After bankrupting the country with golden handshakes for the banks, news comes in that the government is to attract more backers for its controversial School Academies scheme – by dropping the requirement of a £2million up-front investment.
Previously, the government and private investors would split the cost of setting up a new academy or converting a ‘failing’ school. Now, instead of putting their money where their mouth is, prospective ‘sponsors’ merely have to show the ‘skills and leadership’ to run an Academy. Since Academies are not under the jurisdiction of Local Authorities, it is not clear who will decide what ‘skills and leadership’ specifically entails. Given Labour’s attitude to leadership, the outlook is anything but rosy.
The announcement coincides with the opening of the 200th Academy. Hackney City Academy has opened its doors in an area of London that has seen a surge in industrial action over cuts to education, notably at St. Paul’s and Haggerston Schools. The presence of a taxpayer-funded, state-of-the-art state school, benefitting from Labour's privatisation fetish is a slap in the face for dozens of teachers in the borough who are fighting for their jobs, after serving the local community for decades.
The government milestone of 200 Academies comes a year ahead of target – highlighting the fact that increasing creeping privatisation, PFI schemes etc, is the government’s real priority. Meanwhile conventional state schools and other public services are left to scrabble amongst themselves for funds, resulting in the inevitable cuts to staff, courses and educational and extra-curricular activities.
This view is reinforced by sceptical teaching unions, who say that extra spending has a divisive impact on other local schools.
The National Union of Teachers General Secretary said “We don’t believe taking schools out of their local authorities and having them run by people who no experience of running schools... is a way of doing school improvement.” Exactly. Yet Hackney Academy is to be run by a former banker and will specialise in ‘business and finance’. This is a blatant indication of the capitalist class’s determination to wrest control of education out of the hands of teachers unions and parents and increasingly to entrench their free-market ideology within schools.
In the ‘50’s the government engaged in a massive program of building ‘technical schools’ where students could enrol for vocational training – training a highly-qualified workforce to work in industrial jobs. Nowadays, we are signing over our schools to the same cowboy capitalists and adventurers who brought the monolithic global economy to its knees overnight.
Surely it is a ludicrous idea to suggest that our schools – particularly taxpayer-funded and owned state schools should be run by these kinds of people, people who are not teachers, or even in the education industry?
Richard Powell, the Vice-President for Resources at Hackney Academy – after a previous career in the financial sector – said the academy model was “a way of innovating and applying professional structures to managing schools.”
Yes, the ‘innovation’ of privatising management of schools- unaccountable to the Local Authority or parents- while keeping the school coffers (and management’s inflated wages) greased with taxpayers money.
And the ‘professional structures’ that the private sector is so enamoured of: compulsory redundancies, rationalisation, the introduction of contracts, union-busting and slashing of extra services that bring no concrete financial benefit to the institution.
In stubbornly forging ahead with the discredited academies, the Labour government is playing the role of icebreaker, paving the rough way for the Conservative’s education plans after the 2010 general election.
The Tories are already discussing privatisation for state schools and rolling out the Academy programme across the country and extending it to primary schools!
They say, however, that Academies should have even more independence – accusing the government of ‘diluting their ability to innovate’.
Well we saw what happened when the government didn’t interfere with capitalism’s ‘ability to innovate’ in the financial sector...
The London School Students’ Union is implacably opposed to the Academies scheme and all other forms of direct or creeping privatisation of education.
Academies represent the intrusion of big business and unscrupulous interest groups into the most precious of publicly-owned and financed services- the education of children.
The much-vaunted ‘independence’ of these academies is in reality nothing more than the freedom for the ‘sponsor’ to foster their particular ethos and moral program on students – without having to answer to local democratic structures.
With both Labour and the Conservatives committed to the wholesale expansion of the scheme, resistance must be co-ordinated on a national scale, involving unions, parents and students themselves.
Resistance to education attacks must be rooted in local crisis committees, creating a democratic forum for students and workers alike to co-ordinate local struggles in the community with the same struggles that are happening across the country.
Previously, the government and private investors would split the cost of setting up a new academy or converting a ‘failing’ school. Now, instead of putting their money where their mouth is, prospective ‘sponsors’ merely have to show the ‘skills and leadership’ to run an Academy. Since Academies are not under the jurisdiction of Local Authorities, it is not clear who will decide what ‘skills and leadership’ specifically entails. Given Labour’s attitude to leadership, the outlook is anything but rosy.
The announcement coincides with the opening of the 200th Academy. Hackney City Academy has opened its doors in an area of London that has seen a surge in industrial action over cuts to education, notably at St. Paul’s and Haggerston Schools. The presence of a taxpayer-funded, state-of-the-art state school, benefitting from Labour's privatisation fetish is a slap in the face for dozens of teachers in the borough who are fighting for their jobs, after serving the local community for decades.
The government milestone of 200 Academies comes a year ahead of target – highlighting the fact that increasing creeping privatisation, PFI schemes etc, is the government’s real priority. Meanwhile conventional state schools and other public services are left to scrabble amongst themselves for funds, resulting in the inevitable cuts to staff, courses and educational and extra-curricular activities.
This view is reinforced by sceptical teaching unions, who say that extra spending has a divisive impact on other local schools.
The National Union of Teachers General Secretary said “We don’t believe taking schools out of their local authorities and having them run by people who no experience of running schools... is a way of doing school improvement.” Exactly. Yet Hackney Academy is to be run by a former banker and will specialise in ‘business and finance’. This is a blatant indication of the capitalist class’s determination to wrest control of education out of the hands of teachers unions and parents and increasingly to entrench their free-market ideology within schools.
In the ‘50’s the government engaged in a massive program of building ‘technical schools’ where students could enrol for vocational training – training a highly-qualified workforce to work in industrial jobs. Nowadays, we are signing over our schools to the same cowboy capitalists and adventurers who brought the monolithic global economy to its knees overnight.
Surely it is a ludicrous idea to suggest that our schools – particularly taxpayer-funded and owned state schools should be run by these kinds of people, people who are not teachers, or even in the education industry?
Richard Powell, the Vice-President for Resources at Hackney Academy – after a previous career in the financial sector – said the academy model was “a way of innovating and applying professional structures to managing schools.”
Yes, the ‘innovation’ of privatising management of schools- unaccountable to the Local Authority or parents- while keeping the school coffers (and management’s inflated wages) greased with taxpayers money.
And the ‘professional structures’ that the private sector is so enamoured of: compulsory redundancies, rationalisation, the introduction of contracts, union-busting and slashing of extra services that bring no concrete financial benefit to the institution.
In stubbornly forging ahead with the discredited academies, the Labour government is playing the role of icebreaker, paving the rough way for the Conservative’s education plans after the 2010 general election.
The Tories are already discussing privatisation for state schools and rolling out the Academy programme across the country and extending it to primary schools!
They say, however, that Academies should have even more independence – accusing the government of ‘diluting their ability to innovate’.
Well we saw what happened when the government didn’t interfere with capitalism’s ‘ability to innovate’ in the financial sector...
The London School Students’ Union is implacably opposed to the Academies scheme and all other forms of direct or creeping privatisation of education.
Academies represent the intrusion of big business and unscrupulous interest groups into the most precious of publicly-owned and financed services- the education of children.
The much-vaunted ‘independence’ of these academies is in reality nothing more than the freedom for the ‘sponsor’ to foster their particular ethos and moral program on students – without having to answer to local democratic structures.
With both Labour and the Conservatives committed to the wholesale expansion of the scheme, resistance must be co-ordinated on a national scale, involving unions, parents and students themselves.
Resistance to education attacks must be rooted in local crisis committees, creating a democratic forum for students and workers alike to co-ordinate local struggles in the community with the same struggles that are happening across the country.
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