The Times on 7 January 2013 ran an article under the headline: ‘Academies growing too fast, say experts’.
The Times said that some of the organisations running academies may have expanded too quickly, reducing their chances of turning around failing schools.
Education experts had analysed the performance of schools taken over by academy chains. They recognised that the whole point of the Government’s sponsored academies policy is that a sponsor can help to improve weaker schools by taking them into their academy chain. But they questioned whether a sponsor was able to achieve the required improvement in a large number of schools at once.
The Times concluded: ‘It will help no one if academy chains over-reach.’
We share this concern.
The Harris Federation is currently expanding rapidly by taking over a number of primary schools at once. But they have no track record in improving primary schools, and could be over-stretching themselves, taking on more schools than they can really cope with.
It will be of little help to the children of Camden Juniors if, after they have taken over, we find that the resources and expertise of theb Harris Federation are too thinly stretched across all the schools they control, and they are not able to devote the resources to Camden that it needs.
The Greenshaw Trust, on the other hand, has the capacity and capability to provide the support that Camden needs; it will be focused on just Greenshaw High School and Camden Juniors, and is not trying to take on too much at once!
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