schools - twin blow to academies
WORKERS, JUNE 2005 ISSUE
THE GOVERNMENT'S academies programme received two hammer blows in May with the news that the Unity City Academy in Middlesbrough has been described by Ofsted as "failing to provide a good education" — and that staff at the flagship academy were balloting on industrial action against plans to cut jobs and introduce new contracts. The NASUWT says that the academy is planning to cut around 20 of its 98 jobs.
Academies were trumpeted as the way forward for struggling schools, usually in particularly deprived areas, and Unity was a flagship, one of the first three to be opened in 2002.
But the academies concept has a fault-line running right through it. Essentially, the thinking goes like this. Take a failing school, rebuild it as a state of the art modern facility (typically £20 million), and hey presto, problem solved — an expensive facelift that ignores the factors which caused the school to have difficulties in the first place.
These schools are required to raise £2 million from private sponsors, who can then use the school as a platform for the promotion of their own beliefs — hence the proliferation of academies that offer 'creationism' and other Bible-inspired theories as part of their core curriculum.
Despite protestations of good intentions, academies are not subject to the normal requirements of a school — such as employing qualified teachers and paying them the nationally agreed rate.