January 12: Academies under Carter's scrutiny
Comments |
ARE secondary school
academies achieving what they ought to be?
Not my question but one that the leader of
Kent County Council Paul Carter rhetorically asked
when he expressed what amounted to some fairly substantial and
far-reaching reservations about the Government’s flagship education
policy earlier this week.
Read our story:
Academies under the spotlight>>>
His misgivings centred on several aspects of
academies, notably the ability of schools to use their relative
freedoms over admissions to refuse places to some of the county’s
most vulnerable children; their high rate of exclusions and
crucially, their results.
Behind all of these entirely legitimate and
pertinent points, there is another issue which he touched on rather
more opaguely – namely the fact that to all intents and purposes,
KCC has all but lost control over the academies it has supported
setting up, notwithstanding its claim that as a co-sponsor it has
retained an ability to influence them.
I’ve heard that there are a number of
Conservatives at County Hall who share these reservations about
academies and have been particularly irked by the degree of
autonomy they have handed to schools they used to be responsible
for and any influence they exert is marginal verging on
non-existent (although you might be entitled to ask they should
have seen it coming).
There’s a certain irony that the leader of the
largest Conservative controlled education authority has drawn an
unfavourable comparison with the former grant maintained system,
which under Margaret Thatcher, allowed secondary schools to opt out
of council control. Mrs Thatcher, of course, introduced the policy
to liberate schools from what she perceived as the malign influence
of left-wing education authorities.
Nationally, David Cameron says that a future
Conservative government wants to extend the number of academies
beyond Labour’s aim for 400.
He might just find that he has some doubters
in his ranks in Kent.
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Academies may be directly funded when they are set up but the
costs of setting the process running falls to councils. KCC's
latest batch of five academies will cost it at least £3million in
fees in two years.
Another reason perhaps why the Conservatives are rankled -
authorities pave the way with their money to see schools leave
them.
Tuesday, January 12 2010
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