Labour plan to end Free Schools and control Academies brings intelligence back to education
Angela Rayner: Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary was set to announce the policy.
Good – this is another common-sense policy from the Labour Party Conference.
Free Schools were nothing more than devices to funnel money away from the state education system – where it was needed – and into the hands of money-grubbing Tories.
They were built where they weren’t needed – or if they did appear where there was a genuine need, they took pupils from elsewhere and overlooked those who lived next door.
They employed unqualified amateurs as teachers and were rocked by scandal after scandal when they repeatedly failed to reach the academic standards required of them.
Under the Tories, Academies have been another method of dumping school pupils into the hands of private companies at the expense of achievement, and at huge cost to local authorities.
No wonder the UK’s education system is an international laughing-stock!
It’s time we went back to doing what works; time our own government stopped trying to undermine students solely because they don’t come from a moneyed background.
We know the nation’s rich has produced generations of imbeciles – Boris Johnson is a product of Eton and Oxford, and look at the state of him.
Now the UK needs the best brains it has, thanks to the monumental blunders of the generation of dimwits – but these have been stifled by the narrow-minded jealousy of the Johnsons of this country.
Labour’s plan will start to turn that situation around and bring intelligence back to education.
Labour would scrap free schools and bring academies under greater local democratic control as part of a plan to unwind Conservative education reforms that it says have created a legacy of “fragmentation and privatisation”.
The new policy will be unveiled by Angela Rayner at the Labour party conference on Monday, the first time that the shadow education secretary has presented her own structural reform plan in her two years in the job.
“The Tories’ academy system is simply not fit for purpose,” Rayner is expected to say. “Labour will end the forced conversion of local schools to academies, scrap the inefficient free school programme and instead focus on delivering what works to get the best results for pupils.”
Labour said that it would allow local authorities to build schools again and halt the free school programme, a flagship initiative of Michael Gove when he was education secretary under the coalition government.
Source: Labour vows to rein in academies and scrap free schools | Politics | The Guardian
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YES – LETS HAVE THE GOOD EDUCATION SYSTEM THAT BLAIR PROMISED BUT NEVER BOTHERED TO CHANGE
Quite right, Education should be run by the State.
Indeedy
Right from the start of this academisation rubbish I have been saying that business has no place in our education system.
Maybe in tertiary education, insofar as loaning/donating the industry standards equipment for training purposes or other specialist equipment/environment. But certainly not in primary or secondary level.
A good move. Sometimes turning back the clock needs to be done
At last some good common sense and decency and good riddance to the profit motive in our children’s education. I would also like to see the “charitable status” for private schools ended.
Being a parent with no option in my area for anything other than awful academies to choose from for my yr6 child for next year with half of the secondary academies in my town being single sex and SO under subscribed (approx 40 chosen each sch for the previous 2 years, even with the children dumped in them by the LA as no spaces left elsewhere) that the controlling MAT has announced plans to merge the 2 schools for Sept 19 intake. This MAT has control of several primary schools locally, took over a further one last year despite huge parent, staff, and public protest, which was all ignored. Children were moved to the schools not in that chain by droves.
You would think the LA would notice and question what was going on. Why 2 secondary schools that were always considered the first choice for well over 50 years, suddenly no one wants to touch with someone else’s 10′ barge pole. But no, instead they are allowed to merge them further reducing the availability of places, when infact we need more secondary school places, having already lost 1 whole school to this academisation farce.
The sooner we have someone thinking pragmatically , about this whole pile of garbage our once enviable education system has become, and willing to get their hands dirty putting the work in to rebuild it the better. Tweaks and changes are just cosmetic sticking plasters, it’s too late for a vanity fix. Our children deserve it, their future needs it!
Here’s hoping that Angela gets to come out of the shadow, and does rebuild the system
They need to get rid of religious schools there is no place for these divisive establishments.