Shame Academy (sorry)
BBC News: MPs call for a halt to academies
The estimated £5bn funding for the government’s academy schools in England should be withheld until they are shown to be cost-effective, MPs have said.
City academies like most, if not all, New Labour initiatives that let private sector companies provide public sector services, is more sleight of hand. Or at least that’s what we’re expected to believe - that the private sector provides the services taking the burden off the Exchequer’s books and, by extension, the taxpayer.
However, like PFI, the academies don’t really make any savings. As the Commons education committee has found:
Academies have cost the Department for Education and Skills between £13m and £38m each, whereas their independent sponsors put in 10% up to a maximum of £2m in return for control of the governing body.
The committee said this averaged £21,000 per pupil - often far more to begin with - compared to £14,000 for a new comprehensive.
In it’s report, Secondary Education (PDF), the committee also said academies were introducing selection by the back door:
“The startling complacency of Government regarding the extent to which its objectives for admissions system are being implemented continues to give cause for concern. The evidence we took during our enquiry idicates a troubling slide away from parents choosing schools for their children and towards schools choosing the pupils they wish to admit.”
The committee recommends that further observation of existing academies is in order before introducing more. The Government disagrees and wants to push ahead. Speaking to Radio 4’s Today programme, Schools Minister Stephen Twigg said, “There is some evidence that there have already been improvements”. But in almost direct contradiction of this, the committee’s conclusions say:
“The specialist schools programme, and more recently the City Academy initiative have added new school types to an already diverse system of secondary education. The Government asserts that this policy will lead to a rise in standards, but it has failed to produce the evidence to support the expansion of its diversity initiatives.”
The idea behind the academies is that philanthropic businesses and businessmen pay £2 million towards an academy’s funding and then have a say in the way it is run.
Like Sir Peter Vardy who’s diversification from being a “Christian fundamentalist car dealer” to sponsor of city academies is documented in John Harris’ excellent So Now Who Do We Vote For? (Guardian extract on city academies).
The Vardy Foundation made contributions to the opening of Emmanuel College in Gateshead and the King’s Academy in Middlesbrough. “Vardy schools accord equal importance to both creationism and theories of evolution,” says Harris. It’s an approach that was given the stamp of approval by OFSTED in 2002. The then head of science, Stephen Layfield - a young earth creationist, at the college made a loop-the-loop speech in which he said, among other things:
Note every occasion when an evolutionary/old-earth paradigm (millions or billions of years) is explicitly mentioned or implied by a text-book, examination question or visitor and courteously point out the fallibility of the statement. Wherever possible, we must give the alternative (always better) Biblical explanation of the same data.
The speech is worth reading in its entirety - it’s dangerous nonsense but there are many laughs to be had along the way.
The Vardy Foundation are seeking opportunities elsewhere in the education system. This could be coming to your town.
But it gets worse. In his piece for the New Statesman, Blair’s flagship schools and the money that never was, Francis Beckett shows that the £2 million sponsors are supposed to foot is more often than not discounted to “as little as £350,000 towards the total capital cost, and at least two have not put in a penny.”
But, Beckett tells us:
The government has helpfully suggested to sponsors that they should ensure their nominees have a majority on the governing body. The sponsor controls the school, the teachers, the curriculum, the admissions and exclusions policies, the design of the buildings, the appointment of the head, and pretty well everything else. The taxpayer pays the piper, but the sponsor calls the tune.
So, like much else that trips off the back of the New Labour fag packet, city academies are not quite what they seems. It’s a wheeze painted as the saviour of British education, but scratch the surface and its a haven for fundamentalist Christians and “altruistic” businessmen who want all the kudos at the minimum possible outlay.
Needless to say, Tony Blair’s kids don’t attend city academies. Only the best for them.
Posted on March 17th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
Excellent summary this. Can’t find anything in your piece to disagree with. I have written myself about this a few times, including something today about the ‘teach the controversy’ bollocks that Vardy and co. are learning from ID-ers in the US. In fact, he repeated it in an interview with Nicky Campbell on 5Live this morning. So much of this academy stuff is shady. Blair is supposedly so enamoured with the private sector’s way of doing things. Well, if you bought 10% of a private company, you certainly wouldn’t have total control of the board of directors. Go figure.