Academy Schools & Selective Admissions: The Background

English: Grace Academy. The day before the schools first intake of pupils (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A report released in the New Year by the Academies Commission has proposed that some of the new generation of academy schools maybe using de facto selection methods to affect their respective intakes to the favour of their results and performance. There is no doubt that there have been some great success stories amongst the raft of new schools that have converted to academy status in the last few years but is there a question over how these results have been obtained and whether they are a true reflection of performance? The first instalment of this article recaps what academy schools are and when selective admissions are permitted.

What are Academy Schools?
Academy Schools were introduced as City Academies by the Labour government in 2000 with the aim of transforming the fortunes of failing city secondary schools in England by providing them with the freedoms of self governance together with the ability to team with partners from the public and private sectors who have experiences of delivering success in their respective fields. In July 2010, the current coalition government embraced and grew the academy project passing the Academies Act passed shortly after the start of its term. The act opened up and promoted the possibility for all schools to apply for academy status and as a result there are now 2,619 currently operating in England.

At the heart of their definition is the idea that academies are schools which continue to receive funding from central government - the same funding per head as a traditional state school would receive via the local education authority (LEA) - but they are free from the control of said local education authorities. Therefore, they have the freedom to determine how the school is run to a significant extent; namely, how those funds are allocated on school resources (including staff pay), the length of the school day and the dates of school terms, uniforms, how the school is structured and, most importantly, what and how they teach as they are not required to follow the national curriculum fully. However, despite being afforded many of the freedoms of privately run schools, academies are still defined as state schools due to their funding and as such are subject to Ofsted inspections and are prohibited from charging fees.

The Rules Concerning Selection
Schools that convert to academy status can continue to use selection processes such as the 11 plus if they did so before their conversion. Many Grammar schools for example that were previously run under the grant maintained scheme, which also gave them autonomy from local government control but access to central government funding, found a natural fit with the academy structure and so made the conversion. These schools exist on the principle of providing tailored education to the highest achievers irrespective of their social background and so relied on using the 11 plus to select these children and can continue to do so following their switch to academies.

State schools that convert to academy status and that do/did not implement any selection criteria as LEA controlled schools, cannot subsequently become selective in their admission however, because this would undermine one of their stated aims, to drive up academic standards throughout their local communities.

The forthcoming instalment of this article will look more closely at the Academies Commission’s concerns regarding selective admissions.

© Stuart Mitchell 2013
If you want to find more information about applying to become an academy then you can get advice from solicitors specialising in Education Law.

The Government’s Adoption Map for the UK

Children of the United Kingdom's Children's Migrant Programme (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The UK government recently released a map of the country’s local authorities, colour coded to indicate the number of children in each authority that are eligible for, and in need of, adoption. The map demonstrates the areas of the country that are therefore struggling to recruit enough adoptive parents to meet demand and the government hopes that this will encourage more to come forward. Consequently it is perhaps an opportune time to take a quick look at what adoption in the UK actually entails and why the government deems it necessary to take this course of action.

What is Adoption?
As mentioned, these latest developments concern the number of children that are in need of adoption. This means children that are in need of parents who will be required to assume full parental rights over them and to take this responsibility on as a lifetime commitment. A child who is adopted becomes a fully integrated and permanent member of that family and in the eyes of the law hold the same status, rights and protection as a child would by birth. Indeed, at the point a child is adopted, the birth/original parents relinquish their parental relationship and effectively cease to be the child’s parents in any legal context.

The concept of adoption is notably distinct from that of fostering where a foster parent cares for a child who is need of a secure home on a temporary basis. Although children may be in foster care for varying periods of time, the intention with fostering is always to return the child to their parent’s home as soon as possible, if possible. The birth/original parent remains the child’s legal parent and the foster parent becomes a temporary guardian.

Barriers to Adoption
The permanency of adoption introduces a number of factors which affect the ability to find suitable adoptive parents with which to place children. The fact that the prospective adopters must be willing themselves to make this lifetime commitment, and take on both the financial and emotional challenges that that brings, will limit the number of parents coming forward to adopt in the first place. Importantly, however, the stakes are also increased in regard to the welfare of the child, which is the ultimate concern with adoption. As a consequence there is a need for greater emphasis to be placed on making sure the parents and children are suitable matches and will subsequently be happy as a family. This is, of course, a concern in any scenario when placing a child with carers, but has even greater importance with adoption. It is the job of adoption agencies to ensure that the adoptive parents have come to terms with the commitment and that the child will be happy and secure with suitable parents for the rest of their lives.

With the higher stakes, there is a risk that the processes involved in qualifying for adoption and then placing individual children can be exhaustive and create too many administrative, practical and emotional obstacles; dissuading parents from entering the process, and preventing children from exiting care and finding settled families.

Upcoming Changes
As the government’s new map helps to demonstrate, there are currently more children waiting to be adopted than prospective adopters and so the challenge facing the government and agencies is to appeal to more parents/families to come forward, to enter the process, whilst ensuring that the necessary safeguards are in place to protect both the child and the adopters wellbeing.

To this end the government are looking towards a few initiatives to raise the profile of the adoption issues in the UK and make the process easier for parents to enter the pool of prospective adopters. The map is one stage in this. Parents can now see the scale of the shortfall in adoptive families in their local area by seeing the number of children who are eligible for adoption but still awaiting a suitable family. Hopefully, this may encourage those who may have been under an illusion that the chances of being successful in their applications was remote because of the competition they may have faced.

The map however is part of a wider initiative which also involves a new adoption hotline funded by the Department for Education but run by charities and staffed by people with first hand experience of the adoption process. The hotline aims to make it easier for prospective adoptive parents to access the information they need as well as to navigate their way through their applications. In addition, the government is planning to launch a new website, “Gateway for Adoption” later in the year which will aim to be just that and put parents into contact with the relevant agencies as they embark on their adoption journeys.

For those looking for legal advice in regard to the adoption process and other childcare related matters you can click here.

An Introduction to Quantitative Easing - When It’s Used

The Bank of England in Threadneedle Street, London. Deutsch: Sitz der Bank von England in der Londoner Threadneedle Street. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since the dawn of the financial crisis in 2008 - a crisis that continues to effect the health of our economy, and therefore the prosperity of each one of us today - there has been much discussion as to the best ways to minimise government debt whilst, at the same time, encouraging as much growth in the economy as possible. One tactic that has been used in a few countries including the UK and US is that of quantitative easing.

Typical Monetary Policy
A central bank’s primary and most effective tool when influencing or controlling the speed at which the economy is growing is the base interest rate. In the UK the central bank, the Bank of England (BoE), defines this rate as the rate at which they will lend to other banks. In short, by lowering this base rate, other banks are able to borrow at a lower rate and consequently offer lower interest rates in turn on both loans and savings accounts to their customers. These customers therefore have access to more affordable (due to the lower loan repayments) money with which to grow their businesses or to spend on goods and services. Meanwhile, the lower interest rates on savings accounts reduce these potential returns and so there are less incentives for customers to deposit their money as savings. All these factors make investment opportunities more attractive and spending more likely; thus increasing the flow of money through the economy.

When Quantitative Easing Is Used
This system works well as long as the base rate has room to be lowered. However, when it is too low to be reduced any further the central bank must look to other solutions to encourage further spending and investment. What’s more, when a base rate is lowered in response to a lack of liquidity and growth in the economy, there is a point at which banks can become more reluctant to lend. This is caused by the twin effects of lower yields for the bank on their loans, due to the tendency for the interest rates across the market to be lower, and the increased uncertainty surrounding whether individuals and businesses will be able to make their repayments. All of which reduces the money reaching invdividual’s and businesses and subsequently their spend and investment on goods and services within the economy, slowing down growth.

When the central bank encounters a situation such as this, as has been the case in a number of economies in the last few years, they can utilise a secondary tactic of quantitative easing. The basic principle behind quantitative easing is to introduce more money (i.e., more liquidity) into the economy to spur spending and growth, by using newly created money (colloquially referred to as ‘newly printed’ although in truth it is all done electronically). This new money is injected by the central bank when they purchase government bonds (i.e., government debt) from private companies, as explained further in the second installment of this article, with the aim of there being a trickle down effect throughout economic markets to other businesses and individuals.


Managing Growth
The level of spending in the economy can be intimated by the inflation rate - the percentage rate at which the value of goods and services are changing, usually increasing, in price. A high inflation rate reflects the fact that there is high demand for these goods and services within the economy, although the higher it becomes, the greater the chances of a rebound effect that then reduces demand and slows spending - high inflation means high prices and these prices can reduce the affordability of goods and/or money will start to lose its value (particularly in the case of hyperinflation such as was seen in Germany in the inter-war period). Therefore, countries tend to aim towards a stable rate of inflation which reflects growth with a sustainable momentum.

In the UK, a committee within the Bank of England called the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has the remit of attempting to maintain a stable rate of inflation at 2%. To that end the committee is responsible for a number of monetary policies. including setting the base interest rate and overseeing the BoE’s quantitative easing policy.

The second installment of this article looks at how quantitative works and achieves this aim.

To find out more about investing in global economies you can visit Stocks and Shares ISA Plan.

The Profile of 2013's Free Schools

The UK Government has recently announced that 102 prospective free schools have been given the go-ahead for 2013. It displays an increase in the adoption of this particular government initiative and so it is perhaps an appropriate time to look at what this means for the landscape of the English schools system.

Now in its third year, the initiative is certainly becoming more popular. The approval system had given permission to 65 schools last year, of which 50 will open this September (2012). The first batch of pioneers in September 2011 , however, only consisted of 24.

Who is Setting Them Up?
Of the 102 new free schools eligible for 2013 there is a mixture as to who is/will be behind their establishment. They are all being set up by either those in the education profession already or local communities but the full break down is as follows:

• 59: Existing education professionals; including teachers, headteachers, educational organisations, existing schools and universities, of which:
• 5 are private schools converting to free schools to access public funding
• 2 are backed by universities
• 43: Local community groups; including charities and, parent groups

What Are They?
The majority of free schools being approved will be defined as mainstream schools, however there are a number of specialist schools being set up alongside these, as would be expected due to the remit of free schools to satisfy particular local education needs. The schools can be defined as:

• 85 mainstream schools, of which,
• 40 are primary
• 28 are secondary
• 10 are all through (primary and secondary)
• 5 are for 16-19 year olds
• 1 is for 14-19 year olds
• 1 is for 5-7 year olds (i.e., reception school)
• 12 alternative provision schools for those who are unable to attend mainstream schools
• 5 special schools, of which,
• 2 are all through
• 1 is primary
• 1 is secondary
• 1 is for 14-19 year olds

Perhaps most controversially for the opponents of free schools in particular:

• 33 are religious schools, of which,
• 20 are faith schools which wil be permitted a degree of selectivity in their admissions based upon religious beliefs

The relatively high proportion of religious schools in the mix can be seen to bear out the concerns that religious groups will be more able and more likely to set up free schools. The belief is that this results from the fact that they are likely to already have access to the infrastructure as well as the organisational structure they need to get them up and running, in contrast to private individuals attempting to form organisations themselves from scratch.

Where Are They?
The largest concentration of schools will be in London (34, 1 in 3), followed by the South East and North West. Although one of their aims is to improve the education possibilities in particularly deprived areas, the North East only has 3 opening despite its higher than average levels of depravity. Interestingly there are pockets of the country where there are no new free schools opening at all such as in: the southern counties of Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset & Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight); the central midlands (around Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire etc); South Yorkshire down into Derbyshire; North Yorkshires across into Cumbria.

The full breakdown by region is:

• 34 (33%) - London
• 16 (16%) - South East
• 12 (12%) - North West
• 10 (10%) - East of England
• 9 (9%) - South West
• 7 (7%) - West Midlands
• 7 (7%) - Yorkshire and Humber
• 4 (4%) - East Midlands
• 3 (3%) - North East

The DfE’s own research suggests that the Independence awarded to Academy schools in general is yielding dividends with their results seeming to outstrip the rest of the sector whilst the success of their US counterparts in New York also bodes well. However time will tell whether these burgeoning free schools can continue that success and fulfil their remit to plug the specific social and educational gaps in their local areas.

© Stuart Mitchell 2012
If you want to find out more about applying to become a free school or converting to academy status then visit Education Law Solicitors.