As of June 2015 there are over four thousand academies in England. Originally introduced by New Labour back in 2000 in order to support failing schools in socially deprived areas, academies have long since remained a controversial topic. Touted by governments as the miraculous magic answer to improving standards and loathed quite rightly by teaching […]
Posts Tagged ‘Academies’
Labour’s timid education manifesto – and what it must include next time
Jul 13th, 2015 by Naomi Fearon.Our education eystem has undergone a severe and vicious ideological assault since 2010 with teacher morale at all-time lows, a rise in child mental health issues due to over testing and a teacher recruitment crisis to name but a few. Never was there such an education Secretary that provoked such vitriol and contempt than Michael […]
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Tory education bill will speed up failed academy project
Jul 2nd, 2015 by Naomi Fearon.Last month the Department for Education announced its new Education and Adoption Bill. According to the DfE in their press release the bill will seek to “sweep away bureaucratic and legal loopholes’. Any school found inadequate by Ofsted will be expected to convert to academy status, as well as those schools that are found to […]
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Really, Tristram? The “totally convincing” case for performance related pay exposed
Oct 22nd, 2013 by David Pavett.Having giving his support to academies and “parent-led academies” (aka free schools), Labour’s new shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt has now committed the party to another key right-wing goal for education: “performance-related pay” (PRP). He told the BBC Question Time audience: “I’m in favour of performance-related pay. We had a great report come out today […]
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Who’s in charge in Twigg’s vision for free schools?
Jul 3rd, 2013 by David Pavett.Interviewed by Jeremy Vine last Sunday, Stephen Twigg repeated the proposal made in his recent RSA speech that Labour will support “parent-led academies”. He said that these will not be free schools because: (1) they will not be allowed to use unqualified staff; (2) not all free schools are parent-led; (3) they will be overseen […]
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Academies good, other schools bad
May 9th, 2013 by Conrad Landin.When they’re not running a bout of self-justification on why the latest writer has had no choice but to use private schools, you can count on the Evening Standard to run a puff piece vindicating the “trailblazing” Mr Gove for his agenda of private-sector involvement in state education.
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Lucy Reese on Newsnight: “big companies gagging to get their hands on education budgets”
Dec 14th, 2012 by Newsdesk.Regular Left Futures contributor Lucy Reese defended local authority-run education on Newsnight last night – and warned that Michael Gove’s free schools policy was paving the way for large corporations to “get their hands on education budgets”. She appeared on the programme after a film was aired assessing the progress of free schools at the […]
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Gove calling opponents of academies ‘ideologues’ is pretty rich coming from him
Jan 6th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Gove’s fulminating against opponents of academies as ‘ideologues happy with failure’ is a bluster that will come back to haunt him. If anyone was happy to play with children’s lives and prospects for ideological reasons, it’s him. What makes him think that merely structural change like enforcing independence from local authorities, as opposed to high-quality […]
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Why did two Labour MPs back a “more divided and elitist school system”?
May 18th, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Last week, Graham Brady, a former Tory shadow minister, tabled an amendment to the education bill designed to increase the number of academically selective state schools in England. The amendment was signed by 38 MPs, including two from the Labour party – Gisela Stuart and Eric Joyce. Andy Burnham, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, rightly slammed the […]
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Academies steamrollered through
Jul 20th, 2010 by Michael Meacher.The Academies Bill yesterday in the Commons was a particularly brash example of Govian arrogance – the unprecedentedly telescoped parliamentary proceedings for scrutiny of the Bill, the bypassing of constitutional and democratic processes (which on Radio 4 he dismissed as over-concern for processology), the lack of consultation, and the rolling-out nationwide of an inadequately tested […]
