability (whereas CTCs can). However, although academies are limited in the number of pupils they can select, there is no bar to them excluding as many pupils as they like: while other schools in an academy's area lose funds if they exclude a pupil, the academy keeps the funding promised for that pupil, and the excluded pupil is sent to another school which receives no extra funding for taking them. The academy can therefore 'select' after admission by finding excuses to exclude poorly performing pupils, and so artificially boost their league table scores. Also, Academies are designed specifically to be part of the overall education provision in the areas in which they are built, and have consistently been stated as part of the wider strategy on education; CTCs were not built with local provision or need in mind and were mostly "parachuted" into areas with little thought as to the effect it would have on other schools.

In some respects comparisons may be drawn between city academies and US charter schools. Charter schools are elementary or secondary schools in the United States that receive public money but

External links

See also

In England, City Technology Colleges (CTCs are independent schools which charge no fees as their recurrent costs are borne by the Department for Education and Skills
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