The Academy Expansion Programme And The Newly Implemented Free School Programme - Essay Example

? The Academy Expansion Programme And The Newly Implemented "Free School "Programme There is a close link between the location where a child lives and the probability of that particular child attaining certain examination grades. The kind of life that people live in the Britain can be distinguished based on the quality of housing available in a particular habitable geographical area. Inner city area is one of such inhabitable geographical areas in British. Inner city areas are characterized by lower rent and rates owing to old housing and social amenities and as such low-income people mostly inhabit them. For this reason, Inner city schools in major British cities are renowned for harboring a large pool of poverty-stricken children. It is common knowledge that school in British cities that experience overt poverty and social deprivation are likely to register significant lower examination success rates compared to schools in wealthy areas. Various government institutions and other related non-government often gather statistical data regarding nature schools in different cities. The kind of data gathered often include pupil teacher ratios, exclusions, number of pupils eligible for free school meals, unauthorized absenteeism and average class size and the figures normally vary in different social contexts. For instance, data from British inner city school often record a high percentage of the number of pupils eligible for free school meals (Lupton, R 2004: 16). Schools in inner city areas have been found to be one of the most challenging areas for teachers. A number of reasons have been indentified to explain why schools in British inner cities are challenging and records below average examination pass rate. According to the Chief Inspector for Schools (Ofsted) David Bell issues for inner city schools revolves around high pupils’ turnover, lack of adequate investment, difficulty in recruiting staff and low confidence from the immediate community. For instance, majority of teachers work in inner cities for limited period and then leave for less difficult working environments. There is no doubt that the trend of poor academic performance recorded year after year in disadvantaged areas particularly inner city areas has been a major policy issue in England for policy makers. For instance by the late 1990 at least 500 schools in both British and Wales inner cities were considered failing schools owing to their inability to meet acceptable nation academic performance. Data gathered in 2001 indicated that paltry a fifth of pupils in disadvantaged areas on average could achieve five GCSE passes at grades A*-C compared with 50% nationally. In fact schools are currently being forced to turn into academies as in the cases of Downhills Primary in Tottenham, north London, and in the London borough of Haringey (Harrison, 2012). Poor performance is a long established patter in inner city schools taking into consideration that poverty presents a barrier to children education because they are caught up in a major interplay between learning and dealing with the tough social and economic problems. There is a strong link between education attainment and poverty in the sense that a more socially disadvantaged the community served by a school the higher the probability of the school appearing to be underperformer. Another major problem with inner city schools is the fact they perform poorly in inspections by OFSTED (Lupton, R 2004: 1). An OFSTED inspection, which is often carried out at least once every four years on all school and those with unsatisfactory performance are described as having “a serious weakness”. Such schools with unsatisfactory performance are often put into a special measure to assess if they are “failing or are likely to fail in providing pupils with acceptable standards of education.” Despite strong evidence, demonstrate that broader social policies will contribute significantly in reducing the attainment gap between the pupils in inner cities and high-end areas compared to educational interventions; education policy has an important role to play (Lupton, R 2004: 2). For a number of years successive British governments with a broad framework of standardized have come up with compensatory programs to assist pupils coming from less disadvantaged areas. Key among the programs takes into consideration welfare interventions such as family support services or on site pupils, free school meals as well as additional educational programs, which constitute reading recovery programs and homework clubs. Schools in disadvantaged areas have also witnessed increase in their learning resources in the past few years through area targeted programs such as Excellence in Cities (EiC) and Education Action Zones (EAZs) including initiatives such as and the ‘extended schools’ program and Pupil Learning Credits (Lupton, R 2004: 1). Despite the fact that these initiatives resulted to a positive impact on the GCSE grade attainment levels, these initiatives are not universally accepted to be sufficient, as something extra is required to ensure that attainment levels are increased up to expected levels. In other words, the baseline is to address the issue of low academic achievement in inner city. According to Shimmon (2010) Academy expansion program and free school program was thought of by the Blair administration as the solemn solution to upgrade the attainment of good grades and reduce the number of failing schools in deprived areas in 2001. It is noteworthy that the idea of reinforcing academic performance of disadvantages schools did not start with Blair’s Administration but as early as 1980s when the Thatcher administration sponsored a school renewal and improvement program in inner city areas referred to as City Technology Colleges (“Michael Gove”, 2012). Since then successive governments have had good intentions of bridging the attainment gap in inner city schools, which have been perceived to be left behind in their quality of education, management, climate and efficiency. The term academy was born in early 2000 to refer to schools that received public funding and independent from the control of the local authority. Expansion of Academies in the United Kingdom and the introduction of free school program were realized through the Academies Act 2010. This was a legislative Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and it was meant to allow all publicly funded schools to change their status to academies. Though the idea of Academies program was brought into lime light several decades ago, Free school program was made possible through the Academies act as an extension of Academies program which would allow for direct and autonomous management and administration of schools. The government wanted to engage the community-parents, entrepreneurs, religious groups, as well as education charities in the operations of the school directly. Since the enactment of the Academies Act the number of schools that has converted and those, willing to convert to public school has increased significantly. For instance, by 2010 there were less than 250 academies in Britain. However, with the Academies Act 2010 in place for two years the number of schools that have changed their status to academies have increased tenfold to at least 2000. This is clear indication that the idea of expanding academies and introduction of free school program in Britain was a long awaited. The Academies program in Britain were invented with aim of attaining three key objectives. Key among the objective was to give academies an opportunity not only to terminate a trend of underachievement in disadvantaged areas but also to reduce low academics aspirations in such areas of deprivation (Trust, 2008: 5). For instance a study conducted in inner city and middle income areas indicated that majority of students from inner cities did not have high hopes proceeding with their education to college or university and vice versa among the students from middle income families (Strand & Winston, 2008:8). Another objective of Academies program is to make this institution an integral part of the local strategies to enlarge choices and diversity in education while the final objective will be to make academies more inclusive, mixed ability schools (Trust , 2008: 5). The ability of the Academies program to increase attainment in British inner city schools will be gauged based on the achievement of these objectives. This is because all these objectives of the academies program are aimed at breaking the series of low academic performance in disadvantaged areas. There is no doubt that academies form the best avenue for educational attainment of children in British inner cities. The independence of these learning institutions and the role of the sponsors are certainly important elements that bring new light to the academies compared to state schools (Ryan & Astle, 2008: P24). The independence of the academies gives these learning institutions an opportunity to innovate and raise standards. If there is an important attribute that inner city schools needs innovative and high standards to help the students achieve better grades. With the independence guaranteed to the academies through the governors and sponsors puts the inner city schools in a good position to come up with innovative curriculum. It is noteworthy that the sponsors, governors and the experts are allowed by the Academies Act 2010 to develop a wider innovative curriculum which may include sports and the sports despite the fact that they are expected to pay more emphasis to the national curriculum, core subjects which include Maths, English, Science and ICT. The in inner city schools are certainly going to take advantage of the provision that allows academies to develop a wider curriculum to develop a wider curriculum will certainly help in developing a creative literacy and numeracy programs that will assists underachievers improve their performance mandatory GCSE exams. Before the expansion of the Academies the local authority tend to influence school curriculums and as such locking out majority of slow learning students especially those that use English as their second language from competing fairly with their native peers. This is now a bygone case as academies can now come with specialized curriculums just like independent schools. Studies indicate that the number of English speaking students have reduced significantly in inner cities over the resent past especially in London schools (Clark, 2009). This means that there is large pool of students in inner city schools that require help with English and this is the perfect opportunity for academies to assist these students. According to Clark (2009) it is even difficult to understand who the immigrant children in the inner London are supposed to integrate with taking into consideration that they overwhelmingly exceed the natives. Academies in the UK are schools that receive funds from the public and as well as outside sponsors (Machin &Vernoit 2010: 19). They are under the management of individuals, without the control of the local authority. According to the government, they refer to it as independent state funded schools. Individuals run academies though they receive maintenance from the state in England. In England, the coalition government has been encouraging all schools to convert to academies. The coalition government also encourages parents to unite and develop or set up their own schools, called “free schools.” The idea of this change came because of The Academies Bill. The Academies Bill is raised a debate which is currently discussed in the House of Commons. The academies, compared to other school that are under the control of the local authority, have more freedom in terms of conditions, teachers pay, finances and curriculum (Shimmon, 2010). According to most academy founders, the main reason to establish academies is to improve learning standards and replace schools that offer low quality education to the students. The failing schools mainly underperform due to the poor maintenance offered by the local authority because of various problems facing the authority. Initially, academies were known as City Academies. The word city was dropped in order to encourage the expansion of the academies in both the inner cities and the struggling rural areas. Academies operate differently compared to other schools. For instance, they can decide what to teach; they can also agree or decide to offer bonuses to teachers whose subjects perform well. Additionally, academies can give awards to their staffs and increase their head teacher’s earnings considering their hard work unlike other schools under the control of the local authority. Moreover, academies are free to choose their own subjects because they are not under the local authority management. They also have the freedom to extend or shorten the duration of the term or day. In general, academies carry out their activities in their own way without intrusion of other people, organization or state. This makes them very different from the mainstream schools and as such important tools of improving attainment in inner city schools. In England, the academies already exist and there are more than 200 of them (“Q&A: Academies”, 2012). The Labour government mainly launched them in order to cover up for the failing schools and the schools in remote areas. Academies received funds straight from the central government. They also received support from the sponsors who were raising over $2m. The sponsors include church groups, private schools, charitable trusts and other businesses. The development of new academies is a way through which the government would help in improving education. I believe that the expansion of academies programme is a good way of improving educational achievement and success of children in various parts of the world more so in United Kingdom inner cities owing to the direct financial support that these schools will receive and thus unlock them from the tradition of strenuous financial resources. Additionally the academies will assist the schools in inner cities improve their achievement based on the fact that the academies establishment enable students to change their environment thus improving their way of thinking. This would definitely assist them to engage more in learning. According to research, academies improve so fast unlike other school. For instance, in 2008, the figures confirmed that academies were highly developing than the state schools. Additionally, in 2007, the PricewaterhouseCoopers report stated that achievement in academies was developing so fast. The students were also doing much better than other schools (“Department for Education”, 2011). However, the performance of the children in academies alarmed others since they claimed that it was hard to tell whether the success of the academies was due to the freedom given to them or the extra cash offered to them. The performance of academies is good compared to other schools. This proves that the expansion of the academies would definitely improve education in both inner cities as well as in the rural or remote areas where schools are disadvantaged. The government has visions for the academies being that they present their capability of improving educational attainment of children (Strand & Winston, 2008: 9). The coalition government encourages all schools including primary schools and special schools to change to academies. This change will appear as part of education revolution in the coalition’s view. The government argued that it would be best if the schools change to academies including those in the inner cities because this would enable them to have the freedom and flexibility required to maintain high standards of education. The government claim that it focus on raising standards for all students and reduce the gap the least and most advantaged. Michael Gove, an Education Secretary views academies as a means of cutting bureaucracy and providing control to schools. In case the wish of the Coalition government comes true, thousands of schools will come out of control of the local authority. Therefore, the local authority will have a reduced work of controlling several schools. The academy sponsors work very hard in order to succeed in providing quality education in most tough communities in the country and in the inner cities. Their vision is very clear since they aim at making a difference in the state of schools. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that the main reason of encouraging the academies programme is to improve education in order to get better results. He also said that they are looking forward to giving the head teachers, governors, and teachers more authority to control their schools in their own chosen way. This will be a major boost in the operation of inner city schools in Britain which have been ignored in the wake dreaded poverty and underachievement. He also claimed that this act is the best because the teachers are capable of deciding what kind of education, teaching style and subjects to give their pupils. They also know and can detect whether their decision will benefit their students or not. He therefore declared that the academies programme is the only way of improving education. He additionally said that because various schools would convert to academies, they would be able to access extra freedom, empowerment and responsibility offered in academies. The Education Secretary Michael Gove also talks much about the academies and their importance in improving educational attainment. For instance, Gove gave examples of individuals who have succeeded in securing results for scholars at their schools. He also explained that the individuals are trying to expand their reach and gather more students. According to Gove, the individuals managed to use the academy powers to capture scholars from the weaker schools and assist in raising standards in failing schools in most parts of the community. Gove explained that the best method of recovering schools is by acquiring the best professionals who have done a good job (“Michael Gove”, 2012). Therefore, he said they have declared that schools should apply for the status of academy in order to allow them benefit greatly. According to the above statements made by David Cameron and Michael Gove, I can say that academies programme is very important for schools in the inner cities and rural schools. Academies have been proved to offer quality education that improves standards of education and this helps students to succeed in attaining educational standards. Besides the academy programme, free schools programme also helps to improve the educational standards for children. Free schools programme is a programme found after academies programme. Free schools are state funded schools that are set to help children in the local areas and to improve education in their communities. A good school is capable of transforming life of children and assist them achieve great things that they might never have thought of (Machin &Vernoit 2010: 20). Free school programme enables children to achieve their dreams successfully. Furthermore, free education makes it easier for the focussed and more talented teachers, parents, education experts and charities to start schools and concentrate on real demand within a given community. Free schools are indeed important in improving the performance of children in schools in various parts of the country both rural and inner city in British. I therefore believe that free schools and academies programmes aid in developing educational attainment since they perform almost same functions of helping children to attain better results in their schoolwork. Michael Gove, the Secretary of State, encouraged people who were concerned and had a lot of interest in setting up free schools. He said that free schools programme is a good idea that helps in improving education more so in rural areas as well as inner cities. Due to the motivation of groups who come together to develop free schools, children have the opportunity of learning and achieving their goals successfully. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, said that the free school programme is a wise way through which the government was going to improve education and referred to it as a great success. Shimmon (2010) asserts that Groups such as teachers, charities, parents, voluntary and religious groups establish free schools. The established and funding of free schools is carried out the same way as the academies. The Free schools programme interests many people because it is a solution to poor education quality in the inner cities of British by promoting participation of the entire community especially those who understand the challenges of their schools and students alike. The programme also offers teachers and parents an opportunity to begin the creation of schools in case they do not like the state school’s performance in a given locality. Education provider is an organization brought by a group that sets a free school so that it can manage the daily activities of the free school without expecting any profits. The groups who set up free schools have authority over their established school because they decide on how to spend their budgets and schedule their own teaching hours, curriculum and term times (“Academies”, 2004). This act is a great advantage to the schools found in the inner cities and in the remote areas where schools face many challenges due to bad environments and poor structure. The decision of how to run the school enables the managers to reflect on the disadvantages that are faced in the areas thus making a decision that will not affect the children in any way. A report about free schools and academies programmes stated that these programmes mainly benefit children coming from rich and highly established backgrounds than the children from poor backgrounds. However, according to my opinion, I consider this report irrelevant. I believe that these two programmes are of great importance to children coming from the inner cities and rural areas where education programme are seen to be very poor. I have this vision in the perspective that when these programmes establish in such areas, children or students will have access to high quality education thus enabling them to achieve their dreams successfully. Additionally, it will give the teachers the freedom of scheduling their programmes according to the condition of the surrounding around them. This will enable learning to run smoothly because students will be familiar with their surrounding and the programmes will help them improve their understanding. It has been found that various private schools sponsor or partner academies in order to encourage their establishment and improve education. Some private day schools in Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol are struggling to become academies. This will enable the children to get excellent education provided without fees in worst areas that require good schools to improve the performance of the schools in the areas such as in the British inner cities. In other words Academies and free schools help in driving up or improving educational attainment of pupils in the inner cities in UK through private school sponsorship and or partnering. Various researches try to consider the performance of academies with other schools that plan to become academies (“Academies”, 2004). The comparison of the performance was to be done before and after the schools became academies. The results of the comparison reveal that the schools performed very poorly before transforming to academies. However, after the transformation of the schools, the performance improved. This is a clear prove that academies are good at improving educational attainment of children, especially those in inner cities where education quality is very poor. In summary there has been transformation of schools to academies and formation of free schools in various schools in UK especially in British. The academies and free schools programmes launching are meant to overcome or combat the disadvantages in schools with poor learning programmes and facilities in inner cities of British and other countries as well. This objective is fulfilled because the programmes tend to perform the work meant for them by improving education in most the worst parts of the cities and rural areas thus encouraging good standards. According to the above explanations, I can declare that free schools and academies programmes help in improving the educational attainment of children. I can say that academies programmes and free school programmes are the key elements that the government plans to use in reforming the school system in the inner cities and local and remote areas. 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Lupton, R 2004, Scholls in disadvantaged Areas: Recognizing Context and raising Quality, Accessed December 6, 2012 from< http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/dps/case/cp/CASEpaper76.pdf > Machin, S &Vernoit, J 2010, Academy schools who benefits, Accessed December 6, 2012 from < http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/cp325.pdf > Michael Gove speech on academies, Department of Education, Accessed December 6, 2012 from < http://www.education.gov.uk/inthenews/speeches/a00201425/michael-gove-speech-on-academies > Michael Gove: Academy school critics 'happy with failure', BBC News, Accessed December 6, 2012 from < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16409940> Q&A: Academies and free schools , BBC News, Accessed December 6, 2012 from < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10161371 > Ryan, C & Astle, J 2008, Academies and the future of state education, Accessed December 6, 2012 from Shimmon, K 2010,What is an academy? The Gurdian, Accessed December 6, 2012 from < http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/may/26/what-is-an-academy> Strand, S & Winston, J 2008, Educational aspirations in inner city schools, Educational Studies 34 (4): Pp 2-26 Accessed December 6, 2012 from < http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/cedar/staff/stevestrand/strandwinston_inpress.pdf > Trust, S 2008, The Academies programme: Progress, problems and possibilities, Read More