TDA 3.2 Schools as organisations

Since 2004 all children in the UK aged three and four years old have been entitled to free places at nursery preschool in an OFSTED inspected setting which is found to be satisfactory or better. From 1st September 2010 the Government extended these hours from 12.5 to 15 hours for up to 38 weeks of the year. The free entitlement provides universal access to early childhood education and care, ensuring that all children have the opportunity to benefit from early years education. The extended hours also supports parents who wish to go back to work or develop their careers through further education by providing affordable day care. In September 2010 the government announced that children at the age of two from families who met the criteria for free school meals could also benefit from from free child care a year early. From September 2014, the number of early learning places for two year olds will be extended to around 260,000. This is to allow more parents to take advantage of the scheme, already used by more than 800,000 three and four year olds.

1.2 Explain the characteristics of the different types of school in relation to educational stages and school governance.

Community schools
Community schools (state schools) are run and owned by the local authority. The Local Educational Authority (LEA) are responsible for employing the staff within the school as well as owning the building and the land. The LEA deal with the admissions and the governors deal with the budget and the appoint or dismiss staff. Academies - State maintained but independently run and cover key stages 3 & 4.

Special needs schools
These too are funded by the Government and cater for children who have special educational needs and cover key stage 1, 2, 3 & 4

Private schools
These schools set their own curriculum and admissions policies. They are funded by fees paid by parents and income from investments. Just over half have charitable status. They are monitored by the Department of education. They offer Key stages 1-4.

Foundation and trust schools
Foundation schools are run by their own governing body which determines the admissions policy in consultation with the LEA. The governors employ the staff and they own the land and bulidings.

A trust school, although a type of foundation school, will form a charitable trust with an outside partner, such as a business. The school will have to buy in any support services. The decision to become a trust school will be made by the governing body in consultation with parents.

Federation and Collaboration
There are four types of federation and collaboration schools, which include: informal loose collaboration, soft federation, soft governance federation and hard governance federation. These can be seen in Table 1.

Table 1: Differences Between Federation Types. (Teachers.org.uk, 2013).

Church schools
These are mainly religious or ‘faith’ schools. They have their own governing body whom employ the staff and the church will own the building and the land. They are responsible for their own budget. Usually theses schools are church of England or Catholic schools.

Voluntary controlled
These are very similar to a voluntary-aided school s, although they are run and funded by the local authority which also employs the staff and provides support services. The land and the buildings are usually owned by a charity, which is often a religious organisation.

Specialist schools.
These are usually secondary schools which can apply for a specialist status to develop one or two subject specialisms. They then receive additional government funding for doing this. Specialist status’s could include:
Mathematics and computing
Art
Technology
Business & enterprise