Day of dialogue: Research priorities from the Researching Academies Conference

The Researching Academies (RA) Conference, hosted by the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham on 12 November 2008 and organised by the authors, was a unique one-day event, funded as part of a research project (a case study of an Academy) supported by a British Academy (BA) grant, with additional support and funding from BELMAS. The RA conference, opened by the University of Gloucestershire's VC, Patricia Broadfoot, and additionally supported by two of the authors' student ambassadors (Nicola Favish and Donna Pugsley), involved a variety of researchers and educationalists from all over the country. Over 50 attended, two-thirds researchers and academics, the remainder representing a range of organisations including Academies, local authorities, the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the National College for School Leadership, the NAHT, NUT and NASUWT, the United Learning Trust (ULT), the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, Ofsted, the Campaign for State Education, the Church of England Academies Services and CfBT. The purpose of the conference was to facilitate communication and exchange among the research community and with the practitioner and policy communities, in order to promote and enhance research into Academies and to share emerging findings from our BA-funded Academy case study so as to place these in a larger context. Along with a keynote sharing some of these emerging findings, keynote presentations were given by David Armstrong of Pricewaterhouse-Coopers and Stephen Ball of the Institute of Education, University of London. The outcomes of these discussions are summarised in this article, drawing on the invaluable notes of recorders (Linet Arthur, Kevin Avison, Jim Cambridge, Andy Curtis, Melian Mansfield, Trevor Mepham, Shelagh Potter, Kirsten Purcell, Charles Sisum and David Eddy Spicer) who kept a record of the main points emerging from each of the five workshops and the main plenary session. Among the themes examined at the conference were: creativity, innovation and diversity; institutional ethos and values; Academy effects and impact; workforce issues concerning the impact on professionality in teaching and staff pay and conditions; admissions procedures; governance; and leadership. The importance of focusing on the total local system of education, not just individual Academies, emerged in both the May and November conference discussions, and that Academies should be examined in the context of the wider national secondary