Is English schools’ academisation plan electoral suicide for Conservative councillors?

Last Updated: April 3, 2016By
Graham Brady has warned education secretary Nicky Morgan not to rush the academy proposals through parrliament [Image: Paul Cooper/Rex/Shutterstock].

Graham Brady has warned education secretary Nicky Morgan not to rush the academy proposals through parrliament [Image: Paul Cooper/Rex/Shutterstock].

The growing opposition to ‘Thicky’ Nicky Morgan’s academisation plans has now grown into several distinct arguments.

There’s the issue of schools being run by “distant bureaucracies”, as described by Mr Brady. Obviously this implies a restriction of choice, which contradicts the Conservative Party’s claim to be the party of choice.

There’s the matter of cost – more than £1 billion more than was set aside for the project? Thicky Nicky needs to go back to her maths class, it seems! Perhaps she thinks it’s a price worth paying to put more than £60 billion of publicly-owned assets in the hands of private companies, who will pay nothing for them.

There’s the issue of reduced accountability, with parents being forcibly removed from school governing bodies.

But more pressing than all of these, for Conservative councillors who have banded together with rivals from Labour and the Liberal Democrats, is the concern that this policy will spell electoral disaster for them in May.

English voters go to the polls in May for council elections, and This Writer reckons Conservative members of local authorities can see the writing on the wall for them. It spells “Tories out!” if this policy goes ahead.

Ah, but Thicky Nicky has already announced that there can be no rethink, and all publicly-funded English schools will become privatised academies by 2022.

She’s between a rock and a hard place now. Can we hope for another cabinet departure in the next few days?

The leader of the backbench Conservatives at Westminster has raised serious concerns about plans to force all state schools to become academies by 2022, in a blow to government hopes of forcing them on to the statute book.

In a sign of the depth of Tory unrest, Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee, said the plans announced by George Osborne could lead to the creation of “new and distant bureaucracies” rather than delivering greater freedom and autonomy for schools. He also said they could have the unwelcome effect of removing parents from governing bodies and reducing accountability.

Brady, who spoke out as new data suggested the reorganisation could cost more than £1.3bn, is writing to education secretary Nicky Morgan in the hope that the proposals spelled out in the recent education white paper can be changed. He also wants reassurances from Morgan that the plans will not be rushed through parliament – suggesting that without a rethink they could trigger a backbench Tory rebellion.

On Friday night the row escalated as new parliamentary answers provided by the minister for children and families, Edward Timpson, suggested ministers face a £1bn-plus funding “black hole” to pay for the plans. In answer to a question by Labour MP Jess Phillips about how much the Department for Education had already spent on converting schools to academies, Timpson revealed that the total bill for converting 4,897 schools has been £323m since 2010.

This works out at an average cost per school of just under £66,000. Were the average cost to remain the same, the bill for converting the remaining 16,800 schools would be more than £1.1bn. Only £140m was announced to fund the plans in Osborne’s March budget.

A Department for Education spokesperson hit back at claims that the plans were underfunded, saying: “It is untrue to suggest there will be a shortfall of funding for our academisation plans. As set out in the spending review, and in last month’s budget, we have enough funding to support a high-quality, fully academised school system. We have over £500m available in this parliament to build capacity in the system – including recruiting excellent sponsors and encouraging the development of strong multi-academy trusts.”

But Labour insisted that, of the £640m in the budget red book, £500m had been set aside for the separate transition to a fairer funding formula for schools, leaving ministers with a funding “black hole” of more than £1bn over the next six years.

Source: Tory backbench rebellion threat over George Osborne’s academies plan | Education | The Guardian

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(
but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

latest video

news via inbox

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

4 Comments

  1. shawn April 3, 2016 at 5:54 pm - Reply

    This works out at an average cost per school of just under £66,000. Were the average cost to remain the same, the bill for converting the remaining 16,800 schools would be more than £1.1bn. Only £140m was announced to fund the plans in Osborne’s March budget. In allowing some savings through economies of scale, the £140 announced by our none to economically aware. Chancellor Osborne, is a long way short of £1.1 billion.
    If a lot this money was not being funded by cuts to the disabled and poor it could almost force a smile out of me.

  2. Terry Davies April 3, 2016 at 6:02 pm - Reply

    thicky nicky is a follower and not endowed with much ability as an MP. she is clearly not able to think constructively relying on thicky Osborne and others to do her thinking and there is now panic in the tory ranks. councillors know that the academies are not best for education of the workers. her plans are those put forward by Cameron and Odborne. she is the cannon fodder for the political flak and reaction of the majority who are affected by the privatisation of schools directly.

  3. John April 3, 2016 at 6:33 pm - Reply

    I know that this post refers to COUNCIL elections (and not local MPs, general election), but you’d think/hope that the Tories have done enough damage in this country already (never mind academies!), to guarantee that the Tories get pretty much wiped out wherever they are !

  4. Michael Broadhurst April 4, 2016 at 1:00 pm - Reply

    hope they do get wiped out wherever.

Leave A Comment