Continued from page 12


 


Page 13


Save our schools


 


Academy fairy tales


Aren’t working conditions better in academies?


 All the evidence shows that the majority of teachers in academies face the threat of greater workload, more and longer working days, Saturday sessions and greater difficulties in pay progression.


Don’t teachers get paid more in academies?


Academy principals are certainly paid more than most head teachers. For other teachers, higher pay is usually only offered in return for longer working hours or to a few selected staff.


Aren’t academies more accountable to the taxpayer?


Academies are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, nor to local authority accountability structures. Securing information on salaries, funding, budget expenditure and operational policies can, therefore, be extremely difficult.


Transferring to academy status will also take a school’s publicly funded assets – buildings, land and so on – out of public ownership. And the government says that once a school has left local authority control it can never go back.


Don’t academies raise standards? 


There is no evidence that academies are more effective at raising standards than other types of school. A five-year study, commissioned by the previous government and carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, concluded: “There is insufficient evidence to make a definitive judgement about academies as a model for school improvement.”


Don’t parents and staff have more say in the running of academies?


The governance arrangements of many academies exclude parent and staff representatives. There is a requirement for one parent rep in an academy (parents make up a third of the governing body in maintained community schools), and this sole parent rep is appointed rather than elected.


For answers to other frequently asked questions on academies, go to www.teachers.org.uk/academies.


 


The truth about free schools


The government has also announced plans to allow parents and community groups to set up Swedish-style ‘free schools’ – independent schools funded with public money. Michael Gove and his colleagues are citing spurious evidence from Sweden and the USA on the benefits of free schools – arguments vigorously rebutted by the NUT.


Myth 1: Free schools raise standards


The introduction of free schools in Sweden has coincided with a 20-year decline in academic standards. In May this year, Swedish education minister Bertil Ostberg said free schools in Sweden have been a failure and warned the British government not to introduce them. Mr Ostberg told the Sunday Mirror:


“We have actually seen a fall in the quality of Swedish schools since the free schools were introduced… The free schools are generally attended by children of better educated and wealthy families, making things even more diffi cult for children attending ordinary schools in poor areas.”


Myth 2: Free schools are in demand


An Ipsos Mori poll published in April found that most of the public want state-funded schools to be kept public and run by government. A mere 5 per cent supported the establishment of free schools.


In Sweden, free schools were established to introduce parental and student choice in a system where, until the early 1990s, all children attended their local municipal school.


This is not the case in England, where there is already a wide choice of school types – maintained community schools, grammars, voluntary aided schools and academies, to name just a few.


There is no positive evidence that competition lifts educational standards. There is also much negative evidence that it reduces equity, with pupils’ educational outcomes more likely to be affected by their socio-economic background, as well as by factors such as ethnicity and gender. In Finland, the country that reaches the highest standards and achieves the best equity, there is no competition within the education system.






Myth 3: Free schools will benefit the less well-off


The government frequently cites ‘charter schools’ in the US as a model of free schools for the UK to follow. The US education system is far more segregated than that in the UK. Charter schools in mainly urban areas have appealed to poorer and predominantly ethnic minority families who have traditionally been unable to access, or felt let down by, some of the better public schools.


In England, a leading education lawyer, Graham Burns, is acting on behalf of three groups of parents who wish to establish their own parent-led free schools. He told The Guardian that parents from poor neighbourhoods will be unable to benefit from the policy because they lack the money and influential friends needed to plan for a new school.


A guide for parents issued by the new Schools Network, which is advising parents wishing to set up their own schools, suggests that parents “try and find a lawyer and an accountant who are parents and are interested in your idea”. It also recommends parents are credit-checked, which could rule out those on lower incomes.

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