Mossbourne Community Academy, the controversial successor to Hackney Downs School. (October 2005)

In England an Academy is a recently created type of secondary school. Academies are independent schools although they are publicly funded and run, and as such are outside the control of the Local Authorities in which they are situated. 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. Image File history File links Mossbourne_community_academy_1. ... Image File history File links Mossbourne_community_academy_1. ... Hackney Downs from the centre of the Downs looking northeast. ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population – Total (mid-2004) – Total (2001 Census) – Density Ranked 1st UK 50. ... Secondary school may refer to Secondary school in the United Kingdom, is the general term for the schools for children between the ages of eleven and eighteen in most areas (a few areas have schools for 13-18 year olds instead, and these are called upper schools). ... 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 perhaps the investment yield of an endowment. ... Amendment has at least two meanings: An amendment is a formal alteration to any official document or record, typically with the aim of improving it. ...

City Academies were created by the Education Act 1996 and first announced as a reality in a speech by David Blunkett, then Secretary of State for Education and Skills, in 2000. 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. 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). However, as the programme is in a fairly early stage of development with less than 30 Academies open (and for less than three years) there is little solid evidence one way or the other as to whether they are effective in this. Academies are currently subject to an independent five-year evaluation by the consultancy PriceWaterhouseCoopers who have to date published two annual reports consisting of both 'hard' and 'soft' data concerning the open Academies. 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.[1] David Blunkett The Right Honourable David Blunkett (born June 6, 1947) is a British Labour Party politician and has been Member of Parliament for Sheffield Brightside since 1987. ... The Secretary of State for Education and Skills is the chief minister of the Department for Education and Skills in the United Kingdom government. ... This article is about the year 2000. ... Andrew Adonis, Baron Adonis (born c. ... Sir Robert Walpole, the first Prime Minister A prime minister may be either: chief or leading member of the cabinet of the top-level government in a country having a parliamentary system of government; or the official, in countries with a semi-presidential system of government, appointed to manage the... Department for Education and Skills (DfES) is a department in the United Kingdom government created in 2001. ... PricewaterhouseCoopers (or PwC) is the worlds largest professional services firm. ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

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 Bexley City Academy) or an organisation such as the United Learning Trust or Amey PLC. 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

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 education, a curriculum (plural curricula) is the set of courses and their contents offered by an institution such as a school or university. ... Ethos (ήθος) is a Greek word originally meaning the place of living that can be translated into English in different ways. ... In the United Kingdom, School Governors are the largest volunteer force in the country and have an important part to play in raising school standards through their three key roles of setting strategic direction, ensuring accountability and monitoring and evaluating school performance (http://www. ... A governing body is a corporate form of management. ...

Academies typically replace an existing (predecessor) school, or 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 can select up to 10% of pupils by aptitude in a way similar to Specialist Schools (although very few of them exercise this ability). 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. As of September 2005, 27 city academies are already open. 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 computer program aptitude is a front-end to APT. It displays a list of software packages and allows the user to interactively pick packages to install or remove. ... The National Curriculum was introduced into England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as a nationwide curriculum for primary and secondary state schools following the Education Reform Act 1988. ... Key Stage 3 sets the educational knowledge expected of a child aged between 11-14 in the United Kingdom National Curriculum Key stage 3 strategy and development of pupils mathematical language It is debatable whether the faculty of mathematics is an independent one. ... GCSE is an acronym that can refer to: General Certificate of Secondary Education global common subexpression elimination - an optimisation technique used by some compilers This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... In Britain, the term maintained school is short for grant-maintained, meaning that its funding comes from the local education authority. ...

In terms of their governance, Academies established as charitable trusts with a Governing Body that also acts as the Trust's Board of Directors (they are legally accountable for the operation of the Academy, but not financially so). It has been suggested that Board of Trustees be merged into this article or section. ...

Opposition/criticism

The British House of Commons Education 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."[2]. This view is also held by the Liberal Democrat Party 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 commmit to abolishing the programme). The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and is now the dominant branch of Parliament. ... 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The programme of creating city academies has been controversial and heavily criticised for handing schools built at great expense to private sector entrepreneurs who in many cases have no experience of the education sector - most notoriously, the Evangelical Christian car dealer, Sir Peter Vardy, who has been accused of pushing the teaching of creationism in two academies he sponsors in Gateshead and Middlesbrough (the latter being the King's Academy). The failings of the Unity Academy in Middlesbrough and the West London Academy in Ealing have also been highlighted as indications that the programme is not wholly successful.[3] The programme has also 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 to help those that the Academies serve (namely disadvantaged and chronically low performing children in deprived areas). This article is about the Abrahamic belief; creationism can also refer to origin beliefs in general or, centuries earlier, to an alternative to traducianism. ... Map sources for Gateshead at grid reference NZ2460 Gateshead Millennium Bridge Gateshead is a town in Tyne and Wear in north-east England on the south side of the River Tyne opposite Newcastle upon Tyne which covers the North Bank. ... Map sources for Middlesbrough at grid reference NZ5118 Middlesbrough is a town, borough and district in North-East England, with a resident population in 2001 of 134,855. ... Map sources for Middlesbrough at grid reference NZ5118 Middlesbrough is a town, borough and district in North-East England, with a resident population in 2001 of 134,855. ... Ealing is a place in the London Borough of Ealing. ...

Comparisons

The city academy programme was originally based on the programme of City Technology Colleges (CTCs) created by the Conservative Party in the 1980s, which were also business sponsored. One of the proposed city academies is Dixons CTC, once sponsored by the retailer Dixons. Currently the Government is encouraging CTCs to convert into Academies which several of them have already done (Djanogly CTC is now Djanogly City Academy). Academies differ from CTCs in several ways, most notably Academies cannot select pupils (which CTCs can). Also Academies are designed specifically to be part of the overall education provision in the areas 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 England, City Technology Colleges (CTCs) are independent schools which charge no fees as their recurrent costs are paid by the DfES and businesses within the private sector. ... The Conservative Party is the largest political party on the right-of-centre in the United Kingdom. ... Dixons Group plc is a United Kingdom-based consumer electronics retailer. ...

In some respects comparisons may be drawn between city academies and US charter schools. In the United States, a charter school is a public school that is created via a legal charter. ...

External links

• Rebecca Smithers, The Guardian, July 6, 2005, Hedge fund charity plans city academies: Network of schools for children from poor backgrounds, based on US model, will start with £14m proposal for seven in London"
• Roy Hattersley, The Guardian, 6 June 2005, "And now, over to our sponsors"
• Polly Curtis, The Guardian, 1 November 2004, "Academies 'gagging' teachers"
• Francis Beckett, The New Statesman, September 20, 2004, "How car dealers can run state schools
• Rebecca Smithers, The Guardian, 31 August 2004, "Flagship schools attacked over costs"
• The DfES Academies Website