Academy Journey: The Ups and Downs of Academisation

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In her continuing series, Lisa Bower shares her candid reflections on the challenges and optimism surrounding the academisation process, from navigating stalemates to embracing new systems

The last couple of lines of my last update were very positive and included the words ‘Hopefully next month I will be able to say we have converted’

Since then, a month has gone by, and we are no further forwards. The issues that we were discussing four weeks ago are the same, and in some areas, we have actually gone backwards!

Being in a standoff like this is difficult, and without discussing the complexities of the disagreement, I can empathise with the Local Authorities position. In fact, if I worked for the Local Authority then I am sure that I would be arguing their point just as vehemently as I am arguing mine.

Getting Through the Stale Mate

Finding compromise in any situation is difficult, and I don’t believe making some adjustments to your position should ever be perceived as a sign of weakness. In fact, finding a way through should be a sign of strength. I would say that though, as I have spent the last two days putting forward a suggestion for how we could reach a compromise. All I can do now is cross my fingers and wait to see if the Local Authority will agree and move some way to the middle.

This situation has made me realise the complexities of academisation. In theory the CTA is a standard agreement that is used as the basis of any transfer. Every school is different, and so the CTA can only ever be a skeleton that is used by both sets of lawyers to agree a position that makes all parties comfortable. This is also in an environment where the Local Authorities are losing schools, making their positions vulnerable – so it is easy to understand their reticence to compromise! I remain optimistic that we will get there in the end, but my optimism is being tried.

Finding the Positives

As if to rub insult into injury we have spent two days being trained on our new finance system this week. At the risk of sounding too geeky, I can’t wait to start using it. We currently use FMS, and whilst it does the job, the alternative systems can offer so much more, and my finance team are excited to start using it. This has also given us a great opportunity to look again at our systems and to consider how we want things to work. One of my least favourite phrases is “Well we’ve always done it like that”. I am very lucky, the finance team embrace change and are really excited for the next steps, so over the next few days we are going to answer practical questions about how we want things to work, without trying to adapt our existing systems.

The Perfect Tonic

On Monday of this week, we held an inset day with the two schools who will be forming the trust – I told you I was optimistic. This was a great day and meant that staff from both schools got to brainstorm how we could work together to give students a better experience, and as many opportunities as possible. I have said before that I don’t believe that day to day life will change for most staff, and I stand by that. But spending a few hours discussing what the future could look like was the perfect medicine to makes sure that we keep pushing on until we finally get the academisation over the line.

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