My college got turned into an academy after I left. Within a few years they had merged with the next door secondary school, fenced off any grass or wooded area on the grounds, knocked down the building for said secondary school and crammed all the kids from both schools into the aging, asbestos ridden college building, and gone from outstanding to poor with Ofsted!
My secondary school’s trick is to pressure underachieving students (including and especially those with disabilities) to apply to universities with low entry requirements. They’re then able to say they’ve gotten scores of students into higher education. They don’t speak on the quality of that education, nor whether students could have done better had they received even a modicum of meaningful support.
yep my school did exactly this. those who didn’t want to go to university or didn’t get good enough grades, still had to apply. it really was to just have the stats to brag and boast about their pupils getting into higher education.
I'd never heard of this because nobody bothered wearing ties at my school. The thing in our school was 'pocketing', ripping off someone's shirt pocket.
@@morbidsearch In my secondary school we all wore clip on ties cause apparently one student peanutted another and they were strangled to death, this was in west London.
This is baffling £3.75 million a year for a job that didn't exist before who people in that job have even admitted his job is pointless and does nothing. That money could refurb every classroom in the school, you could do an extension with that, new sports facilities, you get in new text books for every class. Even just give every kid in the school a decent computer and pay for their internet.
@@Holo-qu6lnsorry but you are an absolute fool. That's not how funding works. The unions are entirely funded by union dues and other things. Schools are not a closed shop and their funding cannot and does not go to unions. What we're actually seeing here is an example of the non-profit industrial complex where rich members of the professional managerial class colonise any and all parts of the economy, including charities and ostensible community organisations, and find ways to increase the turnover and then award themselves massive salaries. It's a symptom of late stage capitalism.
This put so much context behind the sh*t I saw and went through at a Harris Academy in the 2010s - starting in the second year of it as an academy. Courses being cut, mandatory easy-A* courses, massive push to get 10+ GCSEs or 15+ A*-Cs with BTECs, lunches getting progressively worse but more expensive, no special needs or mental health support (but rife in bullying, and bullying from teachers/staff), high teacher turnover due to pupil behaviour (and likely high stress); but one inspection day of each year the teachers could deliver their lessons giving our school Outstanding Ofsted rating. At the same time my grades got progressively worse limiting my collage and later university choices. It took 6 years after leaving to recover from an offing-myself depression; relearning that my worth is not based on my achievements or opinions of others, and loving my neurodivergent self
brilliant video i’m about to go into year 11, and for the first two years of my secondary school experience were spent in a harris academy. i also have autism and adhd. despite being academically gifted, there was no support for special education students, and i got no support and was mocked for my emotional turmoil i experienced because of it. teachers only dealt with me because my grades looked good. the bullying ended up affecting me so much i had to leave the school because i was struggling to balance school because i had no aid as an autistic & adhd student, i couldn’t thrive in a school that was unable to support me. i joined a school that wasn’t academy run, and i’m on track to get all A’s in my gcses. i’ve always been against academy schools and my experience there shaped much of my political beliefs about how things should be run today. being at a school like that had a permanent impact on my life, and it wasn’t a positive one.
Sorry to hear about your experience, but well done on your grades and glad you appreciated the video. Just doing my part to try and explain what I think a lot of people are feeling!
I was lucky enough to have good SEN support at my school, which became an academy the year after I left. There was a really good individual needs assistant that helped me get through with good grades despite being a little ball of anxiety the entire time. But I worry for my younger autistic & ADHD friends that are still there. I know several people with really similar stories to yours & I absolutely feel you. Business-run education incentivises a one-size-fits-all approach that improves grades by excluding neurodivergent and other special needs kids, and I suspect that SEN support & training will be the first to lose funding when a school academises. Mismanagement of SEN kids and outdated behaviour policies are already bad enough, I just hope they can get through okay. Solidarity ✊🏼
Excellent video. From my experience, academies tend to overemphasise appearances and results over literally everything else, often to the detriment of the students and teachers.
100% I remember when my step brothers school got turned into an academy over summer, the principle came into school in September in a brand new sports car
Great video - so glad this journalism ended up on my dash. I did a teaching internship a while back and as part of it we visited two local schools to see how teaching was done there. One was an academy and one was a faith school. The academy was genuinely soul crushing, teachers were not really free to choose how to do their lessons and it seemed like personality was being shaped out of the students. Lunch breaks were very short and the school had no green space. The faith school was more vibrant, in an older building. What struck me was how ironic it was that it was the religious space that left students more free than the secular, free-market academy.
My closest faith school had been its own academy decades before schools were pushed into becoming one. I believe this is the biggest reason why they seem to be so different from secular schools.
I love your videos! I'm a teacher from Spain, and this is global, in case you thought it only happened in Croydon or UK In Spain all education is turning private, the final goal is, if you have money you will study, if you don't, you'll be leaving school at 18 and work, or not, who knows. In state school we have up to 40 children in one class. We can't teach, impossible We have children from other countries, children with Autism, children with mental illnesses, all in the same class. And the government doesn't care at all. Nobody listens, nobody cares. Families who can afford it take their children to private schools. Anyway, sorry about this long message It is global, and the goal is to create the new generation of adults (ignorant, stupid, zombies, easy to manipulate, working for a small wage)
I work for a MAT. When I compare my Academy to the local authority comprehensive I was taught at, the quality of teaching is basically identical but the senior leadership team is 10x larger and there is a lot more turnover among the rest of the staff.
I am an IT Technician for a MAT, and it is the same story here with the schools I look at. Decent teaching quality but a bloated SLT team and a really high turnover of staff
my brother went to harris academy merton and he left a completely different person. i feel like with these trusts, they all try and manufacture the kids to be exactly the same. they all want high english maths science etc scores, which i understand is important, but it leaves absolutely no room for individuality and creativity at all.
Very underrated observation. I felt the same change happen in me. For 8 years I was basically in a type of Educational Gulag. Even now, my old friends and cousins keep talking about how grey and boring i’ve become.
The funny thing is, You can’t really force somebody to become good at English with pressure and fear. A person’s creative writing abilities come from his own imagination and feelings. If the school suppresses those things, they suppress linguistic talent
@@maalikserebryakov oh absolutely they really don’t allow these kids to thrive or be people. they’re all just numbers that get good results. when the school opened as a harris academy in 2006 people thought it was a welcome change, but i’ve seen basically how this school disregards any student that isn’t either incredibly disruptive or top of the class, leaving those floating in the middle to sort of just coast on by. and because they actually care so little about the students themselves, safeguarding is an absolute nightmare. my old school was an academy and even for kids with severe safeguarding issues (home issues, mental health etc), a good follow up to a kid saying they want to kill themselves is an (incredibly patronising) conversation from teachers that are not only not qualified to deal with things like that, but simply don’t care enough to engage on a deeper level. so these kids end up falling through the cracks, which means lacklustre exam results by the time they reach gcse.
I remember interviewing for an top academy in London and frankly I was really put off. It felt like a machine that churns out Oxbridge candidates - you study 8:30am - 3pm ish like many schools but then afterwards every day you have compulsory extra curriculars, both sports and extra work such as volunteering and or music. I remember thinking it feels like I won't have a life if I go there and I'll just become boilerplate Oxbridge material (good grades, part of school sports teams and extra curriculars like volunteering).
@@maalikserebryakov Facts! I had a hard time keeping an organised revision schedule on the tail-end of my exams, but my final English Language grade completely trumped everything else. ADHD has its perks.
My primary school became a Harris Academy right before my Year 6. We all hated it, even the teachers would openly tell us how much it sucked that this was happening lol. We used to call our teachers by their first name, but Harris insisted we should use last names from then now. Our teachers just told us to do it in front of inspectors only.
My secondary got academied shortly after they used all their Building Schools forthe Future funding to build a second sportshall and convert the old one (right above the changeing rooms) into an examhall. Couldn't even take our GCSEs without being disrupted by all the yelling directly below us every time a PE class Changed (4 times in the same exam). I always hated the forced honourific change from "Miss" to "Madam". The only times in my life I'd ever heard "madam" used was to refer to someone in sort of a mocking (classist?) way by being condescendingly formal. Which then made it feel DISrespectful and insincere to say. Also the change to mandatory top buttons AND ties (the policy before was top buttons optional). Ties are designed to close your collar, so why the button as well? Other than to strangle those of us who can't afford tailored shirts.
@robertmarley9380 I once went to a restaurant where we were served by my sociopath ex and he kept calling my mom "Madam". It was a truly disorienting experience.
Oh my goodness, you have absolutely hit the nail on the headI left the classroom this year and am so so glad I did. An all round education no longer matters, just results, particularly in maths and English. The arts and languages have been sidelined, and many students are not allowed to study them because they need more intervention in maths and English. That doesn’t make them better, it just creates the next generation of NEETs as they don’t find what they are good at.
I remember my school becoming an academy, the local perception of the school did change, but all that really changed in the school was literally the front wall, it was a bit flashier, but from the inside you could still see the mold on the windows looking outwards. Subjectively, maybe its my bias, but the school also started feeling more soulless, its not like we were buddies with the teachers before, but afterwards they definitely felt like more of an alien ruling class, didn't help that some of the older respected teachers got pushed out and replaced with teachers from the local coe school that was basically taking over. It felt like the newer students got worse too, we were always the worst school around, so its not like the students were coming from a different place, but somehow we were all always on the same team, whereas afterwards it just seemed like the school was filling up with little sh**s. I reckon the new approach actually fostered much less community spirit.
Similar situation happened to me. Once the academy took over they painted inspirational slogans on all the walls. They then started assemblies just to talk about getting high grades while the school's favourite teachers slowly left one by one over lower pay and a bigger out-of-work payload, leaving us with overly strict and boring drones who pointed at the whiteboard and complained if we didn't recall all the information we were shown. They even invented lies like "there are only so many As the country is allowed to give out". The older students bonded over their hatred over the transition, while the younger students were oblivious and played on their phones far too much. School definitely felt soulless in my last year there.
You/your team are very talented, this video and topic are extremely well presented!! Please don't let any media deals you get in future impact your integrity, keep it up could be huge!
I’m a recently graduated A level student. My school got a required improvement ofsted result the year after we were allowed back after Covid, and some of the grounds were that it taught year 7-11 about fractions and other things they learnt in year 6 (the school doesn’t make the curriculum and it gets more complicated year by year so this shouldn’t have been a complaint) but some of the things that actually needed improvement got a good score. We were then forced to become an academy after a month (baring in mind this is just after Covid) with a new head teacher (now a part of the academy) that disrespected staff and students, had a ridiculously high staff turnover (50 teachers left in 2 years), and had an academy that took away resources from departments such as music (this was a music specialist school) and spent money on installing more gates around the school rather than improving our internet or computers. I watched as staff were becoming less and less knowledgeable on how to deal with students (due to many new teachers being introduced to replace the 50+ we lost), students became an absolute nightmare and all of us found it harder to learn because we were relying on teaching ourselves more than we should’ve (computer science and biology especially as they didn’t have A level teachers for over a term for some classes) and as a result, most of us stopped caring about our grades as we felt like we were doomed from the start. Our academy did nothing to help us and instead ruined our school to a point it might never be even slightly good again.
Wintringham got some "private school" guy to take over our school, ruined it, made it "Requires Improvement" and "Inadequate" up until I left, now they're back to "Good" and I'm actually annoyed
My school became a MAT when i was in Year 12 (Currently going into Y13). It created a absurdly high staff turnover (probably over 40-50%) due to the overly pointless bureaucracy it created. Its also led to many other pointless changes as well, like changes in exam boards (which screwed a few teachers over). I don't think being in a MAT will improve my school whatsoever, as its already had poor ofsted results & a stabbing (happened just over a year ago) and the decrease of funds (due to the MAT) probably wont help either.
I know exactly which school you're talking about. I went there for all of secondary school and for all of that period it was getting good OFSTED inspections, exam results were going up and it was being well invested in, with new buildings for D&T, Art, Science and Humanities (partially because the local area was expanding and it needed higher capacity). It also a "technology college" owing to a pretty forward thinking school-wide computer network set up in around 1999 and was a "beacon school" which meant it was deemed of high enough teaching standards that it was paid to impart those practices onto other less successful schools in the area. It actually became an Academy in 2012, it's only this year that the name was changed. And if you go and look at the OFSTED reports the school goes from glowing OFSTED reports to falling into "requires improvement" upon the first inspection as an academy, a year after the change (which came with a new headteacher). It's been stuck there ever since apart from a blip up to "good" in 2016. And on a more subjective level, the site is an absolute eyesore now with the oppressive perimeter fencing and replacement cladding to the main building. I was aghast when I learnt a couple of years back that the sixth form centre had been refitted into an incredibly sterile environment (students used to be able to paint murals across the common room walls) with an enforced "business-casual" dress code. But I'm sure the slipping standards are all entirely coincidental to its change into an academy. :\
I was a teacher in an academy and did see some advantages, centralizing administration and allowing work load (such as building curriculums) to be shared. Another benefit is you can try moving extremely challenging students to other schools with the same curriculum without excluding them, allowing them to get a second chance (hopefully) away from bad. When primary and secondary are all in an academy together you can also create a 5-16 or 5-18 program for the kids, hopefully improving development. Not entirely certain why it really matters if local councils have control (which I think was the previous system?) or funding comes from central government. So long as teachers have the power to make decisions.
Sorry I’ve got to disagree. The academy system has completely transformed the education system. The majority are running their schools very well. There’s only a small few who exploit the system. Our state academies are the equivalent of most other countries private schools. Since bringing the academy system we’ve been able to support iver 70% of Uk schools being given a complete rebuild due to extra sponsors who come to the support the academies which was previously not allowed under local authority. Not to mention local education authorities are often ran by people who truly have never even set foot in a classroom and have never been teachers and have no background in education. Compare it to the academies. The vast majority are ran by ex headteacher who have much experience than the political party’s in running schools.
I work at an MAT, within HR, we have about 9 schools, up from 3 a year ago. Rapid growth. We have the CEO at that level, the rest about 100k. All the Head Teachers hover about 60-100k as well. Some of the independent schools we brought on REALLY mismanaged their budgets though, all tied up in salaries and teacher bonuses, while the school falls apart. It's a complex issue.
@@spliffedtothegallows7337 I adjusted language to be more legible to layman readers - what I specifically mean is retention allowances and TLR1,2 and 3 allowances. We found while a lot of these were being paid out, no one was actually fulfilling these alleged extra duties for the students sadly.
@@spliffedtothegallows7337 I just tried to comment and its seemingly been deleted. To clarify I meant TLRs, but just using layman terms for non-education sector readers. The teachers in this case were not performing the extra duties to go along with these TLR payments sadly.
Mostly clicked because I was so flabbergasted to see my hometown/city on my recommended, and I can't say I was ever interested in this topic before, only having gone to a state school (I *was* attending Roke primary when Harris took over, but I moved schools soon after), but this was a seriously engaging video! I'm enjoying it a lot. I hadn't realised there was so much corruption in education. Selected moments: 6:44 IS THAT MY BUS 7:17 I KNOW THIS TESCOS!) Aside from me being about six mentally when it comes to seing Surrey in the wild, this was a really good video. I love when video essays are so fascinating that I can just watch them whatever the topic.
Nice video, although I disagree with the principle of using AI images in what is otherwise meant to be a factual and educational piece on the school system. Hearing you mention the pay rates that are influenced by exam results really hit home to me. Through a combination of burnout and struggling to adapt, my A-Levels were atrocious, and I walked away with much lower grades than what was predicted of me. One teacher forced me to work on their work, despite it being one module of one A-Level. It ended up taking more than half of my timetable, meaning all three of my grades were being jeporadised because of one teacher wanting the best grades possible. I suspected at the time it was for money, or ego. Safe to say, I despise that teacher and the unnecessary stress and torment I was put through because of it. The academy system is clearly much more flawed than I originally realised. When my primary and secondary schools mentioned academies, I thought nothing of it, because nothing in my day-to-day life was changing. Unfortunately, politics rarely changes life overnight, so I never saw the issues.
Hi, I randomly came across this video on my recommended & i loved it ! You should look into how dodgy some of these multi-academy trusts are - I highly recommend ‘Profits before pupils? The academy scandal - Panorama BBC’. It shows how a lot of the funds, that were supposed to be allocated to schools by the trusts, were not being allocated appropriately. As a result, various schools were suffering. I think it shows how these academies may not exactly be working.
Great video, i get Jay Foreman vibes from you 😊 My school turned into an academy about 2 years after i left. It was a grammar school, one of a group of schools. I do wonder, as a comprehensive school as part of the group, appeared. Do academies have to be non seledtive, at least officially? It did seem a bit random, pretty surer there's a second non selective school in the group now. I am so skeptical, i don't believe school groups would do this altruistically 😅
Thanks, do love Jay's work and he's definitely an inspiration. Officially, trusts are supposed to run state schools non selectively according to the DfE but they are allowed to take over grammars now. Regardless, it seems questionable if the bigger trusts actually follow many of the rules anyway.
My Secondary became an Academy when I was in Yr 8 or 9, being the self-titled owner of the trust which also runs a large number of local primaries. Decline began not long after. Most impressive thing they did was build a new crappy modern box to replace a relatively historic red-brick building which admittedly was too small and filled with Asbestos. After completely knocking down the old building the new one was condemned 2 years after construction and now the students have to use a combination of tents and a nearby college for their secondary. Turns out the £Multi-Million contract to build it went to a cowboy builder who went bust after being caught using Plywood as Cladding (bearing in mind this is many years after Grenfell). Money well spent
this is discussed a lot in sociology / social science fields under the marketisation of education. But also, the academisation of schools is deeper rooted in the financial issues of the local authorities, in the same way that a majority of services that were run either by local authority councils or the government were privatised (such as housing trusts so that council-run houses were now third party owned) I remember when this was coming in as a pupil, the key 'force' was that underperforming schools would become academies for improved performance. At one point if I remember correctly, there were incentives for schools to become academies. My school technically became an academy, but mostly due to it becoming part of a 'catholic school partnership', despite it never failing an ofsted inspection. To this day, the school continues to run as it usually did but services are shared (such as one headteacher going to one of the schools in the partnership if it's underperforming) Glad to have been recommended this video, thoroughly enjoyed! :)
i got put in isolation once for wearing the wrong color socks as it was 'a disruption to learning' idk what's more disruptive, me having to miss out on lessons (including group activities, where there were consequences beyond just missing 1 day )and read harry potter all day, or coming in with white socks instead of black ones.
I remember my local primary school becoming an academy. It used to be known as Bentworth Primary School in White City, but it got repurposed to ARK Bentworth Primary Academy. I had left my primary school before its conversion but I’ll be honest, the academy conversion improved the school so much. Our library was literally converted from a storage room and one of the teaching assistants in my younger brothers class was literally a dinner lady who had no qualifications, yet she was given the job. Most of the teachers were really overworked and stretched thin and the school’s facilities started to be in a state of disrepair. I saw a video on the rebrand of the academy and the improvements were a huge difference.
ptsd from the words HARRIS FEDERATION my secondary school became apart of the harris federation just before i started year 7 and obviously i can’t compare it to anything else since i stayed until y13 but you can genuinely tell how different it was, it felt so different to what i expected secondary school to be like and was even more different than the secondary schools in the area. teachers that i’ve had being seriously overworked constantly getting sick as well as having incompetent teachers in the key years of secondary school, my learning was so severely disrupted due to the fact that there were so little teachers around y10/11 and even when i was in y12 and y13. not a great experience i’m finally glad to have left that hellhole 😭😭
My (pupil) school was not supposed to join the academy trust that ended up taking us - but our headteacher forced it through to join this trust. He then got promoted from headteacher, to CEO of the trust. The new headteacher announced his resignation a few months ago, saying he would be leaving at the end of the school year, because he disagreed with the trust top-slicing £750,000 from our school each year (the school also owns a historic site that they're responsible for the upkeep of which is. Difficult on a state school budget.) The trust then called the police on him when we showed up to work the following Monday and he was fired on sight. MATs are scummy.
I've been thinking this for years. Plus academisation also means that it's a way for the government to elude the responsibility of our schooling system as well as to fund it less. Almost all schools that have been academised, they got worse in their ofsted ratings at some point or anotner, school good got worse, teaching got worse and so on.
That doesn't sound likely, I don't think they'd ever privatize or outsource services (Apart from schooling, hospitals, emergency ambulance capacity, GPs, domestic waste collection, bus services, train services, prison services, prison transport services, army bases, cleaners, libraires, community venues, road repairs, water, energy production. national grid, immigration services, job services, security services, benefit assessment services, care home services, carers, energy production, passport creation, currency production, military recruitment, HMRC services, Home Office Centers, Health Inspectors, Public Enforcement, traffic management,. ticket enforcement, call centers, postal services, phone providers, air traffic control, cyber security systems, defense system, defense security, defense maintenance, defense research, defense manufacturing, weather forecasting, inner city light rail services, It services, data centers, catering services, property maintenance, property ownership, social housing, primary schools, middle schools, high schools, further education, special support education) I could go on... The affects and consequences? 1. Transfer of blame and liability. 2. Lack of oversight. 3. Removing the requirement of paying a livable wage, apart from core government worker... so they can publish it. 4. Removes the requirement of higher pension contributions. 5. You get less than what you pay for even though the worker are paying less. 6. You get 1000x the amount of middle managers, CEOs, CTOs, COO, chief this and head off that to pay for the various companies running the services. The big scum of the earth: Geo Group, Serco, Sodexo, Mitie, Atos and G4S... now we can just add academies to the list too. Sorry for the rant.
Wow, this video is actually quite eye opening. I am from the US and I currently live in South London, and most US school districts have something called charter schools which are basically schools that are private that leech off of public school money. They get to control their own spending and curriculum. I truly find that the UK mirrors the US more than British people want to admit.
Charter schools came up in my research actually. The UK is a bit of a n outrider in this atm, but they are moving increasingly that way in the States it seems.
@@CronxWatch Wikipedia, Charter Schools, US section: 'These schools, however, need to follow state-mandated curricula'. So do UK MATs, if OFSTED go in and find they aren't then there is trouble. The person you just responded to used the phrase 'leech off public money', yet you didn't correct them or even suggest that might be quite misleading or unfair in terms of UK MATs.
Remember distinctly when my school became an academy, any sign of struggling with GCSEs or A-Levels were met not with offers of extra support, but instead dropping the subject entirely. We went as a group to protest our awful substitute teachers for our Computing A-Level (one guy had to cancel a lesson because someone had flipped his screen before the lesson and he didn't know how to fix it himself) and instead we were told if we weren't confident we could pass the exams, we should drop the subject. Everyone with the exception of myself ended up dropping the subject weeks before exams after pressure from the teachers on our parents, telling us it was 'best for our mental health', when in reality it was because a whole class of dropouts looks better then a whole class of failing students.
I went to harris CTC in after my first year it became the academy and starting buying out the local schools. Harris felt like a cult. It was extremely strict, it was a weird scaling detention system where minor infractions would build into bigger detentions regardless of how minor so you could get excluded if your uniform was bad 9 times in a term. If you're smart they push you to the moon and if you're not they'll do leave you by the way side but force out a passing grade. There felt like there was a kind of mentality of people who could do and people who couldn't. They would split you into green route and Yellow route at GCSE, one making you do all the GCSE's you could fit in and one making you do less subjects as BTEC's to replace them, there was always the feeling the school looked down on BTEC's it created a abit of a petty attitude amongst students and felt like in general the wider group of students looked down on students doing BTECS, 'underachieving' students and all the other schools in the area. They would do this to up the GCSE equivalent pass rates, we were always at above 98% and would improve every year and the University rate was really high but they cared more about forcing you to university rather than if university was a good option for you and if there are any other options out there. They wanted to make the students and there grades into statistics that they could shovel in front of the press. At the time it was the best school in the area to go to in terms of grades and truth is i doubt i would have achieved as much as i have if i went anywhere else but i hated the place and the mentality it forced on us. I've heard though mates younger siblings that its all turned to shit and the grades have gone through the floor but the elitist attitude still exists, not really sure how they justify the schools mentality is anymore but they definitely manipulate the pass rate and Uni acceptance numbers now by obscuring what the numbers mean.
As an alumni of Harris Crystal Palace I can say that it pretty much was a grammar school. High achieving Students were almost coveted and given more time and resources whilst anyone who was avarage or below avarage was given the minimum amount of support. Even as a secondary school student I could clearly see what was going on
oh, that's funny - my old headteacher became the CEO of a MAC in my last year there too. i didn't notice any particular decline, since all the a-levels i did were pretty low maintenance in terms of necessary funding except ICT (but we already had the computers). but everyone i've spoken to who's been there since has said it's getting worse and worse and all they have to show for it is a relatively fancy new dining area, but awful, unhealthy food in it.
I went to an Oasis too, and got abused heavily by each party of individuals, there wasn't any support for children with ASD, or any sympathy for children going through divorce, couldn't focus on half of my exams and only aced the creative ones. I'm 100% aware it's unhealthy to look back in anger, but knowing that it's like this and I can't do anything about this or change it has me actually seething.
Decided to check up on my secondary school that was rated outstanding across all marks by the time I left. It's gone down a few pegs in that time and the former headteacher is now the CEO of the Multi-Academy Trust that runs it. Our education system is truly buggered
What a great video! Academies suck. Here’s my experience into the mix … In my last year of sixth form, my school turned into an academy. The student support hub for those with additional needs was all but eroded by the time I left. Everyone has to reapply for their jobs during ‘restructuring’, where you guessed it, roles were expanded and pay was lessened. 2 years after I left, the sixth form was merged with another sixth form a 10 minute drive away. It was run as one sixth form, between two schools with a separate staffing and high school cohort, and subjects were split between the two sites. Since it would be impossible to walk between the two, there was a mini bus issued at the start, lunch and end of the day each day there and back. I should mention this mini bus was also old and could just about fit everyone in. It is still run like this (and has recently scored ‘Good’ on Ofsted so what do I know?). But what an absolute palava! I really felt sorry for the kids stressed about travel in between classes. Tell me that’s not a purely economic decision? To my knowledge, within 4 years since I’d left, half the staff cohort I knew left. Mostly the old-standing staff that had been there for years. Nothing was explicitly said, but we assumed management and the academy status had a significant role to play.
This was a really interesting video. Watched it as I was curious to know the answer as a lot of the schools where I grew up had become academies while I was in school. I was lucky enough to go to grammar school in Bromley that got turned into an academy (idk if it was a MAT) about halfway through my time there. I've heard a lot of nightmare stories about my school but honestly I saw little difference (one school trip got cancelled as they had to do more bureaucracy but thats all i remember) when it became an academy and had a great time there. I think its hard to say what is good or bad for students as everyone is different and needs different support.
My old school was one of the first academies in the south west, and it went downhill from there very fast. Used to compete with its sister school, but was easily overtaken within 2 years, and then, instead of learning from my schools' failure, the sister school became an academy and failed too. Then the 3rd "shit" school overtook them both and from what I believe, is still the better school now as its still not an academy.
I’ll be starting my pgce in secondary maths in a month and during an internship many teachers told me that the students were never the cause of real frustration, it was the politics, the emphasis of grades above all. I’m still excited to become a teacher because I love and value education so much, but it’s hard to be positive when almost everything I continue to learn about schools is so deeply negative. Great video, good length too! Not too long but packed with info to look into later.
Welcome! The kids at my school have kept me there, and other maths staff are excellent colleagues. Academy Trusts are a waste of resources and although interpersonal politics have always been in schools it feels like being lied to when you are told the money is tight but you can use Companies House to see how many people are paid over £100 000.
Be sure to safeguard your mental health during your PGCE. No matter what they tell you, working nights and weekends isn’t normal. Crying every week isn’t normal. Being cut off from friends and family isn’t normal. I hope you get a good mentor and placement schools. Please take care of yourself ❤
Good luck to you! I did a PGCE with a focus on FE. I really enjoyed it and found it incredibly rewarding. However, in hindsight I felt like I was "shielded" somewhat during my placement by the fact that I was technically a student. Once I landed a job (in the same place I did my placement), I didn't even last 6 months before I had to leave. I was miserable. The students and other tutors weren't the issue, it was the upper management making more demands against ever-shrinking resources. Always put your own wellbeing before anything else, because your employer won't. They have targets which you need to hit and they don't care how much you suffer to get there.
@@HaneeFannee @alixcroll6385 Thank you to both of you for your advice! I am very aware of the stress that teachers are put under and have made the commitment to stick to "normal" hours as much as I can, though I know that will be tricky in its own right. A mentor for a school internship I did mentioned that he found the first year of teaching so intense, among other things, because there was a real responsibility and like you say HaneeFannee the higher ups have targets. In my experience at schools so far every teacher I've spoken to says the frustration comes from those in management and not the students. I met 5 teachers that were leaving but only 1 was leaving education, the rest were shifting to part time or tutoring. It's such a shame but we will see how I fare. Look out for an update in a year I guess!
I finished my PGCE in secondary science a couple of months ago and am about to start my first job (at an academy school, but in a place where the schools all banded together when forced to academise and so it seems to have replaced the LA pretty much one for one). Its a tough year, and a tough job, but as long as you hold onto your focus on the students and their wellbeing you'll get through it. Care first, grades second, irregardless of what some business manager might tell us we need to focus on. 💛
i am grateful i go to a faith school. One of the notoriously worst schools in my city got changed into an academy a year or two ago, and only just after watching this video did it click why. It was getting poor ofsted reports, mass reports of violent behaviour and the reputation of the school was notoriously bad. There is no life in the school, told to me by my friend who goes to the school for extra curriculars and sport. If students got denied from their desired school, they'd be dumped there, with many leaving when the chance to leave was available. Watching sixth formers attend that academy only to return to our school sixth form weeks later begging to be let back in (and they did get back in) shows the state of these "schools". The sudden rebrand to the school as an academy tricked everyone into thinking it was going through major changes to become a top end school, but it was just a facade, as nothing changed and if anything, it got worse. Meanwhile, less than 10 minutes up the road in the car, is my faith school. Consistently ranked Outstanding by ofsted, vibrant, full of life, one of the best schools in the city and it makes me realise how grateful i am to be in a school that actually cares about its students wellbeing and safety, whilst maintaining some of the highest grades of any state school nationally. It goes to show that by ripping the life from the school life truly limits the growth of students and teachers, i hope one day this inhumane way of approaching teaching gets abolished, as it's further corrupting the country into one big business and simultaneously ruining the education of many.
Well this was sobering. As someone who joined an academy right as it became one back in secondary school, it's not exactly surprising. But it is sobering.
I'm in Lancashire, and my school was recently forced to be academised by a sham Ofsted inspection. Ever since the trust came in, everything has turned sour. The way management treat students and staff alike has been outrageous. In the first year of the trust taking over, over 40 teaching staff have left because of the way they have been treated. The new systems seem to be all based on buzzwords and a one-size-fits-all approach, so teaching has also gone downhill. I think the leaders of the MATs take on new schools, leech all the funding and transfer it into their own salaries.
A few pointers, namely that high performing academies or MATS will get very little from funding from central government. It is rare to find trusts with say 10-15 schools that are all Outstanding/Good but be millions in the red. The criteria for applying for grants is rigorous and they are often not accepted. It's the same for an LA Maintained school. Recent frameworks introduced this year also mean that the assigning of a school to a trust (whether that be voluntary or via an academy order) are also a lot more rigorous. Sadly virtually every council in England hasn't got a pot to piss in, and 99% of them won't fight hard to stop a school converting, as its one less thing they have to pay for. There was also the financial incentive which I think up until recently was around a £10k grant?
i was in secondary school 2014 to 2019, i joined the year it became an 'academy', it became part of an education trust when i was either year 10 or 11 and since then they've had a different headteacher every year.
Hi, thanks for making a video about an issue that is not covered enough. I am currently a secondary science teacher in Manchester working for an academy trust. In my science dept we have no money for basic resources let alone experiment equipment. Meanwhile SLT staff walk around in £500 suits, drive Porches and have £3000 watches. I wish to god I was doing some sort of parody but I’m not. I also have had to have pupils do ‘performance review and reflection’ sheets at the end of a school year. The ‘businessification’ of a schools structure has affected every aspect of pupils lives. I could go on but people seriously need to be more aware of what is going on, and teachers must do more by taking serious strike action.
Such a great vid. I lived in Croydon as a kid, but went to secondary school down south - this checks out heavily with my experience being at an academy. This was about 10 years ago, just after the school had made the switch and before it expanded to a trust with multiple schools, but pretty instantly there was a heavy focus on results at the expense of everything else. Work experience for year 10s disappeared, the teachers who'd been there for ages were forced out and replaced with NQTs. The uniform suddenly got more expensive and way more strictly enforced (all-day detention for the wrong stud earrings, for example. no joke) The school was veeery interested in the gifted and academic kids - if you got a C, they would be putting the pressure on to retake for a higher grade. On the other hand it seemed like it was giving bare minimum to the less academic kids. A friend of mine with learning difficulties had support on only 1 out of 5 days she needed it. Another of my classmates was blocked from taking GCSEs (except for the essentials) because her mock results were bad, and she was funnelled into BTECs instead. BTECs are worthwhile, but there should always be a choice. Sad to hear its so widespread now.
this sounds like my school too, when we chose our gcse options we were given ‘pathways’. people who scored high in years 7-8 were put on the ‘purple pathway’ (printed on purple paper) which gave options like triple science and further maths, but people who didn’t do as well were put on the ‘yellow pathway’ and given options like construction. it seemed so normal to me as a kid but now it’s baffling that people’s options were being restricted as early as year 9 because of how they scored when they were like. 13.
my primary school became an academy in my last year, so while i didn’t see the effects at the time, when i looked back to see how its doing it’s gone extremely downhill. my old headteacher at the primary was the head of the academy, and merged our well performing school with a few other less performing ones. for the other schools, it seemed like a good idea as we were well performing and that could help with their situation. as for our school, it meant our ex-headteacher got to bring in way more money at the expense of our school. all our teachers were taken and given to these other schools, leaving a bunch of blank places. despite being a small village school, we used to have a fairly large number of applicants, each year being around 25-30. that has dropped so low that years have to be combined and it still only totals to around 11 in a class. it’s really unfortunate that education is being sacrificed for the sake of a few people’s paychecks.
the distribution of funds is mad as well our school (due it it's huge student size despite not enough staff) tends to make the most profit but gets the least returns favouring the private primary schools in the same trust lol we had to ration workbooks at one point haha
I went to an academy and when we were applying for universities they really pushed for us all to apply for Oxbridge. the people who did got way more attention and after school classes that they were picked out for by the teachers. I remember after the first week of year 12 maths loads of people me included were called into the deputy head teachers office, one by one, and they told us that we weren't doing well enough and if we don't improve by the next quiz we will have to drop maths. The school was so selective. You had to get GCSE 7/A's minimum in the A levels you wanted to take, plus pass entrance exams in 2 A level subjects. One of the maths questions my teacher couldn't even answer.
In Sandwich Kent within the year of an Acad-status they hosted a Walkers crisp advertisement at school and brought back junk-food for sale, just seemed like a cash-grab at the time, god knows what else happened behind the scenes.
As a former TA across London, schools being ran like businesses is no surprise. A lot of main issues; safeguarding, exclusion of students that weren’t the ‘brightest’, pushing neurodivergent students onto TA’s who literally are not paid enough, Teachers being stressed, health issues (scarlet fever, measles) that were NEVER addressed and often silenced. It was horrible. Working there, studying there slowly and surely kills you. But at least you get a fancy new playground and equipment that is micromanaged :3
My school changed from a regular state to a Harris academy and all of a sudden there was way more year 7s, no librarian and they just focused on results results results. They stopped focusing on resistant material and food tech lessons and drama and art, they started funding more academics more A levels and less Ctec and Btec into well the subjects were you create things. Also after year 11 they got rod of about half the students who were low performing and had behavioural issues so their results of how many % go to uni and Russell group uni looked better. They filled the other gap by boasting about previous year results and taking student who were retaking year 12 or 13 from other school, which if you’re a retaking and only accepting half of the year 11s of course your results are gonna look good. I’m glad I received a good education but I would have loved to have done something creative at A level with my other subjects and many felt like that. Also now that I remember during secondary we used to have an annual week long trip to a farm or somewhere in England, which they would tell you at the beginning of the year so our parents could pay in instalments, (over 50% of all students were free school meals) and that was so fun, many haven’t left london since we were all poor and they got rid of that. :( Overall it felt like there was less of a community… kinda sad Remembering more, they also got rid of soooo many teachers assistant for ESOL and learning disability students. This was pretty sad as those students eventually left since they couldn’t receive the specific help they needed.
Great video. I wish there were some studies on the effects of academies. Sent two of my children to Croydon academies. HCP took my daughter's soul and spat her back out. OA left my other child suicidle. Horrible institutions
Some kid who moved to our school in the second to last year set up a while mf presentation on himself when he joined and showed it to the whole class, then he started making quizzes (on that Kahoot thing the teachers were obsessed with using when they didn’t have a lesson plan set up) about himself and made the class take them. In this presentation he turned around and said “did you know… I went to an academy school before this” and some girl sat up and went “THIS School is an academy school, nearly every school in the country is” and he stood there like 😐
12:34 I was within the first group of students to join this school, I only attended up until year 9 but generally I remember it being good but after attending a regular state school for year 10/11 it was definitely very strange in comparison. The uniform policies were incredibly strict, I remember students getting lunch detentions for wearing white socks instead of grey and wearing your tie incorrectly was just a no-go. It was incredibly high achieving and we’d often have assemblies focused around gloating about good of a school we were. I always felt like it wanted to come across as more prestigious then it actually was, I think it’s positioning near three well known private schools didn’t help lol. The btec subject department was excellent in my experience, we definitely had a few rough years because we didn’t technically HAVE a school until my last year, partially due to covid 😭 but I always felt like my experience with those subjects was really enjoyable and the teachers were great. Being the first year group we were under a lot of pressure to achieving highly in our exams which was understandable but makes me greatful that I left before the pressure truly amped up, I think I would’ve hated it had I stayed on. Teachers were constantly leaving and I think most of the teachers that I’d had whilst I was there had left within a year after I had gone, which makes me think most of them were using the school as a sort of jumping off point. The uniform was also INSANELY expensive, and there was nowhere that you could buy it second hand within that first year. The sports socks alone were £10 and the hoodie was closer to £100.
Teaching is one of the few remaining unionised professions, and academisation is all about undermining collective bargaining over pay, conditions and pensions.
My school was an academy school before I got there (2021) but it had an awful reputation, and still does, but our new delusional headteacher says otherwise. I talked to a guy from Blackpool whose school was in the same trust as my school and our schools had the EXACT same rules but his school was somehow worse when it came to punishments. Ofsted, alleges that my school is one of the best schools in the country (far from the truth) but apart from the strict stupid rules, our school still has the the worst GCSE results and attendace✊🏾 It’s so bad that they shut down the new 6 form before this school year even finished and sent the students to a local college. rip September 2022-June 2024 finally gone and will be forgotten. The new 6 form students were worse than year 7s and bullied a lot of my mates, at the their big age💀 All schools (including a primary school) in my town and the next are academy’s and definitely did not change at all when they got a new fancy label slapped onto them.
i was at harris crystal palace when it turned into an academy ages ago in 2007. i remember all the optimism the teachers had initially then overnight it went nowhere. it was a top high school back then and well known for producing high achievers but there was so much favouritism between the high achievers and the teachers. it wasnt the best school for students who genuinely needed help and that carpet right man was very very hands off. one time he visited with his two kids to see the newly built extension to the school, they walked around the classes to view us like zoo animals but made zero effort to actually talk to the students or teachers
The question of why anything is done in modern England can be answered with, "There are people getting very rich off of it."
Just want to point out this was also true in the past, but doesn't mean we have to put up with it.
Welcome to Thatcher's idealogy she brought back from her trip to America. The basis of the modern conservative party. Profit over people.
I almost agree, I would just say "why the Tory government did anything"
russian bot account?????
100%
My college got turned into an academy after I left. Within a few years they had merged with the next door secondary school, fenced off any grass or wooded area on the grounds, knocked down the building for said secondary school and crammed all the kids from both schools into the aging, asbestos ridden college building, and gone from outstanding to poor with Ofsted!
Great vid btw!
Interesting! Seems to be a sadly common kind of experience, based on yours and others comments.
Either we went to the same school or this is a common occurrence 😂
@CronxWatch my very good school shut down permanently bc of bankruptcy not even 5 years after it became an academy
Are you aware that the number of children is going down, nationwide????
My secondary school’s trick is to pressure underachieving students (including and especially those with disabilities) to apply to universities with low entry requirements. They’re then able to say they’ve gotten scores of students into higher education. They don’t speak on the quality of that education, nor whether students could have done better had they received even a modicum of meaningful support.
yep my school did exactly this. those who didn’t want to go to university or didn’t get good enough grades, still had to apply. it really was to just have the stats to brag and boast about their pupils getting into higher education.
Dunno how you keep finding these gold topics to investigate, local journalism at its finest. big up!
No worries, happy to be of service!
Well, we are very indebted to the Cronx.
Thank you for your service.
A lot of these "academies" need to be investigated by police.
Getting peanutted as an adult in front of your old school is emotional damage
I'd never heard of this because nobody bothered wearing ties at my school. The thing in our school was 'pocketing', ripping off someone's shirt pocket.
@@morbidsearch That’s just dumb and barbaric and you’re likely to get flattened doing it to the wrong person
The peanut earned him a new subscriber 😂 the quality of content got him the like
@@morbidsearch In my secondary school we all wore clip on ties cause apparently one student peanutted another and they were strangled to death, this was in west London.
This is baffling £3.75 million a year for a job that didn't exist before who people in that job have even admitted his job is pointless and does nothing. That money could refurb every classroom in the school, you could do an extension with that, new sports facilities, you get in new text books for every class. Even just give every kid in the school a decent computer and pay for their internet.
But it wouldn’t be spent on schools would it?
It would go to the teachers unions.
@@Holo-qu6lnlol how does that work
@@Holo-qu6ln zero of the education budget goes to teachers unions.
Thanks for showing you don't know how school funding works in the UK and are just a bizarre anti union weirdo
@@Holo-qu6lnsorry but you are an absolute fool. That's not how funding works. The unions are entirely funded by union dues and other things. Schools are not a closed shop and their funding cannot and does not go to unions.
What we're actually seeing here is an example of the non-profit industrial complex where rich members of the professional managerial class colonise any and all parts of the economy, including charities and ostensible community organisations, and find ways to increase the turnover and then award themselves massive salaries. It's a symptom of late stage capitalism.
Commenting again to make sure RUclips knows this is the stuff I want to watch!!
Haha big up, more coming from us in the near future!
This put so much context behind the sh*t I saw and went through at a Harris Academy in the 2010s - starting in the second year of it as an academy. Courses being cut, mandatory easy-A* courses, massive push to get 10+ GCSEs or 15+ A*-Cs with BTECs, lunches getting progressively worse but more expensive, no special needs or mental health support (but rife in bullying, and bullying from teachers/staff), high teacher turnover due to pupil behaviour (and likely high stress); but one inspection day of each year the teachers could deliver their lessons giving our school Outstanding Ofsted rating. At the same time my grades got progressively worse limiting my collage and later university choices. It took 6 years after leaving to recover from an offing-myself depression; relearning that my worth is not based on my achievements or opinions of others, and loving my neurodivergent self
This is the good proper sort of low quality, highly intelligent type of content the internet was made for.
fr give cronx a sponsor asap
Yaaaaaaa
brilliant video
i’m about to go into year 11, and for the first two years of my secondary school experience were spent in a harris academy. i also have autism and adhd. despite being academically gifted, there was no support for special education students, and i got no support and was mocked for my emotional turmoil i experienced because of it. teachers only dealt with me because my grades looked good.
the bullying ended up affecting me so much i had to leave the school because i was struggling to balance school because i had no aid as an autistic & adhd student, i couldn’t thrive in a school that was unable to support me.
i joined a school that wasn’t academy run, and i’m on track to get all A’s in my gcses. i’ve always been against academy schools and my experience there shaped much of my political beliefs about how things should be run today.
being at a school like that had a permanent impact on my life, and it wasn’t a positive one.
Sorry to hear about your experience, but well done on your grades and glad you appreciated the video. Just doing my part to try and explain what I think a lot of people are feeling!
I was lucky enough to have good SEN support at my school, which became an academy the year after I left. There was a really good individual needs assistant that helped me get through with good grades despite being a little ball of anxiety the entire time.
But I worry for my younger autistic & ADHD friends that are still there. I know several people with really similar stories to yours & I absolutely feel you.
Business-run education incentivises a one-size-fits-all approach that improves grades by excluding neurodivergent and other special needs kids, and I suspect that SEN support & training will be the first to lose funding when a school academises. Mismanagement of SEN kids and outdated behaviour policies are already bad enough, I just hope they can get through okay.
Solidarity ✊🏼
Lmao git gud
@@maalikserebryakov i get better grades than you buddy!
Funny enough Harris Academy has got support for ADHD, bad part is that it ruins the kid more in the way that they deal with it
Excellent video. From my experience, academies tend to overemphasise appearances and results over literally everything else, often to the detriment of the students and teachers.
Exactly. Look good to justify the payout.
My dad always told me schools become a business once they turned to an academy 😅
Guess that explains why they’re actually performing well now.
100% I remember when my step brothers school got turned into an academy over summer, the principle came into school in September in a brand new sports car
@@SpeedfreakUK but they're not performing well at all lol
Great video - so glad this journalism ended up on my dash.
I did a teaching internship a while back and as part of it we visited two local schools to see how teaching was done there. One was an academy and one was a faith school.
The academy was genuinely soul crushing, teachers were not really free to choose how to do their lessons and it seemed like personality was being shaped out of the students. Lunch breaks were very short and the school had no green space.
The faith school was more vibrant, in an older building. What struck me was how ironic it was that it was the religious space that left students more free than the secular, free-market academy.
Interesting, thanks for sharing your perspective and glad you liked the vid!
My closest faith school had been its own academy decades before schools were pushed into becoming one. I believe this is the biggest reason why they seem to be so different from secular schools.
I love your videos! I'm a teacher from Spain, and this is global, in case you thought it only happened in Croydon or UK
In Spain all education is turning private, the final goal is, if you have money you will study, if you don't, you'll be leaving school at 18 and work, or not, who knows.
In state school we have up to 40 children in one class. We can't teach, impossible
We have children from other countries, children with Autism, children with mental illnesses, all in the same class. And the government doesn't care at all.
Nobody listens, nobody cares. Families who can afford it take their children to private schools.
Anyway, sorry about this long message
It is global, and the goal is to create the new generation of adults (ignorant, stupid, zombies, easy to manipulate, working for a small wage)
Great vid again, had never clocked the lack of state primary schools in Croydon before but now I can't unsee it
I work for a MAT. When I compare my Academy to the local authority comprehensive I was taught at, the quality of teaching is basically identical but the senior leadership team is 10x larger and there is a lot more turnover among the rest of the staff.
I am an IT Technician for a MAT, and it is the same story here with the schools I look at. Decent teaching quality but a bloated SLT team and a really high turnover of staff
my brother went to harris academy merton and he left a completely different person. i feel like with these trusts, they all try and manufacture the kids to be exactly the same. they all want high english maths science etc scores, which i understand is important, but it leaves absolutely no room for individuality and creativity at all.
Very underrated observation.
I felt the same change happen in me. For 8 years I was basically in a type of Educational Gulag.
Even now, my old friends and cousins keep talking about how grey and boring i’ve become.
The funny thing is,
You can’t really force somebody to become good at English with pressure and fear. A person’s creative writing abilities come from his own imagination and feelings. If the school suppresses those things, they suppress linguistic talent
@@maalikserebryakov oh absolutely
they really don’t allow these kids to thrive or be people. they’re all just numbers that get good results. when the school opened as a harris academy in 2006 people thought it was a welcome change, but i’ve seen basically how this school disregards any student that isn’t either incredibly disruptive or top of the class, leaving those floating in the middle to sort of just coast on by. and because they actually care so little about the students themselves, safeguarding is an absolute nightmare. my old school was an academy and even for kids with severe safeguarding issues (home issues, mental health etc), a good follow up to a kid saying they want to kill themselves is an (incredibly patronising) conversation from teachers that are not only not qualified to deal with things like that, but simply don’t care enough to engage on a deeper level. so these kids end up falling through the cracks, which means lacklustre exam results by the time they reach gcse.
I remember interviewing for an top academy in London and frankly I was really put off. It felt like a machine that churns out Oxbridge candidates - you study 8:30am - 3pm ish like many schools but then afterwards every day you have compulsory extra curriculars, both sports and extra work such as volunteering and or music. I remember thinking it feels like I won't have a life if I go there and I'll just become boilerplate Oxbridge material (good grades, part of school sports teams and extra curriculars like volunteering).
@@maalikserebryakov Facts! I had a hard time keeping an organised revision schedule on the tail-end of my exams, but my final English Language grade completely trumped everything else. ADHD has its perks.
My primary school became a Harris Academy right before my Year 6. We all hated it, even the teachers would openly tell us how much it sucked that this was happening lol. We used to call our teachers by their first name, but Harris insisted we should use last names from then now. Our teachers just told us to do it in front of inspectors only.
I don’f believe you. Sounds like some weird fantasy
@@maalikserebryakovBoring ass fantasy lmao. Why would I be fantasising about primary school teachers I had over a decade ago?
My secondary got academied shortly after they used all their Building Schools forthe Future funding to build a second sportshall and convert the old one (right above the changeing rooms) into an examhall. Couldn't even take our GCSEs without being disrupted by all the yelling directly below us every time a PE class Changed (4 times in the same exam). I always hated the forced honourific change from "Miss" to "Madam". The only times in my life I'd ever heard "madam" used was to refer to someone in sort of a mocking (classist?) way by being condescendingly formal. Which then made it feel DISrespectful and insincere to say. Also the change to mandatory top buttons AND ties (the policy before was top buttons optional). Ties are designed to close your collar, so why the button as well? Other than to strangle those of us who can't afford tailored shirts.
@robertmarley9380
I once went to a restaurant where we were served by my sociopath ex and he kept calling my mom "Madam". It was a truly disorienting experience.
@@maalikserebryakov
Weird fantasies are your thing
Oh my goodness, you have absolutely hit the nail on the headI left the classroom this year and am so so glad I did. An all round education no longer matters, just results, particularly in maths and English. The arts and languages have been sidelined, and many students are not allowed to study them because they need more intervention in maths and English. That doesn’t make them better, it just creates the next generation of NEETs as they don’t find what they are good at.
I remember my school becoming an academy, the local perception of the school did change, but all that really changed in the school was literally the front wall, it was a bit flashier, but from the inside you could still see the mold on the windows looking outwards. Subjectively, maybe its my bias, but the school also started feeling more soulless, its not like we were buddies with the teachers before, but afterwards they definitely felt like more of an alien ruling class, didn't help that some of the older respected teachers got pushed out and replaced with teachers from the local coe school that was basically taking over. It felt like the newer students got worse too, we were always the worst school around, so its not like the students were coming from a different place, but somehow we were all always on the same team, whereas afterwards it just seemed like the school was filling up with little sh**s. I reckon the new approach actually fostered much less community spirit.
Similar situation happened to me. Once the academy took over they painted inspirational slogans on all the walls. They then started assemblies just to talk about getting high grades while the school's favourite teachers slowly left one by one over lower pay and a bigger out-of-work payload, leaving us with overly strict and boring drones who pointed at the whiteboard and complained if we didn't recall all the information we were shown.
They even invented lies like "there are only so many As the country is allowed to give out". The older students bonded over their hatred over the transition, while the younger students were oblivious and played on their phones far too much. School definitely felt soulless in my last year there.
You/your team are very talented, this video and topic are extremely well presented!! Please don't let any media deals you get in future impact your integrity, keep it up could be huge!
I’m a recently graduated A level student.
My school got a required improvement ofsted result the year after we were allowed back after Covid, and some of the grounds were that it taught year 7-11 about fractions and other things they learnt in year 6 (the school doesn’t make the curriculum and it gets more complicated year by year so this shouldn’t have been a complaint) but some of the things that actually needed improvement got a good score.
We were then forced to become an academy after a month (baring in mind this is just after Covid) with a new head teacher (now a part of the academy) that disrespected staff and students, had a ridiculously high staff turnover (50 teachers left in 2 years), and had an academy that took away resources from departments such as music (this was a music specialist school) and spent money on installing more gates around the school rather than improving our internet or computers.
I watched as staff were becoming less and less knowledgeable on how to deal with students (due to many new teachers being introduced to replace the 50+ we lost), students became an absolute nightmare and all of us found it harder to learn because we were relying on teaching ourselves more than we should’ve (computer science and biology especially as they didn’t have A level teachers for over a term for some classes) and as a result, most of us stopped caring about our grades as we felt like we were doomed from the start.
Our academy did nothing to help us and instead ruined our school to a point it might never be even slightly good again.
Wintringham got some "private school" guy to take over our school, ruined it, made it "Requires Improvement" and "Inadequate" up until I left, now they're back to "Good" and I'm actually annoyed
Keep up the good work mate, you deliver quality and well researched content, love it
Thanks, appreciate that! Slightly shorter but equally interesting report coming in a fortnight.
My school became a MAT when i was in Year 12 (Currently going into Y13). It created a absurdly high staff turnover (probably over 40-50%) due to the overly pointless bureaucracy it created. Its also led to many other pointless changes as well, like changes in exam boards (which screwed a few teachers over). I don't think being in a MAT will improve my school whatsoever, as its already had poor ofsted results & a stabbing (happened just over a year ago) and the decrease of funds (due to the MAT) probably wont help either.
I know exactly which school you're talking about. I went there for all of secondary school and for all of that period it was getting good OFSTED inspections, exam results were going up and it was being well invested in, with new buildings for D&T, Art, Science and Humanities (partially because the local area was expanding and it needed higher capacity). It also a "technology college" owing to a pretty forward thinking school-wide computer network set up in around 1999 and was a "beacon school" which meant it was deemed of high enough teaching standards that it was paid to impart those practices onto other less successful schools in the area.
It actually became an Academy in 2012, it's only this year that the name was changed. And if you go and look at the OFSTED reports the school goes from glowing OFSTED reports to falling into "requires improvement" upon the first inspection as an academy, a year after the change (which came with a new headteacher). It's been stuck there ever since apart from a blip up to "good" in 2016. And on a more subjective level, the site is an absolute eyesore now with the oppressive perimeter fencing and replacement cladding to the main building. I was aghast when I learnt a couple of years back that the sixth form centre had been refitted into an incredibly sterile environment (students used to be able to paint murals across the common room walls) with an enforced "business-casual" dress code.
But I'm sure the slipping standards are all entirely coincidental to its change into an academy. :\
@@TransmitHim Sounds similar-ish to my school. Was this in Gloucestershire?
@@Dinoteddi It was your school - I'm just trying not to dox either one of us.
I was a teacher in an academy and did see some advantages, centralizing administration and allowing work load (such as building curriculums) to be shared. Another benefit is you can try moving extremely challenging students to other schools with the same curriculum without excluding them, allowing them to get a second chance (hopefully) away from bad.
When primary and secondary are all in an academy together you can also create a 5-16 or 5-18 program for the kids, hopefully improving development. Not entirely certain why it really matters if local councils have control (which I think was the previous system?) or funding comes from central government. So long as teachers have the power to make decisions.
Fantastic video that is relevant to the UK as a whole. Academies shouldn't have ever been a thing.
Sorry I’ve got to disagree. The academy system has completely transformed the education system. The majority are running their schools very well. There’s only a small few who exploit the system.
Our state academies are the equivalent of most other countries private schools. Since bringing the academy system we’ve been able to support iver 70% of Uk schools being given a complete rebuild due to extra sponsors who come to the support the academies which was previously not allowed under local authority.
Not to mention local education authorities are often ran by people who truly have never even set foot in a classroom and have never been teachers and have no background in education.
Compare it to the academies. The vast majority are ran by ex headteacher who have much experience than the political party’s in running schools.
Some small MATS with only 4 or 5 schools often have 3 people at the top on 150k plus
When you have local authorities looking after hundreds of thousands of students who pay one person on that level! Ridiculous.
I work at an MAT, within HR, we have about 9 schools, up from 3 a year ago. Rapid growth.
We have the CEO at that level, the rest about 100k. All the Head Teachers hover about 60-100k as well.
Some of the independent schools we brought on REALLY mismanaged their budgets though, all tied up in salaries and teacher bonuses, while the school falls apart.
It's a complex issue.
@@CanadishTeacher’s bonuses, not heard that one before 😂
@@spliffedtothegallows7337 I adjusted language to be more legible to layman readers - what I specifically mean is retention allowances and TLR1,2 and 3 allowances.
We found while a lot of these were being paid out, no one was actually fulfilling these alleged extra duties for the students sadly.
@@spliffedtothegallows7337 I just tried to comment and its seemingly been deleted.
To clarify I meant TLRs, but just using layman terms for non-education sector readers. The teachers in this case were not performing the extra duties to go along with these TLR payments sadly.
Mostly clicked because I was so flabbergasted to see my hometown/city on my recommended, and I can't say I was ever interested in this topic before, only having gone to a state school (I *was* attending Roke primary when Harris took over, but I moved schools soon after), but this was a seriously engaging video! I'm enjoying it a lot. I hadn't realised there was so much corruption in education.
Selected moments:
6:44 IS THAT MY BUS
7:17 I KNOW THIS TESCOS!)
Aside from me being about six mentally when it comes to seing Surrey in the wild, this was a really good video. I love when video essays are so fascinating that I can just watch them whatever the topic.
Really appreciate that, glad you found it engaging despite not being familiar with the topic - that's the goal. Thanks for the comment!
this is such a cute comment
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Nice video, although I disagree with the principle of using AI images in what is otherwise meant to be a factual and educational piece on the school system.
Hearing you mention the pay rates that are influenced by exam results really hit home to me. Through a combination of burnout and struggling to adapt, my A-Levels were atrocious, and I walked away with much lower grades than what was predicted of me. One teacher forced me to work on their work, despite it being one module of one A-Level. It ended up taking more than half of my timetable, meaning all three of my grades were being jeporadised because of one teacher wanting the best grades possible. I suspected at the time it was for money, or ego. Safe to say, I despise that teacher and the unnecessary stress and torment I was put through because of it. The academy system is clearly much more flawed than I originally realised. When my primary and secondary schools mentioned academies, I thought nothing of it, because nothing in my day-to-day life was changing. Unfortunately, politics rarely changes life overnight, so I never saw the issues.
This is the first video I've watched of yours. I knew I would enjoy it after the first minute. Subscribed.
Hi, I randomly came across this video on my recommended & i loved it ! You should look into how dodgy some of these multi-academy trusts are - I highly recommend ‘Profits before pupils? The academy scandal - Panorama BBC’. It shows how a lot of the funds, that were supposed to be allocated to schools by the trusts, were not being allocated appropriately. As a result, various schools were suffering. I think it shows how these academies may not exactly be working.
Big up, thanks for your comment and glad you found this interesting! I will check out the Panorama episode thanks for the tip.
Great work! People just don't know - I hope if they did, they would protest. Disgusting they don't have to follow the public sector pay award either!
Thanks for the great investigation and sharing the sources.
Great video, i get Jay Foreman vibes from you 😊
My school turned into an academy about 2 years after i left. It was a grammar school, one of a group of schools. I do wonder, as a comprehensive school as part of the group, appeared. Do academies have to be non seledtive, at least officially? It did seem a bit random, pretty surer there's a second non selective school in the group now. I am so skeptical, i don't believe school groups would do this altruistically 😅
Thanks, do love Jay's work and he's definitely an inspiration. Officially, trusts are supposed to run state schools non selectively according to the DfE but they are allowed to take over grammars now. Regardless, it seems questionable if the bigger trusts actually follow many of the rules anyway.
Those trusts who place high value on grades are almost always selective, because academic selection is a good system.
My Secondary became an Academy when I was in Yr 8 or 9, being the self-titled owner of the trust which also runs a large number of local primaries. Decline began not long after. Most impressive thing they did was build a new crappy modern box to replace a relatively historic red-brick building which admittedly was too small and filled with Asbestos. After completely knocking down the old building the new one was condemned 2 years after construction and now the students have to use a combination of tents and a nearby college for their secondary. Turns out the £Multi-Million contract to build it went to a cowboy builder who went bust after being caught using Plywood as Cladding (bearing in mind this is many years after Grenfell). Money well spent
this is discussed a lot in sociology / social science fields under the marketisation of education. But also, the academisation of schools is deeper rooted in the financial issues of the local authorities, in the same way that a majority of services that were run either by local authority councils or the government were privatised (such as housing trusts so that council-run houses were now third party owned)
I remember when this was coming in as a pupil, the key 'force' was that underperforming schools would become academies for improved performance. At one point if I remember correctly, there were incentives for schools to become academies.
My school technically became an academy, but mostly due to it becoming part of a 'catholic school partnership', despite it never failing an ofsted inspection. To this day, the school continues to run as it usually did but services are shared (such as one headteacher going to one of the schools in the partnership if it's underperforming)
Glad to have been recommended this video, thoroughly enjoyed! :)
i got put in isolation once for wearing the wrong color socks as it was 'a disruption to learning' idk what's more disruptive, me having to miss out on lessons (including group activities, where there were consequences beyond just missing 1 day )and read harry potter all day, or coming in with white socks instead of black ones.
I remember my local primary school becoming an academy. It used to be known as Bentworth Primary School in White City, but it got repurposed to ARK Bentworth Primary Academy. I had left my primary school before its conversion but I’ll be honest, the academy conversion improved the school so much. Our library was literally converted from a storage room and one of the teaching assistants in my younger brothers class was literally a dinner lady who had no qualifications, yet she was given the job. Most of the teachers were really overworked and stretched thin and the school’s facilities started to be in a state of disrepair. I saw a video on the rebrand of the academy and the improvements were a huge difference.
ptsd from the words HARRIS FEDERATION
my secondary school became apart of the harris federation just before i started year 7 and obviously i can’t compare it to anything else since i stayed until y13 but you can genuinely tell how different it was, it felt so different to what i expected secondary school to be like and was even more different than the secondary schools in the area.
teachers that i’ve had being seriously overworked constantly getting sick as well as having incompetent teachers in the key years of secondary school, my learning was so severely disrupted due to the fact that there were so little teachers around y10/11 and even when i was in y12 and y13.
not a great experience i’m finally glad to have left that hellhole 😭😭
This channel is exactly why RUclips was made, local issues and funny and informative reporting. Keep it up!
Great work thanks for speaking up for Croydoners
Loving the content my bro. I’ll never forget when he got mad about that poster you put up😂😂 That really took me back
Hahah, and I remember when you drank one too many smirnoff ices as well mate! Good times. Glad you enjoyed the video.
My (pupil) school was not supposed to join the academy trust that ended up taking us - but our headteacher forced it through to join this trust. He then got promoted from headteacher, to CEO of the trust. The new headteacher announced his resignation a few months ago, saying he would be leaving at the end of the school year, because he disagreed with the trust top-slicing £750,000 from our school each year (the school also owns a historic site that they're responsible for the upkeep of which is. Difficult on a state school budget.) The trust then called the police on him when we showed up to work the following Monday and he was fired on sight. MATs are scummy.
I've been thinking this for years. Plus academisation also means that it's a way for the government to elude the responsibility of our schooling system as well as to fund it less.
Almost all schools that have been academised, they got worse in their ofsted ratings at some point or anotner, school good got worse, teaching got worse and so on.
That doesn't sound likely, I don't think they'd ever privatize or outsource services
(Apart from schooling, hospitals, emergency ambulance capacity, GPs, domestic waste collection, bus services, train services, prison services, prison transport services, army bases, cleaners, libraires, community venues, road repairs, water, energy production. national grid, immigration services, job services, security services, benefit assessment services, care home services, carers, energy production, passport creation, currency production, military recruitment, HMRC services, Home Office Centers, Health Inspectors, Public Enforcement, traffic management,. ticket enforcement, call centers, postal services, phone providers, air traffic control, cyber security systems, defense system, defense security, defense maintenance, defense research, defense manufacturing, weather forecasting, inner city light rail services, It services, data centers, catering services, property maintenance, property ownership, social housing, primary schools, middle schools, high schools, further education, special support education)
I could go on... The affects and consequences?
1. Transfer of blame and liability.
2. Lack of oversight.
3. Removing the requirement of paying a livable wage, apart from core government worker... so they can publish it.
4. Removes the requirement of higher pension contributions.
5. You get less than what you pay for even though the worker are paying less.
6. You get 1000x the amount of middle managers, CEOs, CTOs, COO, chief this and head off that to pay for the various companies running the services.
The big scum of the earth: Geo Group, Serco, Sodexo, Mitie, Atos and G4S... now we can just add academies to the list too.
Sorry for the rant.
Wow, this video is actually quite eye opening. I am from the US and I currently live in South London, and most US school districts have something called charter schools which are basically schools that are private that leech off of public school money. They get to control their own spending and curriculum. I truly find that the UK mirrors the US more than British people want to admit.
Charter schools came up in my research actually. The UK is a bit of a n outrider in this atm, but they are moving increasingly that way in the States it seems.
@@CronxWatch Wikipedia, Charter Schools, US section:
'These schools, however, need to follow state-mandated curricula'.
So do UK MATs, if OFSTED go in and find they aren't then there is trouble.
The person you just responded to used the phrase 'leech off public money', yet you didn't correct them or even suggest that might be quite misleading or unfair in terms of UK MATs.
@@artgreen6915Did you even watch the video?? UK academies do leech off public money, what’s misleading about that?
I don't think British people don't want to admit it, it's what we're worried about
Like father like son
Remember distinctly when my school became an academy, any sign of struggling with GCSEs or A-Levels were met not with offers of extra support, but instead dropping the subject entirely. We went as a group to protest our awful substitute teachers for our Computing A-Level (one guy had to cancel a lesson because someone had flipped his screen before the lesson and he didn't know how to fix it himself) and instead we were told if we weren't confident we could pass the exams, we should drop the subject. Everyone with the exception of myself ended up dropping the subject weeks before exams after pressure from the teachers on our parents, telling us it was 'best for our mental health', when in reality it was because a whole class of dropouts looks better then a whole class of failing students.
I went to harris CTC in after my first year it became the academy and starting buying out the local schools.
Harris felt like a cult.
It was extremely strict, it was a weird scaling detention system where minor infractions would build into bigger detentions regardless of how minor so you could get excluded if your uniform was bad 9 times in a term.
If you're smart they push you to the moon and if you're not they'll do leave you by the way side but force out a passing grade. There felt like there was a kind of mentality of people who could do and people who couldn't. They would split you into green route and Yellow route at GCSE, one making you do all the GCSE's you could fit in and one making you do less subjects as BTEC's to replace them, there was always the feeling the school looked down on BTEC's it created a abit of a petty attitude amongst students and felt like in general the wider group of students looked down on students doing BTECS, 'underachieving' students and all the other schools in the area. They would do this to up the GCSE equivalent pass rates, we were always at above 98% and would improve every year and the University rate was really high but they cared more about forcing you to university rather than if university was a good option for you and if there are any other options out there. They wanted to make the students and there grades into statistics that they could shovel in front of the press.
At the time it was the best school in the area to go to in terms of grades and truth is i doubt i would have achieved as much as i have if i went anywhere else but i hated the place and the mentality it forced on us.
I've heard though mates younger siblings that its all turned to shit and the grades have gone through the floor but the elitist attitude still exists, not really sure how they justify the schools mentality is anymore but they definitely manipulate the pass rate and Uni acceptance numbers now by obscuring what the numbers mean.
As an alumni of Harris Crystal Palace I can say that it pretty much was a grammar school. High achieving Students were almost coveted and given more time and resources whilst anyone who was avarage or below avarage was given the minimum amount of support. Even as a secondary school student I could clearly see what was going on
I'd say it was until the 2010s - I don't think it is these days.
"I said get back to work blud" looool
oh, that's funny - my old headteacher became the CEO of a MAC in my last year there too. i didn't notice any particular decline, since all the a-levels i did were pretty low maintenance in terms of necessary funding except ICT (but we already had the computers). but everyone i've spoken to who's been there since has said it's getting worse and worse and all they have to show for it is a relatively fancy new dining area, but awful, unhealthy food in it.
Got this video very randomly recommended to me but it turns out I found a gem of a channel, keep it up
Thanks, big up!
I’ve also heard that academies prioritise hiring newly qualified teachers as their salaries are cheaper, further lowering teaching quality!
I went to an Oasis too, and got abused heavily by each party of individuals, there wasn't any support for children with ASD, or any sympathy for children going through divorce, couldn't focus on half of my exams and only aced the creative ones. I'm 100% aware it's unhealthy to look back in anger, but knowing that it's like this and I can't do anything about this or change it has me actually seething.
should definitely google lobo loans....every council is in so much debt
I actually did after your comment on my last video, was very interesting. Thanks for the tip!
My city, Birmingham has gone past huge debt, all the way to bankruptcy! well done them!
First video I ever seen and genuinely think you could go a long way in investigative journalism.
Decided to check up on my secondary school that was rated outstanding across all marks by the time I left. It's gone down a few pegs in that time and the former headteacher is now the CEO of the Multi-Academy Trust that runs it. Our education system is truly buggered
What a great video! Academies suck. Here’s my experience into the mix …
In my last year of sixth form, my school turned into an academy. The student support hub for those with additional needs was all but eroded by the time I left. Everyone has to reapply for their jobs during ‘restructuring’, where you guessed it, roles were expanded and pay was lessened.
2 years after I left, the sixth form was merged with another sixth form a 10 minute drive away. It was run as one sixth form, between two schools with a separate staffing and high school cohort, and subjects were split between the two sites. Since it would be impossible to walk between the two, there was a mini bus issued at the start, lunch and end of the day each day there and back. I should mention this mini bus was also old and could just about fit everyone in. It is still run like this (and has recently scored ‘Good’ on Ofsted so what do I know?). But what an absolute palava! I really felt sorry for the kids stressed about travel in between classes. Tell me that’s not a purely economic decision?
To my knowledge, within 4 years since I’d left, half the staff cohort I knew left. Mostly the old-standing staff that had been there for years. Nothing was explicitly said, but we assumed management and the academy status had a significant role to play.
@@georeadr-h5k this sounds like a prank
Imagine commuting to, after and even DURING school lmao
This was a really interesting video. Watched it as I was curious to know the answer as a lot of the schools where I grew up had become academies while I was in school. I was lucky enough to go to grammar school in Bromley that got turned into an academy (idk if it was a MAT) about halfway through my time there. I've heard a lot of nightmare stories about my school but honestly I saw little difference (one school trip got cancelled as they had to do more bureaucracy but thats all i remember) when it became an academy and had a great time there. I think its hard to say what is good or bad for students as everyone is different and needs different support.
My old school was one of the first academies in the south west, and it went downhill from there very fast. Used to compete with its sister school, but was easily overtaken within 2 years, and then, instead of learning from my schools' failure, the sister school became an academy and failed too. Then the 3rd "shit" school overtook them both and from what I believe, is still the better school now as its still not an academy.
I’ll be starting my pgce in secondary maths in a month and during an internship many teachers told me that the students were never the cause of real frustration, it was the politics, the emphasis of grades above all. I’m still excited to become a teacher because I love and value education so much, but it’s hard to be positive when almost everything I continue to learn about schools is so deeply negative. Great video, good length too! Not too long but packed with info to look into later.
Welcome! The kids at my school have kept me there, and other maths staff are excellent colleagues.
Academy Trusts are a waste of resources and although interpersonal politics have always been in schools it feels like being lied to when you are told the money is tight but you can use Companies House to see how many people are paid over £100 000.
Be sure to safeguard your mental health during your PGCE. No matter what they tell you, working nights and weekends isn’t normal. Crying every week isn’t normal. Being cut off from friends and family isn’t normal. I hope you get a good mentor and placement schools. Please take care of yourself ❤
Good luck to you! I did a PGCE with a focus on FE. I really enjoyed it and found it incredibly rewarding. However, in hindsight I felt like I was "shielded" somewhat during my placement by the fact that I was technically a student. Once I landed a job (in the same place I did my placement), I didn't even last 6 months before I had to leave. I was miserable. The students and other tutors weren't the issue, it was the upper management making more demands against ever-shrinking resources. Always put your own wellbeing before anything else, because your employer won't. They have targets which you need to hit and they don't care how much you suffer to get there.
@@HaneeFannee @alixcroll6385 Thank you to both of you for your advice! I am very aware of the stress that teachers are put under and have made the commitment to stick to "normal" hours as much as I can, though I know that will be tricky in its own right. A mentor for a school internship I did mentioned that he found the first year of teaching so intense, among other things, because there was a real responsibility and like you say HaneeFannee the higher ups have targets. In my experience at schools so far every teacher I've spoken to says the frustration comes from those in management and not the students. I met 5 teachers that were leaving but only 1 was leaving education, the rest were shifting to part time or tutoring. It's such a shame but we will see how I fare. Look out for an update in a year I guess!
I finished my PGCE in secondary science a couple of months ago and am about to start my first job (at an academy school, but in a place where the schools all banded together when forced to academise and so it seems to have replaced the LA pretty much one for one). Its a tough year, and a tough job, but as long as you hold onto your focus on the students and their wellbeing you'll get through it. Care first, grades second, irregardless of what some business manager might tell us we need to focus on. 💛
i am grateful i go to a faith school. One of the notoriously worst schools in my city got changed into an academy a year or two ago, and only just after watching this video did it click why. It was getting poor ofsted reports, mass reports of violent behaviour and the reputation of the school was notoriously bad. There is no life in the school, told to me by my friend who goes to the school for extra curriculars and sport. If students got denied from their desired school, they'd be dumped there, with many leaving when the chance to leave was available. Watching sixth formers attend that academy only to return to our school sixth form weeks later begging to be let back in (and they did get back in) shows the state of these "schools". The sudden rebrand to the school as an academy tricked everyone into thinking it was going through major changes to become a top end school, but it was just a facade, as nothing changed and if anything, it got worse.
Meanwhile, less than 10 minutes up the road in the car, is my faith school. Consistently ranked Outstanding by ofsted, vibrant, full of life, one of the best schools in the city and it makes me realise how grateful i am to be in a school that actually cares about its students wellbeing and safety, whilst maintaining some of the highest grades of any state school nationally. It goes to show that by ripping the life from the school life truly limits the growth of students and teachers, i hope one day this inhumane way of approaching teaching gets abolished, as it's further corrupting the country into one big business and simultaneously ruining the education of many.
Well this was sobering. As someone who joined an academy right as it became one back in secondary school, it's not exactly surprising. But it is sobering.
Good luck with your career as a journalist, you will be very good at it and the profession needs more people like you
Amazing research and journalism.
Thank you for making this video.
Great style of delivery, and good journalism. And, sadly, an extremely depressing situation.
I'm in Lancashire, and my school was recently forced to be academised by a sham Ofsted inspection. Ever since the trust came in, everything has turned sour. The way management treat students and staff alike has been outrageous. In the first year of the trust taking over, over 40 teaching staff have left because of the way they have been treated. The new systems seem to be all based on buzzwords and a one-size-fits-all approach, so teaching has also gone downhill. I think the leaders of the MATs take on new schools, leech all the funding and transfer it into their own salaries.
A few pointers, namely that high performing academies or MATS will get very little from funding from central government. It is rare to find trusts with say 10-15 schools that are all Outstanding/Good but be millions in the red. The criteria for applying for grants is rigorous and they are often not accepted. It's the same for an LA Maintained school. Recent frameworks introduced this year also mean that the assigning of a school to a trust (whether that be voluntary or via an academy order) are also a lot more rigorous.
Sadly virtually every council in England hasn't got a pot to piss in, and 99% of them won't fight hard to stop a school converting, as its one less thing they have to pay for. There was also the financial incentive which I think up until recently was around a £10k grant?
Fantastic work! Looking forward to next amazing content! Truly local journalism at its finest!
i was in secondary school 2014 to 2019, i joined the year it became an 'academy', it became part of an education trust when i was either year 10 or 11 and since then they've had a different headteacher every year.
Hi, thanks for making a video about an issue that is not covered enough.
I am currently a secondary science teacher in Manchester working for an academy trust.
In my science dept we have no money for basic resources let alone experiment equipment.
Meanwhile SLT staff walk around in £500 suits, drive Porches and have £3000 watches.
I wish to god I was doing some sort of parody but I’m not.
I also have had to have pupils do ‘performance review and reflection’ sheets at the end of a school year. The ‘businessification’ of a schools structure has affected every aspect of pupils lives.
I could go on but people seriously need to be more aware of what is going on, and teachers must do more by taking serious strike action.
NET?
i think this is now my favourite youtuber keep up the good work
Big praise, appreciate that!
Such a great vid. I lived in Croydon as a kid, but went to secondary school down south - this checks out heavily with my experience being at an academy. This was about 10 years ago, just after the school had made the switch and before it expanded to a trust with multiple schools, but pretty instantly there was a heavy focus on results at the expense of everything else. Work experience for year 10s disappeared, the teachers who'd been there for ages were forced out and replaced with NQTs. The uniform suddenly got more expensive and way more strictly enforced (all-day detention for the wrong stud earrings, for example. no joke)
The school was veeery interested in the gifted and academic kids - if you got a C, they would be putting the pressure on to retake for a higher grade. On the other hand it seemed like it was giving bare minimum to the less academic kids. A friend of mine with learning difficulties had support on only 1 out of 5 days she needed it. Another of my classmates was blocked from taking GCSEs (except for the essentials) because her mock results were bad, and she was funnelled into BTECs instead. BTECs are worthwhile, but there should always be a choice.
Sad to hear its so widespread now.
Interesting to hear that this chimed with your personal experience. Thanks for the comment!
this sounds like my school too, when we chose our gcse options we were given ‘pathways’. people who scored high in years 7-8 were put on the ‘purple pathway’ (printed on purple paper) which gave options like triple science and further maths, but people who didn’t do as well were put on the ‘yellow pathway’ and given options like construction. it seemed so normal to me as a kid but now it’s baffling that people’s options were being restricted as early as year 9 because of how they scored when they were like. 13.
@@solentsquared6719 seriously i hate the pathway system so much 💀 like why does it matter what i scored at 13 i was barely thinking
@@solentsquared6719 in my school people who do triple science and further maths aren't given a choice whether to do it or not, they're just entered in
This is good mate. Well done for shining a spotlight on another aspect of how we rip ourselves off.
The UK’s Friendlyjordies!
You deserve much success as a RUclipsr my man
my primary school became an academy in my last year, so while i didn’t see the effects at the time, when i looked back to see how its doing it’s gone extremely downhill. my old headteacher at the primary was the head of the academy, and merged our well performing school with a few other less performing ones. for the other schools, it seemed like a good idea as we were well performing and that could help with their situation. as for our school, it meant our ex-headteacher got to bring in way more money at the expense of our school. all our teachers were taken and given to these other schools, leaving a bunch of blank places. despite being a small village school, we used to have a fairly large number of applicants, each year being around 25-30. that has dropped so low that years have to be combined and it still only totals to around 11 in a class. it’s really unfortunate that education is being sacrificed for the sake of a few people’s paychecks.
Great work again, CW.
the distribution of funds is mad as well our school (due it it's huge student size despite not enough staff) tends to make the most profit but gets the least returns favouring the private primary schools in the same trust lol we had to ration workbooks at one point haha
I went to an academy and when we were applying for universities they really pushed for us all to apply for Oxbridge. the people who did got way more attention and after school classes that they were picked out for by the teachers. I remember after the first week of year 12 maths loads of people me included were called into the deputy head teachers office, one by one, and they told us that we weren't doing well enough and if we don't improve by the next quiz we will have to drop maths. The school was so selective. You had to get GCSE 7/A's minimum in the A levels you wanted to take, plus pass entrance exams in 2 A level subjects. One of the maths questions my teacher couldn't even answer.
@@ifeakande6751
I got a bunch of 9s and 8s lol.
can’t relate to grade 7 peasants
@@maalikserebryakov troll
Another banger, keep it up mate
Thanks, appreciate that- we're working on it!
In Sandwich Kent within the year of an Acad-status they hosted a Walkers crisp advertisement at school and brought back junk-food for sale, just seemed like a cash-grab at the time, god knows what else happened behind the scenes.
crisps? in Sandwich?
Crisp Butty.
Adverts in schools is abhorrent
Earned yourself a sub with this one. Keep making videos!
Found my way here from the Wandering Turnip.
Massive respect to you and the message youre putting out there, cheers
Underrated content, you're making me feel old at 26
As a former TA across London, schools being ran like businesses is no surprise. A lot of main issues; safeguarding, exclusion of students that weren’t the ‘brightest’, pushing neurodivergent students onto TA’s who literally are not paid enough, Teachers being stressed, health issues (scarlet fever, measles) that were NEVER addressed and often silenced.
It was horrible. Working there, studying there slowly and surely kills you. But at least you get a fancy new playground and equipment that is micromanaged :3
Great video on more croydon lore big up I cast spell of burger
Thanks for explaining all that - it’s roughly what I thought, but with actual examples ~ thanks.
No problem, it was the same for me writing and researching to be honest. Thanks for your comment!
Saw your video with wondering turnip. Great stuff let’s hope you come to the top of the RUclips algorithm.
I WAS LITERALLY JUST WONDERING ABOUT THIS. I LEFT RIGHT BEFORE MY SCHOOL BECAME AN ACADEMY. EVERYTHING WAS BECOMING AN ACADEMY.
My school changed from a regular state to a Harris academy and all of a sudden there was way more year 7s, no librarian and they just focused on results results results. They stopped focusing on resistant material and food tech lessons and drama and art, they started funding more academics more A levels and less Ctec and Btec into well the subjects were you create things. Also after year 11 they got rod of about half the students who were low performing and had behavioural issues so their results of how many % go to uni and Russell group uni looked better. They filled the other gap by boasting about previous year results and taking student who were retaking year 12 or 13 from other school, which if you’re a retaking and only accepting half of the year 11s of course your results are gonna look good. I’m glad I received a good education but I would have loved to have done something creative at A level with my other subjects and many felt like that. Also now that I remember during secondary we used to have an annual week long trip to a farm or somewhere in England, which they would tell you at the beginning of the year so our parents could pay in instalments, (over 50% of all students were free school meals) and that was so fun, many haven’t left london since we were all poor and they got rid of that. :( Overall it felt like there was less of a community… kinda sad
Remembering more, they also got rid of soooo many teachers assistant for ESOL and learning disability students. This was pretty sad as those students eventually left since they couldn’t receive the specific help they needed.
those farm trips were the most magical part of my school life Lol
Great video. I wish there were some studies on the effects of academies. Sent two of my children to Croydon academies. HCP took my daughter's soul and spat her back out. OA left my other child suicidle. Horrible institutions
Some kid who moved to our school in the second to last year set up a while mf presentation on himself when he joined and showed it to the whole class, then he started making quizzes (on that Kahoot thing the teachers were obsessed with using when they didn’t have a lesson plan set up) about himself and made the class take them. In this presentation he turned around and said “did you know… I went to an academy school before this” and some girl sat up and went “THIS School is an academy school, nearly every school in the country is” and he stood there like 😐
Thank you for this
12:34 I was within the first group of students to join this school, I only attended up until year 9 but generally I remember it being good but after attending a regular state school for year 10/11 it was definitely very strange in comparison. The uniform policies were incredibly strict, I remember students getting lunch detentions for wearing white socks instead of grey and wearing your tie incorrectly was just a no-go. It was incredibly high achieving and we’d often have assemblies focused around gloating about good of a school we were. I always felt like it wanted to come across as more prestigious then it actually was, I think it’s positioning near three well known private schools didn’t help lol. The btec subject department was excellent in my experience, we definitely had a few rough years because we didn’t technically HAVE a school until my last year, partially due to covid 😭 but I always felt like my experience with those subjects was really enjoyable and the teachers were great. Being the first year group we were under a lot of pressure to achieving highly in our exams which was understandable but makes me greatful that I left before the pressure truly amped up, I think I would’ve hated it had I stayed on. Teachers were constantly leaving and I think most of the teachers that I’d had whilst I was there had left within a year after I had gone, which makes me think most of them were using the school as a sort of jumping off point. The uniform was also INSANELY expensive, and there was nowhere that you could buy it second hand within that first year. The sports socks alone were £10 and the hoodie was closer to £100.
Teaching is one of the few remaining unionised professions, and academisation is all about undermining collective bargaining over pay, conditions and pensions.
My school was an academy school before I got there (2021) but it had an awful reputation, and still does, but our new delusional headteacher says otherwise. I talked to a guy from Blackpool whose school was in the same trust as my school and our schools had the EXACT same rules but his school was somehow worse when it came to punishments.
Ofsted, alleges that my school is one of the best schools in the country (far from the truth) but apart from the strict stupid rules, our school still has the the worst GCSE results and attendace✊🏾
It’s so bad that they shut down the new 6 form before this school year even finished and sent the students to a local college.
rip September 2022-June 2024 finally gone and will be forgotten.
The new 6 form students were worse than year 7s and bullied a lot of my mates, at the their big age💀
All schools (including a primary school) in my town and the next are academy’s and definitely did not change at all when they got a new fancy label slapped onto them.
i was at harris crystal palace when it turned into an academy ages ago in 2007. i remember all the optimism the teachers had initially then overnight it went nowhere. it was a top high school back then and well known for producing high achievers but there was so much favouritism between the high achievers and the teachers. it wasnt the best school for students who genuinely needed help and that carpet right man was very very hands off. one time he visited with his two kids to see the newly built extension to the school, they walked around the classes to view us like zoo animals but made zero effort to actually talk to the students or teachers
Thanks for this channel. You’re doing some important work.
Big up, thanks for your comment!
i've been wondering about this for ages!! nice video :D