Academy Schools Research Articles

The financial implications of academy status

With an election looming, Anthony David shares his views on the financial implications of opening new academy schools or opting for academy conversion for existing schools.

The Introduction of Academy Schools to England's Education

We study the origins of what has become one of the most radical and encompassing programmes of school reform seen in the recent past amongst advanced countries -- the introduction of academy schools to English secondary education. Academies are state schools that are allowed to run in an autonomous manner which is free from local authority control. Almost all academies are conversions from already existent state schools and so are school takeovers that enable more autonomy. Our analysis shows that this first round of academy conversions that took place in the 2000s generated significant improvements in the quality of pupil intake and in pupil performance. There is evidence of heterogeneity as improvements only occur for schools experiencing the largest increase in their school autonomy relative to their predecessor state. Analysis of mechanisms points to changes in headteachers and management structure as key factors underpinning these improvements in pupil outcomes.

Ethos and vision realization in sponsored academy schools

This article investigates the realization of ethos and vision in the early stages of sponsored academy schools in England. It is a qualitative nested case study of ten academies. Nineteen key actors were interviewed, including principals and sponsor representatives. The nests were organized by sponsor type. Key themes are discussed within the context of the literature. There were common themes across all of the academies and some that were exclusive to individual cases. The conclusions drawn show that the leaders of these schools were initiating several actions simultaneously in order to develop their academies’ ethos and vision. The ethos and vision realization in sponsored academy schools is more complex than other examples in the literature owing to a greater number of actors and the urgency for change. In particular, the role of the sponsor is greater than much of the literature suggests.

Conductas disruptivas en estudiantes de escuelas diferenciadas, coeducativas e intereducativas

In the context of the current debate on the best way to group students in school (single- sex schooling vs. coeducation), some sources speak of a third approach known as dual academy schools, in which boys and girls are educated separately, in separate classrooms, but at the same school, with coinciding spaces for extracurricular activities. However, this phenomenon has not been studied sufficiently. While some regard dual academy as just another form of single-sex schools, others see it as a different phenomenon, with effects somewhere between those of single-sex schooling and coeducation. To contribute evidence in that regard, this study measures the frequency of disruptive behavior in a sample of 295 sophomore secondary-school students (average age: 13) at single-sex, dual academy, and coeducational schools in an economically disadvantaged area of Arequipa (Peru) in order to examine the correlation between the way students are grouped and their behavior. The results show a statistically significant difference in one of the sub-variables of disruptive behavior; namely lack of responsibility, a difference to the detriment of the coeducational school students in the sample. A significant, but weak, correlation was found between the subvariable behavior disruptive of social relations in class and coeducation, suggesting the closer a school in our sample is to the coeducational model, the more this kind of behavior will be found among its students. The study was controlled for extraneous variables.

Fostering in the People the Purest Types of Beauty: Ford Madox Brown and Democratic Art Education

This article explores Ford Madox Brown’s contribution to art education in Britain. Brown adapted his own student experience of continental academies (Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp) to inform his practical tuition of artists in his studio at home and at independent artisanal schools, while responding to contemporary intellectual fashions to draft his Cambridge Slade Professorship application and public lectures. His misgivings about both the Royal Academy Schools and Government Schools of Design manifested itself in his desire to cultivate taste in all classes of Britons, and balance the commercial requirements of manufacturing industry with the learning needs of individuals in society.

Exploring governance in two chains of academy schools

Although the number and size of academy chains in England is still increasing, the implications of these arrangements at a local level remain under-researched. This article reports findings from a comparative case study focusing on governance arrangements and sponsor involvement in two chains of academies. The findings suggest that the policy and practice of these multi-academy sponsors define the autonomy of the individual academies within the chains, so that the level of autonomy individual academies experience varies significantly between, as well as within, chains.

Academy Schools in England

School choice has gained considerable popularity in recent decades as governments struggle to improve quality and reduce the cost of education by increasing competition among schools and decreasing...

Finding a Balance: Local Autonomy and State Involvement in Alternative Provisions of Educational Choice

Academy schools have become a prominent policy initiative in the UK. By creating self-governing bodies with increased over the educational man- date and financial management of a particular school, the hope is that the increased autonomy will correlate to greater educational innovation and improved student outcomes, particularly for those who are most disadvantaged. Louise Bamfield correctly identifies an ambiguity in the use of the term freedom that is employed in the political rhetoric to promote the growth and opportunities that are espoused in these Academies. Specifically, Bamfield provides an interesting distinction between as non-interference and non-dependence and argues that in order for Academy Schools to provide the level of autonomy that it is intended to provide, a more robust notion of non-dependence must be considered. I wish to take the opportunity to push Bamfield's conclusions further and consider two points. First, I contend that the notion of non-dependence, although not explicitly articulated in policy documents, has not been a major consideration in the implementation of various provisions of alternative programs in American and Canadian charter schools, Swedish free schools, or the UK academy schools. Second, I wish to challenge Bamfield's more demanding notion of as non- dependence and contend that this would be an undesirable stance to take if we wish to provide safeguards for the quality of provision that students receive in alternative school provisions.

Co-operative Schools: building communities in the 21st century

The recent progress of ‘co-operative schools’ both confirms and disrupts many assumptions surrounding contemporary compulsory schooling. The term itself refers to an eclectic array of schools, both primary and secondary, of which there were, by June 2012, almost 300 in England that have adopted co-operative values, in terms of governance, pedagogy and curriculum, and come together as a movement. They have emerged from within a fissiparous ecology of education which has given rise to new schools and networks, including academy schools, converter academies, free schools, trust schools and specialised schools. In this article the author argues that these changes have all offered opportunities for co-operative alternatives to be established.

Discourses of aspiration, opportunity and attainment: promoting and contesting the Academy schools programme

The Academy schools programme was launched in England in 2000, promoted as a school reform policy to raise aspirations, broaden opportunities and improve standards in disadvantaged communities. In this study, discourse analysis is used to demonstrate the ways in which these Discourses1 have been constructed, contested and strategically reworked at a national and local level, highlighting the connections between these different spatial scales. Therefore, the paper provides an empirical example of how geographers can use discourse analysis to conduct policy relevant research and encourages education geographers to undertake multi-scalar analyses which engage with geographical literature on the politics of scale.

Pupil involvement in school (re)design: participation in policy and practice

Over the last decade, an array of policy interventions relating to children, young people and education in the UK have positioned pupil participation in the (re)design of school environments as a key imperative. Indeed, pupil participation is an explicit, core ideal of major, ongoing school (re)construction and (re)design programmes in the UK such as Building Schools for the Future, Academy schools, and Primary Capital Funding. The aim of this paper is to juxtapose the ideals of participation as expressed in national policy statements, via-à-vis the ways in which participation in these contexts is being done (or not) in practice. To this end, the paper presents findings from in-depth interviews with Local Authority officers responsible for the implementation of policies relating to school (re)building and (re)design in diverse localities. These interviews show how the idea(l) of pupil participation may, in practice, be foreclosed by contingencies, budgets, issues, debates, personalities and events at grassroots level. The paper will suggest that national policy-making regarding participation should be better grounded in the complex and diverse realities of the (re)design of school environments in practice.

Academy schools and entrepreneurialism in education

The academy schools programme in England is presented by Government as the means by which increased diversity and private participation in the provision of public education can be used to solve educational and wider social problems. The entrepreneurial features of academy schools are examined, through a study of the sponsors and the ethos, values and specialisms of academies. Data on 58 academies (open or in development), gathered from secondary sources, are analysed. Four types of entrepreneurialism are used to review the findings and it is found that business entrepreneurialism strongly features as a normalising presence, with forms of cultural and social entrepreneurialism also apparent. Public entrepreneurialism is represented but is less evident than the other forms. The emerging pattern of participation in the academies programme suggests that existing structural advantages in the fields of business and the church are being replicated and strengthened, and so academies are predominantly being constructed as sites intended to enhance the growing influence of private versions of entrepreneurialism. It is also recognised, however, that academies represent an unfolding programme and that how it develops over time is subject to complex national and local factors, including the agency of groups and individuals differently positioned in their fields.

DOCUMENT. Evidence to the Committee of Enquiry into Academy Schools

DOCUMENT. Evidence to the Committee of Enquiry into Academy Schools

Art about Hospitals

Reviewing a new book entitled The Healing Environment, Professor Michael Baum writes of the life-enhancing effects of art in hospitals (March 2004 JRSM)1. I agree; and I suggest that, in addition, works of art can serve to explain and celebrate the daily life and events in hospitals. There is no modern tradition of such art, though the work of LS Lowry (Ancoats Hospital Outpatient Department) and Barbara Hepworth (drawings of the operating theatre) offer glorious exceptions. I decided to commission a painting on canvas to document the procedure of bronchoscopy, and succeeded in gaining sponsorship from a pharmaceutical company (Boehringer Ingelheim). I chose a young artist, Steven Rendall, who had just finished a postgraduate art degree at the Royal Academy Schools, London, and who I knew to have an inquisitive eye. He attended several bronchoscopy sessions with his camera and then contacted me with a rough layout. The finished canvas installed in the endoscopy unit, just over a year from the start of the project, takes the form of a ‘photoboard’ image of the bronchoscopy process (Figure 1). I am certain that this is the only painting of a bronchoscopy in existence, and I encourage others to record their working lives in similar fashion. Figure 1 Steven Rendall's painting of a bronchoscopy

The Principal Pre-Raphaelite Pictures of James Collinson

The Principal Pre-Raphaelite Pictures of James Collinson D. M. K Bentley The story of James Collinson's involvement with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is often told as an episode in the life of Christina Rossetti with a comical element generated by his vacillations between High Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism.1 According to William Michael Rossetti, Collinson first came to the attention of the female members of the Rossetti family for "his heedful and devout bearing" at Christ Church, Albany Street, which was renowned during the late eighteen forties for the Ritualistic character of its services and accouterments (see Reminiscences 1: 65). Apparently, he proposed to Christina "sometime during October" 1848 (Marsh 90), a little after Dante Gabriel Rossetti (who also knew him from the Royal Academy schools, where they were both students) proposed htm for membership of the Brotherhood. His decision at about the same time to become a Roman Catholic caused Christina to decline his offer,2 which, however, was renewed by his obliging return to the Church of England within a matter of weeks, if not days.3 In "May orJune 1850,"4 the engagement was terminated by Christina when Collinson again avowed his Roman Catholicism, and two years after that, in the autumn of 1852, he entered theJesuit College at Stoneyhurst with the aim of becoming a priest,5 an act interpreted by William Bell Scott as a "truly Tre-Raphaelite' performance ... [and] a warning, especially to [Dante] Gabriel Rossetti" of the dangers of what Rossetti had called "the Art Catholic" (1:281). In "The Purpose and Tendency of Early Italian Art" in the February 1850 number of The Germ, F. G. Stephens theorized Pre-Raphaelite naturalism as the modern artistic equivalent of mediaeval monasticism (58-59). To Scott, Collinson's Victorian Review (2004)21 "performance" proved that the Stephens' two "tendencies" were chiasmic and that the chiasmus that they formed was a crucifix. I In the same number of The Germ as Stephens' article, Collinson published the first of his two most important contributions to the visual corpus of the PRB: the illustrative engraving that accompanies the poem entitled "The ChildJesus. A Record typical of the five Sorrowful Mysteries" (Fig. 1). Taking its erroneously rendered title from the Vulgate text of Psalm 8.2 ( "Ex ore infantium et lactentium perfecisti laudem": "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings perfect praise"-), the engraving is resonantlv Roman Catholic in typography and language as well as imagery and gesture. It depicts a young, haloed, and garlanded Christ surrounded by four young children and two older ones, a young man whose halo indicates that Figure 1 —James Collinson, 'Ex ore infantium et hctentiumperfecisti u_ „ u_ T0Un *-Ue laudem. " Engraving. The Germ 2 (February 1850). Baptist and a young woman who might be taken for the Blessed Virgin if it were not for the fact that she has no halo and is holding one of the small children rather than attending to Christ. Despite the close association of the Five Sorrowful Mysteries with Mary,6 the engravingperse thus avoids any suspicion of Mariolatry, but it does nevertheless include two other "Popish" elements: the banner inscribed "ECCE AGNUS DEI" ("Behold the Lamb of God") in gothic script that hangs from the cross held byJesus andJohn the Baptist, and the genuflectory posture of the child who kneels to kiss Christ's hand. There can be little doubt that the engraving contributed to the "admiration" that was reputedly generated by "The ChildJesus" in High Church circles (see Zaturenska 50) or that both poem and illustration are among the components of The Germ that make it resemble a "Puseyite parish magazine" (House 152). Because it precedes "The ChildJesus" in the magazine, "Ex ore infantium et lactentium perfecisti laudem" is at some remove from the passage of the poem to which it most directly pertains, the section of "The Crowning with Thorns" in which five singing children approach the youngJesus as he is sitting alone on a beach beside the Sea of Galilee. "[W]hen they saw his thoughtful face, they ceased" singing, begins the passage in question, And, looking at each other, drew near him; While one who had upon his head a...

Charles Henry Collins Baker: Biographical and Bibliographical Note

C harles Henry Collins Baker (1880-1959), art historian, painter, and art critic, was born on 24 January 1880 at Bay Hill in Ilminster, Somerset, the son of John Collins Baker, a solicitor, and Fanny Henrietta Remmett. In 1903 he married Muriel Isabella (1874/5-1956); they had one daughter, Phyllis. Collins Baker was educated at Berkhampstead and studied art at the Royal Academy Schools, London. He began his career as a landscape painter and exhibited in 1907 at the Royal Academy and from 1909 to 1916 at the New England Art Club, also serving as the club's honorary secretary from 1921 to 1925. His art works, signed C.H.C.B., can be found in the Manchester City Art Gallery, Leeds City Art Gallery, and Huddersfield Art Gallery. From 1932 to 1949 he was a senior research associate in British art at the Huntington. In 1911 he began his work as an art critic, contributing articles to The Outlook and Saturday Review; he also accepted an appointment as private assistant to Sir Charles Holroyd (1861-1917), director of the National Gallery, London, and was promoted to keeper in 1914. Early in his career at the National Gallery he wrote his most important book, Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters (1912), a pioneering work in the study of British art. He continued as keeper under Holroyd's successor at the National Gallery, Charles John Holmes (1868-1936), who served as director from 1916 to 1928. Holmes later wrote, Baker's unselfish energy relieved me of more than half my labours, his dry, affectionate humour lightened all the rest, instinctive friendship being cemented by our common danger,' the bombardment of London during World War I. Holmes and Collins Baker supervised the movement of nine hundred of the gallery's best pictures to the unused Tube station in the Strand to keep them safe from air raids.2 Holmes

Innovation and reflection

Jenny Pockley graduated from the Royal Academy Schools, London, UK, in the summer of 1997 with an MA in art. Since then she has continued to paint, working from her studio just off Old Street in London, but she also works as a mural painter. A She has also been involved in teaching art to all age ranges. In her paintings she uses landscapes as a theme, sometimes basing them on the real, sometimes on the imaginary, but always as a metaphor for particular moods and atmospheres. Her painting At Cley was, in November. 1995. the first to accompany a poem in The Lancet, since when many of her works have appeared with poems in the journal. When Thomas Wakley founded The Lancet in 1823, he announced “A lancet can be an arched window to let in the light or it can be a sharp surgical instrument to cut out the dross and I intend to use it in both senses”. Since then, this philosophy has been the doctrine for all those who have worked and who are working for the journal. It was also the starting point for my painting, Innovation and Reflection, commissioned for the front cover of the 175th anniversary issue. Wakley's statement underscored the need for investigation and discovery through medical research while including discussion of existing methods. The reference to the lancet was a metaphor for using well-supported facts (excluding “the dross”), the phrase about the window and the light indicating inspirational discovery. It was important to me, therefore, to represent these two elements of research and practice in my painting. Originally, I tried to base the work around an idea of protecting, nurturing, and caring, so I worked on a series of images of hands in various poses. Somehow, the images I painted did not have the dynamism and strength that I felt were important. I sensed that any element showing a hand should be strong and should also reach upwards as though striving for better things. Colour was also an important factor. Quiet, subtle purples and mauves were too contemplative and reflective, while greens suggested illness. So, eventually I used punchy orange-red standing against a vibrant yellow for the light. On a more subtle level, light blues and turquoise were useful for providing a fresh, clean, clinical quality to the piece. I included a window in the composition, but I felt that the light was the more important feature; an emphasis on the arched shape of the window would be an unnecessary distraction. Therefore, the sense of light is powerful in the picture but I have merely hinted at the arch. Using the shape of a blade to represent the lancet instrument was another difficulty, since it very easily took on a suggestion of violence. Ultimately, I felt that if I painted it as though it were being held aloft, the lancet would take on the role of life saving while also striving for higher achievements. I hope that the finished piece, painted with vibrancy of colour and fluidity of marks, reflects the strident, dynamic nature of Wakley's philosophy and in so doing encompasses the spirit of The Lancet.

The Pre-Raphaelites and the National Gallery

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood grew out of friendships and shared views on art formed by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti when they were students together at the Royal Academy Schools. This was in the 1840s, at which time the Academy's premises were part of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. The building was then much smaller than it is today and both institutions, the Academy and the Gallery, complained bitterly of lack of space; the collection of some two hundred paintings hung in the west wing, and the Academy occupied the east. In the Schools it was part of every student's training to study the art of the past as represented on the walls of the National Gallery, and the painting student would make copies there as a matter of course. There were other public collections within fairly easy reach, notably the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and celebrated works from all over Europe were to hand in the form of engravings. Yet the pictures the Academy student lived with, getting to know them by seeing them regularly in the flesh, as often casually as by design, were those in the National Gallery. The collection played a key part in forming the taste of the young Pre-Raphaelites, and I will show echoes of particular works from the National Gallery in pictures painted by all three leading members of the group during the first heady years following the foundation of the PRB in 1848. Like all students in the Schools, the Pre-Raphaelites had a thorough grounding in the artistic theory of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In his canonical Discourses, Reynolds urged the young artist to look hard at the art of

BOOK REVIEWS

Journal Article BOOK REVIEWS Get access Dutch Genre Painting in Hungarian Museums. By MIKLOS MOJZER Corvina Press. 1967. ANDREW BRIGHTON ANDREW BRIGHTON Royal Academy Schools Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 8, Issue 4, October 1968, Pages 422-a–422, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/8.4.422-a Published: 01 October 1968

Sir Harry Johnston, S.G.M.G., K.C.B

THE death of Sir Harry Johnston removes one to whom the British Empire and science owe great debts. Henry Hamilton Johnston was born at Kennington on June 12, 1858, and he died near Worksop on July 31 last at sixty-nine years of age. He was educated at the Stockwell Grammar School, King's College, London, and later at the Royal Academy Schools. Endowed with great natural ability and with a vigorous and fearless mind, he soon displayed an amazing versatility which led him to success along many different paths. Distinguished as an artist in water colours, an intrepid explorer, a naturalist, an anthropologist, a linguist, and a writer, he won for himself a permanent place in history as one of the builders of Great Britain's African Empire and as a wise colonial administrator. Political activities, alone or in conjunction with Cecil Rhodes, Sir Alfred Sharpe and others, constituted the most important part of Sir Harry Johnston's life-work. An excellent account of these activities was published in the Times for Aug. 1.