The specialist schools programme which from September will account for almost 2500 secondary schools in
Posted in General on 03. Sep, 2010
The specialist schools programme, which, from September, will account for almost 2,500 secondary schools in England, seems far better value for money. The academies programme is without doubt a means of spreading the influence of faith schools in the education system.Indeed, with the controversy attached to millionaire business leaders receiving peerages for cash, the academies movement may have to be even more reliant on Christian backers if Mr Blair is to reach his target.The key question is: will they improve standards to the extent ministers claim and are they value for money? It would be wrong to judge them on the standards issue just yet – as we should wait until pupils taking their GCSE’s have spent their whole secondary school lives at an academy rather than two years in one and three years in a failing comprehensive.Are they value for money? On that ground, I think the answer has to be no (the typical academy has £2m worth of private sponsorship plus £20m of government capital funding thereby making the whole programme worth £5bn). What is unarguably true is that the academies movement is very Christian- based, with 42 of the present 100 in the planning stage having Christian backers. Existing academies do take great care over admissions (some use banding which ensures they take an equal number of children from each of several different ability bands).On the first complaint, while ministers have conceded there should be a vetting system for potential sponsors, it is worrying if the creationists can slip through the net. They are worried that they could become elitist and select their pupils. As a result, the NUT passed a motion at its annual conference at Torquay calling for strikes in schools which are seeking to become academies – or the new “trust” schools planned in the Government’s current education legislation – if there are any attempts to interfere with their working conditions.Their fears on the second score are groundless.
Yes, the majority of the 16 who have already educated pupils to GCSE level have significantly improved the percentage of pupils getting five A* to C grade passes.
Many of them are, though, still amongst the worst performing schools in the country and – when you look at the Government’s new league table measure of insisting all schools record the percentage of pupils with five top grade passes including maths and English, their performance tails off. They are, it seems, relying on an old wheeze of putting pupils in for vocational qualifications – deemed to be worth four GCSE’s – to boost their performance in the league tables.The reason the academies spark so much venom from teachers’ leaders – notably the National Union of Teachers – is the power that is handed over to the academy sponsors. For a £2m outlay, you can control the governing body and determine what is included in the curriculum. There is already widespread concern over allegations that academies and the City Technology College sponsored by the Christian evangelist, Sir Peter Vardy, are teaching creationism alongside evolution in science lessons.Teachers’ leaders argue that it is wrong that millionaires can fork out £2m to – as Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the NUT, so graphically put it, “peddle their prejudices” to pupils.
What research there is about them at present paints a mixed picture. On the one hand, the teachers’ unions believe their very existence will destroy any last vestiges of the comprehensive education system. On the other, ministers insist they’re the only way you can improve standards in our most deprived inner-city areas. We are talking about Tony Blair’s independently run state-financed academies and, as ever, the truth is somewhere in between At present, there are 27 of them up and running.
Mr Blair hopes to have 200 in place by the end of the decade. Listening to Ms Hodge and Mr Cruddas might be a good starting point – provided they are not silenced by the rest of the political establishment.mrbrown talktalk . If normally loyal Labour voters are turning to the BNP along with former Tories (because sometimes there are not even Tory candidates), there is a message to the main parties.Blaming voters for doing the wrong thing is not usually the best way to win them back to the mainstream. But it is inevitably the case that, if local services are completely overwhelmed, there will be resentment at the ballot box where the shoe pinches hardest.The worst response of all is to attack the voters.
Ritual denunciations of the BNP the morning after the night before are usually the best recruiting ground for a further BNP advance in the future. It seems a patently natural response for voters in areas of sudden demographic change to get hot under the collar if they now have to wait 10 days for a GP’s appointment, if they are denied their previous place on the social housing list, and if the character of the classroom is so changed that within two years English is no longer the first language.I doubt that white Dagenham and Barking voters are any more racist than their counterparts elsewhere in London where integration has over time proved successful. To get a front-bench Tory to muse on the current debate is impossible.”The Conservatives refused to comment” was invariably the last sentence of every newspaper article of the past few days since Ms Hodge gave her interview. But as Ann Widdecombe noted yesterday, race and immigration have often been the sleeper issues on the doorstep.Three related issues stand out for the main parties to ameliorate voters’ concerns: health, housing and education. Michael Howard raised the issue of race and immigration to the exclusion of the rest of his agenda. The swing voters reacted badly, so now anything to do with race, asylum and immigration is, like tax and Europe, off the Tory political agenda. For the Tories, the same game is being played, and there was a hint of criticism in yesterday’s interview on Today by Iain Duncan Smith – who represents neighbouring Chingford – that the Tory party leadership’s obsession, also, with only swing voters has caused the Tories to vacate the field in Labour areas of disaffection, leaving the pitch clear for the BNP.The Tory party’s problems in handling the BNP are compounded by their recent experiences in the last general election.