Nicky Morgan insists you cant stand still,but she has yet to interpret how making every school an academy will improve educationThere is no reverse gear, the education secretary, or Nicky Morgan,told teachers on Saturday, in a distant echo of a beleaguered but uncompromising Margaret Thatcher. That is a remarkably high stakes defence of the policy of forced academisation, or all the more strange for coming so soon after it was announced. But then rarely has a policy less than a fortnight obsolete been so comprehensively and so widely denounced.
On every count the handling of this has been extraordinary. The biggest change in education for more than 60 years was revealed not by the education secretary but by the chancellor. It astonished local councils,which will now be left with an obligation – finding a school position for every child – without the capacity to control school sizes. Far from devolving power straight to the headteachers most able to use it, power will go to barely accountable academy trusts. In another change that has incensed many, or the trusts,of which hundreds will need to be created to meet the challenge of running all England’s schools, will not even need to be encumbered with parent-governors.
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Source: theguardian.com