The Government’s scrapping of school rebuilding and its plans to encourage thousands of state schools to become academies could face opposition from a new alliance of trade unions, school governors, parents and teachers.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber promised this week to “co-ordinate joint action in the weeks and months ahead” in opposition to the Academies Bill, which could see more than 1,000 schools given academy status before the school year starts in September. The bill is being rushed through Parliament in the space of a week.
Unions and anti-academy campaigners say the new academies will disadvantage state schools as increasing numbers recoup money from local authorities.
But the TUC and the National Union of Teachers fear academies will be tougher on teachers’ conditions of service and less willing to give time off for union activities.
Meanwhile, anger has continued at the cancellation of 700 school rebuilding projects under Building Schools for the Future. Over 650 union activists, teachers, parents and pupils converged on London for a rally to protest at the consequences for their schools.
Gordon Philips, head of Meadows Sports College in Sandwell, where most schools have been affected by the abolition of BSF, told Tribune his special needs school had been deprived of £2 million for a bespoke IT system for disabled pupils. “We’re still viable, but with the nature of the students coming in, it’s going to be more and more challenging to meet their needs.”
Shadow Education Secretary Ed Balls attacked the planned roll-out of academies. He said: “They’re taking a policy which was about supporting the most underperforming schools and saying they’re going to give extra resources to the most successful schools… in affluent areas.”
And TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “These are reforms driven by dogma, not by evidence, and the consequences could be devastating. Not just the loss of accountability to local communities and the effective dismantling of state schools, but the diversion of limited funds away from schools which remain in local authority control to those who choose to opt out.”
The Academies Bill, set to become law by the end of next week, will allow schools to apply for academy status without consulting their local council.
Schools rated outstanding by regulator Ofsted will have the process fast-tracked so that they become academies by the autumn. Some 1,038 such schools have already expressed an interest.
The NUT this week expressed alarm at Department for Education figures for the amount of funding academies can recoup from councils, in return for council services lost by a school converting to an academy. The union says some councils have found the figures to be several times higher than current amounts.
