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Introduction Literature Review
The Claimed Benefits of Academies
As of June 2015 4,676 academies are open in England. Previously there has been a lot of media on academies and the impact they have on educational establishments. As a group we looked into research from Ofsted, education journals and online publications. An array of claims were seen throughout these resources, the majority claiming that becoming an academy is beneficial; ‘academies have used their freedoms to innovate and improve’ (Cirin, 2014, p.6). We gained valuable information from published articles that have made claims that grades have improved from the greater autonomy; ‘academies perform better than community schools and that is the result of their greater autonomy’ (Educational Review, 2011). We investigated the main statements claiming that becoming an academy is beneficial to a school.
By becoming an academy educational establishments can benefit from greater autonomy regarding changes to the curriculum and developing specific subjects. A Survey conducted in May 2013 of 700 academies shows that three quarters have made changes to or plan to change the curriculum they offer. It also showed that ‘almost 1 in 10 academies have already changes their term dates, or plans to, to suit the needs of their parents and pupils’ (Gov.uk, 2014). One respondent said “All are clear that we are autonomous within the legal parameters and this is now a locally owned and run school for local families… For the first time, we now have 100% focus on our children; it is liberating”. This shows academies are actively changing in order to focus purely on the children and improve their establishment. Although some people may assume performance pay will encourage teachers to perform to a higher standard this doesn’t seem to be the case in all establishments, according to (Education Business, 2015) performance related pay is a distraction and will not have a big enough impact on students learning. We can see academies are using there autonomy however it can take a long time for the implementations to be put in place and each individual academy may use their autonomy in different ways. The impact of changing to an academy will not be the same for each establishment - it is up to the employees to utilize their capabilities. We sent our survey out to a range of schools, with the following aims and objectives...
Key findings from the research that we wished to investigate:
84% of academies are now linking pay to performance (OFSTED, 2014) Those open as academies longer are more likely to have hired a non QTS teacher (OFSTED, 2014) Attitudes towards recruiting staff without qualified teacher status (HATCHER, 2011) Autonomy is seen as a big advantage of becoming an academy (WATERMAN, 2014)
Emails Sent: 150
Academies will be allowed to employ people with no formal teaching qualifications’ The Education Secretary Michael Gove announced in 2012 that academies are now allowed to hire teachers without qualified teacher status (QTS) (GUARDIAN, 2012). This included employing teachers as scientists, engineers, musicians and linguists. David Wootton who is chair of the Independent Academies Association, said it would help academies to bring about "creative and innovative solutions to improve lessons". Many people were sceptical about this decision…
Salary Comparisons Comparing the link between the changes to the curriculum and salaries increasing Comparing the link between changing the curriculum and salaries increasing - the performance pay influences in academies. Assumptions
We decided to investigate the views of having the QTS status and used a range of questions to analyse the employees opinions. Out of the total respondents, 88% answered our question about their current status, whether they are working towards a qualification or not – only 5% (4.5%) said that they were.
We can assume that as academies are now implementing changes to curriculums to improve core subjects results should improve, therefore pay should as well.
A chi-squared test was conducted to determine if a significant difference between changes to the curriculum and teachers’ salaries. A null hypothesis of no significant difference and an alternative hypothesis of a significant difference were established, and a 95% confidence level was assumed.
Further in our survey we introduced ‘survey banks’ giving the responder the chance to show how much they agree on a scale, from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree about the following statement: Q13.3 ‘Teachers need to be qualified to teacher standard (QTS)’
The difference was not significant: x²(2) = 0.767, p (0.767)>0.05. Therefore the null hypothesis is accepted and we can assume that there is not a significant difference between the changes to the curriculum and salaries increasing since the establishment changed to an academy. One-tailed test.
Ofsted, the inspectors and regulators of education claim that 84% of academies are now linking their pay to the performance of their staff (OFSTED, 2014). Since 2012, the organisation has adapted their inspection handbook; The new provisions and reports clearly highlight that Ofsted… ‘require schools to make radical changes to their existing pay and performance management policies in order to avoid unfavourable inspection outcomes.’
Response Rate: 16.7%
(NASUWT, 2012) The purpose of the modifications is to give educators more incentives to improve their teaching methods and raise the standards of their delivery. A report published in 2011 claimed that ‘40% of lessons overall were not good enough. And yet everyone is getting a pay rise.’ (FURNESS, 2012).
Aim:
Q13.1: ‘Salaries have increased since changing to an academy’.
To recognise the attitudes and opinions of those who work in academies in Hampshire, West Sussex and Surrey; also gaining a view from the employees with regards to working conditions and the changes to their freedoms since changing to an academy.
The majority (88%) of respondents either strongly disagreed, or disagreed that no improvements have been seen. This raises questions as to why,.
Qualitative data provided more insights ‘same salary structure as we did prior to becoming an academy’, ‘the academy is following the same pay scales as the state school’, ‘salary structure remains the same’. This indicates that some schools may not be meeting the regulations set out in the Ofsted Handbook.
To establish the attitudes towards autonomy within academies from the perspective of teachers at different levels within the organisation. To recognise views from employees about the concept of academies and how they feel about them now that they are part of them. To review the changes that academies have made to students grades.
Only a small percentage agreed that QTS was not a requirement, showing the desire for professionals.
Academies may be more inclined to recruit staff who are not qualified due to shortages in specific subject areas. Additionally, they may look to recruit non-QTS teachers for part time roles as we would assume those who are fully qualified would like to earn as much as they can as they have invested in their education to get that specific job role. We asked the respondents to indicate how many pupils are currently at their school:
Have the grades changed since becoming an academy? Researching into Academies we looked into whether the grades would change or not. From research we found that a lot of academies grades have improved since being taken over. The guardian provided statistics of the 2011 GCSE results. The stats show that academies grades have improved. GCSE results ‘have risen by 3.1% in sponsored academies, against a national rise for state schools of 0.6%’ (GUARDIAN , 2013). On top of this a group called Ark have also recognised an increase in GCSEs grades. ‘ARK academies GCSE results achieved an average rise of 11 percentage points over the 2010 results.’ (ARK, 2012)
To analyse the difference of state school budgets compared to academies.
Changes to Bureaucracy
Crosstab Showing Grade Changes V Location
Machin and Wilson (Educational Review, 2011) claim that academies perform better due to their advantage of having greater autonomy meaning that teachers can make decisions about how to educate the students and by means they feel will be most effective. We used the statement to assess the opinions of a range of employees across the three counties. Analysing the responses we can see that the majority 60% either strongly disagreed or disagreed that performance of their academy was not due to greater autonomy. However, this is not conclusive enough to say that academies don’t perform better, the respondents may feel that there is another underlying factor that is the reason for the establishments performance; or a collective range of reasons. When making assumptions about the impact of the establishments autonomy we must consider the following factors:
Schools with more students may have difficultly recruiting enough full time staff to cover the demand, therefore part time roles may be created, possibly recruiting non-QTS teachers.
Additional Investigations
From the survey we can see that they are either not changing significantly or teachers are not being made aware of the changes. Therefore, this may indicate that Ofsted cannot manage the extra academies, let alone what they have already got (WATERMAN, 2014, p. 18).
Autonomy in Academies—‘Academies perform better than community schools and that is the result of their greater autonomy’
We can assume that the schools with less than 200 pupils may not have such a high turnover of staff as apposed to the 80% with over 401. Therefore they will not be as accepting of non QTS teachers.
Changes to Grades So Far
Freedoms Available to Academies
After reviewing academies freedoms we expected to see less bureaucracy and directives, as a result of not having to report to local authorities. We included the following statement Q11.6: ‘I’d hope for less bureaucracy and directives, but this has sadly not happened’
We looked into whether the grades have changed for schools in different locations, West Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire. Each of the three locations highest response was for ‘no’ change since becoming an academy and only 20% said that they have improved. However, this may be due to not becoming an academy until recently see Q10.
Our results indicate that grades may not have significantly changed due to the short time most of the establishments have been an academy.
57% of respondents have been an academy for over 3 years, however only 20% indicated that grades have changed since becoming an academy. This highlights that it is not an immediate method to improve results.
The time spent as an academy, question 10 (above), 43% of the newly established academies may still be making strategic decisions
This provided some results that highlighted disagreement with Michael Gove’s announcement. Clearly the opinions of those working in the establishments differ.
Staff to Student Ratio
It was concerning to obtain information that was negative towards Ofsted’s regulations, some respondents highlighted that ‘pay rises to next level take longer to be approved in academy’ and ‘money has stayed the same even though I have more responsibilities’. Therefore this suggests that the regulations may not be influencing better performing teachers – which may be having an impact on student achievement.
Objectives:
Following the survey bank, we asked for a small sentence to explain the reason for the choices made. Interestingly, 60% of the responses given explained that they felt it is essential to ensure the staff are capable of delivering an expected standard of education; ‘By opening the door to non QTS there is the danger that low quality educators are able to access the field and deliver poor opportunities to pupils’. On the alternative end, some said that ‘Life skills are equally valuable’. One cannot assume that the QTS will enable guaranteed good opportunities for the pupils as one respondent highlighted ‘We have some qualified teachers who are not capable of keeping control of their class’.
Changes to Pay – Have they changed?
Respondents Profiles
Responses: 25
Qualified Teacher Standard
As we can see from the bar chart, we were incorrect about academies. One main reason they do not have less is because the schools previously were converted establishments that were failing ‘The policy, which originated under Labour, aimed to improve struggling schools, primarily in deprived areas’ (BBC, 2015)
for following years. The qualifications and experiences of the current teachers, QTS (see questions 13.3) may influence whether the teachers want to continue
Difficulties with Increasing Salaries Ofsted introducing performance related pay can be seen as a great way of influencing higher involvement and teaching standards. However, academies don’t have an unlimited budget to constantly raise salaries if teachers performance increases.
the previous lesson plans. Whereas unqualified teachers may not feel confident enough in there decisions to utilise the autono my fully. The age of the respondents, if they feel that their methods have worked for their previous years they may feel no need to make changes.
Freedom to Change Schooling Hours—’Changes to schooling hours enables greater focus from pupils’ Academies are permitted to change the hours of their typical teaching day. During the start of 2010 a large percentage of academies had increased the length of the school day. They also have the freedom to change the term times, meaning they can extend the amount of weeks pupils have to attend. However, this is not often implemented
Fig 1. (Ofsted, 2014)
‘Academy chain follows national terms and conditions so, we are limited by the chain in what is allowed. Changing school terms is too complex for a single school to do, as staff have children in different schools and variability in holidays will not work practically in a small area.’ (Ofsted, 2014).
Ofsted’s report gives clear insight into how teachers view the freedoms available to their school; however, when taking into consideration our respondents answers about changes in grades there is conflicting evidence about improved attainment. When analysing our qualitative results, we obtained information from one school that said ‘History went up by 22% last year, but has no link to the school being an academy’, in addition to this, another response was ‘we thought they would go up but they haven’t. We still have really poor results’.
Alternatively, those who have been employed for less than one year will have to have their per formance recorded and monitored for a certain period of time before any significant reward can be made.
We would assume that the employees who have been employed between two and six years to see the biggest changes in salaries.
It was not surprising to see that no respondents strongly agreed with the statement, therefore indicating that they felt there is no difference between the schools (shown by the 44% who had no opinion) or they believe academies have more funding available to them.
A range of data that was collected suggests that budgets have had minimal changes, therefore academies may not be able to implement all the changes they desire, holding back any changes on pupils results.
As we can see from the pie chart over half of the respondents are aged over 50 years of age. From this we can assume that because of their age they will not need as much staff development due to previous working experiences.
There was no significant changes to grades for any of the three counties, in some cases they had seen a drop in grades—this may be due to changing the curriculum in a non-beneficial way.
Academies may not have a clear idea of how to implement staff development strategies with the need freedoms, most establishments are still only a few into the change. Therefore they may be making small changes over the years and monitoring progress slower, as apposed to making big changes and developing staff in certain ways that may not be beneficial in the long run.
Over time, the academies may be able to implement strategies and a more beneficial structure to schooling hours which will result in higher grades and scores for the Ofsted inspections.
We can also recognise the funding may be restricting how much development is undertaken, some employees may expect an increase in salary if they are higher skilled than others.
Comparing State schools budget and staff development
Areas of Development/References What we would change next time
We can assume that as state schools have a restricted budget staff development will not be as accessible . A chi-squared test was conducted to determine if a significant difference between funding being accessible in state schools and accessibility of staff development in state schools.. A null hypothesis of no significant difference and an alternative hypothesis of a significant difference were established, and a 95% confidence level was assumed.
A large proportion of the respondents (41.7%) agreed that the statement reflected how they felt. This indicates they feel less pressure from local authorities and this may influence higher staff retention in teaching roles in coming years. Less than one quarter of respondents (20.8%) strongly disagreed or disagreed, this may be due to them feeling performance may drop from the greater autonomy creating potential for abuse or lapse in standards.
The difference was not significant: x²(2) = 0.172, p (0.172)>0.05. Therefore the null hypothesis is accepted and we can assume that there is not a significant difference between funding accessibility and staff development accessibility within state schools.
As we expected a small percentage would disagree with this statement. How ever, we were surprised to see that 16.7% strongly disagreed. We assume that respondents who do not work directly with children, such as admin and technicians may not be as passionate about students as others.
One-tailed test.
Focus groups- After conducting our online survey we concluded that this isn’t the most effective way to get responses as we only got a 16.7% response rate. In future we would look into arranging focus groups as the candidates may give better responses and more teachers would take part as they feel their views are being heard. Face to Face- By going to the schools and asking teachers face to face this would give a better response rate. By doing this we could also ask different questions depending on their responses. Changing the questions- Make more use of the NOIR questions to enable greater opportunities for analysis.
Expand on a range of the questions, asking for the respondents to explain and give numerical data.
Assumptions
Q12.2: ‘We’re here for children, not to please the local authorities or play their political games’.
The highest percentage indicated that most employees may not be seeing the benefits of the partnerships. Therefore communication may only be present with head teachers or larger stakeholders.
The overall response was negative towards employing teachers without QTS status however Ofsted suggest that academies will employ more teachers without QTS over time (Ofsted, 2014). However, we collected data that suggested staff development is not sufficient for teachers who are qualified ‘as always, budgets are tight and therefore everyday teachers see little to no changes in terms of CPD’.
Clearly from the results the majority of respondents best interests are for the children, not local authorities.
Academies Have Less Involvement With Local Authorities
Q12.1: ‘We enjoy the freedoms we have to innovate and develop, practice within, having to consult or worry about third party opinions’.
The results were almost even on each opposite response, therefore a clear analysis cannot be seen. However, the respondents did not reject this statement, showing the collaboration is not having a negative effect on most schools.
Overall we can see that autonomy is not the main influencer in academies raising pupil grades. From the responses provided the current results challenge Ofsted’s claims of academies increasing grades. The qualitative responses indicated some concerns, when questioning results one respondents response was ‘they have gone down in both academy schools I have worked in’ this would suggest the changes are not always beneficial. Ofsted claim that one of the most important changes that academies can make is adaptions to the curriculum; our results suggest that it may not be true for all establishments. However, a large percentage of our respondents were over 50 years of age and they may feel that changing the curriculum is a bad idea.
We investigated the age categories of the respondents to assess whether there may be a link between the age of the employee and how much development is available to them. If they are of an older age or perhaps more experienced it may be difficult to implement development strategies that would have an effect.
Local Authority Involvement As academies receive their funding directly from local governments or sponsorship. Therefore there is no longer a high necessity to communicate with local authorities. We asked the following questions to investigate how employees felt about the changes the full statements are…
Conclusion
As we have previously seen there is no significant increase in grades for most of the surveyed schools, we looked into how available staff development was—to see if they are investing in their employees. In theory there should be correlation between staff development and grades, as staff can improve teaching methods and strategies.
‘No, your child probably won’t jump for joy at the thought of a longer school day, but having the time to study fun stuff as well as the core material necessary to pass standardized exams wins over many sceptics’ (Boyd, 2014)
Q11.7: ‘Collaboration with other schools in more formalised partnerships is easier’
Staff Development—’Staff Development is more accessible in state schools’
A higher percentage said they disagree (25%), whereas only half the percentage was seen for the respondents who agree it is beneficial (12.5%). Teachers may be reluctant to accept that longer, more strenuous days are making an improvement for fear of more changes being made ‘Teachers, already overworked and undercompensated, may resent this proposed addition to their workload’ (Specht, 2014).
We investigated how the collaboration with other schools is viewed with the following statement:
Staff Development in Academies and State Schools
From our results the majority of respondents had no opinion about pupils focus improving due to adapting schooling hours. This may be due to the school not having measured the improvements for long enough (due to recently converting).
Collaborations With Other Schools
44% of respondents have been in their current employment for more than seven years, this may mean that the employee is on the highest salary bracket for their role and additional monetary rewards are not easy for the academy to provide—due to funding.
References ARK. Closing the achievement gap: Further GCSE improvement at ARK academies. ARK, 2012. Disponivel em: <http://arkonline.org/news/closing-achievement-gap-further-gcse-improvement-ark-academies>. Acesso em: 10 December 2015.
GUARDIAN. GCSE results set to accelerate drive to turn schools into academies. Guadian, 2013. Disponivel em: <http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/jan/24/gcse-results-success-sponsoredacademies>. Acesso em: 10 December 2015.
GUARDIAN. GCSE results set to accelerate drive to turn schools into academies. Guadian, 2013. Disponivel em: <http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/jan/24/gcse-results-success-sponsored-academies>. Acesso em: 10 December 2015.
HATCHER, R. The conservative-Liberal Demoncrat Coalition government's "free schools" in England. Educational Review, Birmingham, v. 63, n. 4, p. 498, November 2011.
WATERMAN, C. Education Journal. Trade unions have their say on academies and free schools, n. 212, p. 18, October 2014. ARK. Closing the achievement gap: Further GCSE improvement at ARK academies. ARK, 2012. Disponivel em: <http://arkonline.org/news/closing-achievement-gap-further-gcse-improvement-ark-academies>. Acesso em: 10 December 2015. FURNESS, H. Teachers must go the extra mile if they want a payrise, chair of Ofsted says. Telegraph, 2012. Disponivel em: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9559669/Teachers-must-go-the-extra-mile-if -they-want-a-payrise-chair-of-Ofsted-says.html>. Acesso em: 05 December 2015. GUARDIAN. Michael Gove tells academies they can hire unqualified teaching staff. Guardian, 2012. Disponivel
em: <http://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/jul/27/gove-academies-unqualified-teaching-staff>. Acesso em: 10 December 2015.
NASUWT. OFSTED INSPECTION: PAY AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT. NASUWT: The Teachers Union, 2012. Disponivel em: <http://www.nasuwt.org.uk/consum/groups/public/@education/ documents/nas_download/nasuwt_012831.pdf>. Acesso em: 05 December 2015. OFSTED. Do Academies Make Use Of Their Autonomy. Research Report, p. 6, July 2014. OFSTED. School Inspection Handbook. [S.l.]. 2015. TELEGRAPH. WATERMAN, C. "Its still too early to tell" - a very interm verdict on academies and free schools. Education Journal, n. 195, p. 19, March 2014. WATERMAN, C. Education Journal. Trade unions have their say on academies and free schools, n. 212, p. 18, October 2014.