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Academies - why not

Sally Kincaid knows from experience what happens when schools opt out of local authority control. She makes the case against academies.

Less than three weeks into the new coalition government, Education Secretary Michael Gove attempted to extend the academies programme to over 2,000 schools by inviting the head teachers of these schools to move to academy status.

The letter, also sent to the heads of primary and special schools, encouraged schools to acquire several “freedoms”, including the ability to set their own pay and conditions for staff, freedom from following the national curriculum, and the ability to change the length of terms and school days.

This is the most serious attack on comprehensive education for many years. As an ex-further education (FE) lecturer who went through the incorporation of FE colleges in the early 1990s, I know from experience the effect this had on pay and conditions.

Before incorporation, FE lecturers were paid on average slightly more than school teachers. Now the reverse is true – lecturers receive on average 10 per cent less. Holidays were slashed, with lecturers losing up to five weeks. Over 40 per cent of FE lecturers now work on fixed-term or casual contracts.

Michael Gove is attempting to use the expansion of academies to break national pay and conditions for all teachers in the same way.

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