Save our education

Stop these academies

COVENTRY’S COMPREHENSIVE education is under attack. Coventry city
council recently announced proposals to turn three of our secondary
schools into two City Academies.

Jane Nellist, Coventry NUT (personal capacity)

Councils are being held to ransom by the government into accepting
City Academies in return for extra funding to re-build or re-furbish our
other schools.

Woodway Park Secondary School has been selected as one of the
schools, the sponsor being a multi-millionaire Christian fundamentalist
who will undoubtedly seek to impose his own religious views on the
school for an outlay of just £2 million.

The sponsor Bob Edmiston, a car dealer, already owns multiple radio
stations that beam out his religious rantings to millions of people. He
already has one City Academy in Chelmsley Wood, Solihull and wants to
establish three!

The second academy is proposed for a new, multi-million pound
redevelopment by merging two schools, Barrs’ Hill and Sidney Stringer.
In this case, no sponsor has yet been identified. We could go through an
absurd public consultation in September without knowing who the sponsor
is likely to be! How’s that for democracy?

After much debate in the local paper, some Labour Party councillors
and members are clearly unhappy with the proposals from the Conservative
ruling group on the council – even though it is the Labour government
that is actively pushing these academies!

If these schools are established, it will be disastrous for education
in this city. The government intends to create privately run City
Academies in every city and town across the country.

Over £3 billion has been set aside for this ‘Blair’ project. Our
demand must be that we have that money to rebuild our schools without
any strings attached – that means no City Academies and no PFI!


COUNCILLORS FROM all the mainstream parties voted at a recent Waltham
Forest School Organisation Committee (SOC) meeting to close McEntee
Secondary School, which had seen off an earlier attempt to set up an
academy. This time the United Learning Trust (ULT), a subsidiary of the
Church Schools Company, wants to set up an academy.

Many people at the meeting feared that, if they rejected this
proposal, the £25 million earmarked for McEntee in the Treasury would
not only be with-held for McEntee itself, but also for the refurbishment
of all secondary schools in the borough. Most people would call
that blackmail.

Two other interest groups voted against the proposal – the schools
group, made up of governors and more directly associated with education
on the ground than councillors, and, amazingly, the group representing
the Church of England, which says ULT has only very tenuous links with
them.

Privatisations everywhere are cloaked in commercial secrecy. But it
appears that private school outfit ULT, already owning nine private
fee-paying schools, is looking to expand its empire. Its stated aim is
to own 100 schools.