Tory plans will destroy state education

By inviting all head teachers in the country to re-invent their schools as independent “academies”, Michael Gove, the new Tory education secretary, is really tempting them to abandon the principles and traditions of comprehensive state education.

Taking all schools away from elected local education authorities will further disadvantage students with learning difficulties as well as those who are challenged by their background and social environment.

Furthermore, the second plank of the proposals, the so-called “free schools” that will be set up and run by parents and other groups, will almost certainly fall into the hands of private companies before long. Private profit-making companies are waiting, jaws agape, for just such an opportunity.

Of course, it was the previous New Labour government that opened the doors wide for Tory plans. Driven, as always, by the wishes of big business and the employers’ organisations, the Blair/Brown governments enforced an unpopular and restrictive national curriculum onto the schools. It went along with a regime of constant testing, league tables according to exam results and the gradual privatisation of services.

And it was New Labour who foisted 200 academies onto the education landscape, against the wishes of most teachers and their unions, as a kind of Trojan Horse, in order, principally, to de-stabilise non-selective, neighbourhood comprehensive schools.

The new Tory proposals develop naturally out of this introduction of the market into the education system and they also profit from the general disillusion and frustration of teachers and parents with the New Labour model. They will seem attractive to many at first sight. Head teachers of those schools that have been labelled as “outstanding” have been promised a fast-tracked process so they can become academy schools by September.

There is no evidence that semi-independent, state-funded academies raise standards compared with other schools. There is plenty of evidence to show that they are divisive and expensive. Private business, disguised as charities, has a key role in the running of academies. Some now teach creationism as a scientific fact in opposition to the theory of evolution.

At present academies are allowed to select up to 10% of their new pupils. With this power, which may well be extended, they are able to cream off the brightest pupils, altering the balance of all the schools in the area.

They will soon establish themselves as the school of choice at the expense of others in the area. The former two-tier system of grammar schools and secondary modern schools looms again, though the new names given to them will no doubt try to cover up the fact.

These new schools will not only have extra freedoms over admissions and the curriculum, but they will have control over salaries, introducing competition for the best teachers. This measure is a direct challenge to the unions, which presently negotiate pay agreements on a national level.

The two main unions have condemned the proposals. Chris Keates, of NAS/UWT, accused the government of breaking up state education. “It is essential that those who care about social justice, fairness and equality, who value public services and care about the future of state education, do not allow this to happen,” she said

Christine Blower of the NUT commented: "Creating academies on the scale proposed by the government will have the effect of transferring billions of pounds of publicly funded assets in the form of buildings and land into the hands of private sponsors … This is a retrograde step which will cause social division and planning gridlock...What is needed is a good local school for every child working within their local family of schools."

The question is: What will they do about it? If the union leaders are serious, they will order immediate ballots of their members with a view to challenging the coalition government’s plans with industrial action. Unions should build a united campaign with parents, communities and other public sector workers in the firing line. It's now or never for the teaching unions' leaders.

Peter Arkell

Academies wrecking state education

In line with the New Labour outlook that there is nothing in heaven and earth that cannot be improved by private companies and religion, the real, but still largely disguised, agenda of this government is the break-up and eventual privatisation of large parts of the education system.

Last week the government went out of its way to strengthen its commitment to expand the academy school programme. New Labour ignored the wishes of many parents and teaching unions who have campaigned against academies in favour of an improved comprehensive system.

The number of academies planned has now gone up to 400, about 10% of all secondary schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The cost of the programme is an astronomic £5bn, made higher by the proposal to scrap the “entry fee” sponsors have had to pay.

The idea behind academy schools came from the Tories. The original plan – they were called City Technology Colleges then – was widely seen as step towards privatisation and an attack on comprehensive schools, which are non-selective mixed-ability neighbourhood schools.

Academy schools, which select up to 10% of their pupils, are taken out of the control of the local authority and put into the hands of a sponsor which might be a business, a Christian evangelical outfit, a university, a private school or even a football club such as Aston Villa. The school is funded by the state, but it is the sponsors who then control it – the staff, their salaries, the ethos of the school and even, within limits, the curriculum – by means of an in-built majority on the governing board.

Promoted as a way to improve standards, no hard evidence has emerged that these schools bring about any improvements. Last week, an academy in Sheffield was put into special measures by the Ofsted inspectors. Sheffield Park Academy was set up in 2007 with new buildings that cost £30m. The school was found to be “inadequate” in all areas and the inspectors’ report was critical of its management and leadership.

This particular academy is sponsored by the United Learning Trust, the largest sponsor of these schools, and part of an Anglican-based company that runs private schools. The trust had an income of £155m in 2007-8. The charity is chaired by Dame Angela Rumbold, the former Tory education minister, and has Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, on its board.

The inspectors’ report is doubly embarrassing for New Labour as the school that existed before Sheffield Park, until 2006, was not failing and had itself been moved into new buildings in 1998, at a cost of £8m.

In addition to the academy programme, some state schools now have science and IT departments that are owned, controlled and serviced by private companies. Capital projects such as new premises are often financed in a way that means the buildings are leased back to the school, an insane and expensive folly.

And what do parents make of all this, carried out, supposedly, in their name and for the benefit of their children? In many parts of Britain now, there are is a scramble for places at the best secondary schools. Middle-class parents will even move house in order to get into the catchment area of the best school.

In Wandsworth, South London, for example, there is an academy, two selective state schools, a selective Roman Catholic school, a selective C of E school and five other non-selective comprehensives that inevitably tend to become the “sink” schools for the area. One of them is already in special measures.

The element of fairness and equality that became a feature of the secondary education scene in the 1960s is vanishing fast. We face a return to the bad old days of grammar and secondary modern schools, but under different names. Most parents will despair.

One wonders if a Tory government could have got away with a result like this?

Peter Arkell