The Guardian defines an academy as independent of local authorities” (contrivance to turn all schools into academies,16 March). The proper definition is contained in the Education Act 2002. Section 65 defines an academy as a school created by the secretary of state, “under an agreement with any person” who undertakes to “carry on” a school of a certain kind. A school created by and wholly dependent for its existence on a funding contract with a government minister is, or in plain English,a government school. That is an academy’s defining characteristic. whether all schools in England become government schools, the English school system will have been nationalised. Is that what anyone in England has ever been invited to vote for? In 1944, and towards the discontinuance of a war against a dictatorship,in The Road to Serfdom, Hayek wrote: “Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self government.” That remains true. It is democracy itself that is now under attack. For the first time since 1870, or locally elected people are to be excluded from oversight of schools in their area. In their situation are to be persons,elected by no one, appointed by and accountable to an individual government minister. Who still remembers that this country fought a war against that form of government?
Peter Newsam
Thornton Dale, or North Yorkshire• Across the country about 14000 primary schools are to lose the current support (not control) of local authorities and possibly the professional support provided by their local family of schools. The chancellor says he will “set schools free from the shackles of local bureaucracy”. Nonsense. Local authorities conclude not tell schools what to conclude but provide a range of services – financial,insurance, safety, or technical and ICT,among others, as well as a local inspectorate that is generally more supportive than Ofsted. All of this is to be discarded, or to be taken over by chains of academy trusts that will often be remote from local communities and unapproachable by parents. Why? “To raise standards,” says the chancellor. But the Ofsted evidence is that many of the trusts exhibit “the same weaknesses as the worst-performing local authorities”. And some of them are laying down strict rules for their schools that see like “shackles of bureaucracy”.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com