Why Labour needs to commit to LEA accountability

It is not surprising that the Academy experiment is showing serious signs of failure. Deregulated education models, a laissez faire approach to standards and replacing experienced education professionals with enthusiastic amateurs is a recipe for the failure we are now seeing with no less than ten E-Act academy schools seeking ‘new sponsors’ after Ofsted raised serious concerns.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-26335206

Free schools & academies have no part to play in a democratic society

Next month Labour’s national policy forum will publish new consultation papers before a final forum meeting in July agrees basis of the manifesto for the 2015 general election. There is no shortage of Con Dem destruction to make good and nowhere more so than in the state education system in England. Graham Lane, writing in Tribune, makes a compelling case for a future Labour government to abolish academy chains and free schools: ‘Labour should make it clear that the privatisation of the delivery of education is not appropriate for a democracy. That means free schools and academies have no part to play in a democratic society’
http://www.tribunemagazine.org/2014/01/undemocratic-free-schools-and-academies-must-go/

Labour's embrace of 'parent-led' academies is a retrograde step

This is what happens when you put public school boys in charge of policies they have no concept of understanding. As a product of University College School Tristram’s view of the world is clouded by an idealistic education that so called independent ‘parent led’ schools will not and do not now replicate. Will it be the parents of children from households where no one is working, living on a sprawling council estate that will get together to form parent led independent schools or it will be the sharp-elbowed middle-classes sucking the life blood from scarce local resources that take up this so called offer of support? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24510283

Mass Academies programme a waste of public money

Ahead of the Spending Review planned for 26 June, former Labour Minister John Healey highlights the trail of destruction waged on the state education system by the ConDems and questions the waste of £100's of millions of public money. ‘After three years, the evidence on cost simply doesn’t support the government’s flagship policy of mass academies. The independent Academies Commission, in the most in-depth study of the academies and free schools programme so far, found substantial progress among many Labour-era 'sponsor academies', but no marked evidence of improvement in more recent waves’
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/its-time-hold-ministers-account-their-waste-public-money-starting-gove

Academies are Tory Trojan Horses

Excellent analysis of the profit motive which is driving the growth of academies and the decline of public education in the UK, by Trevor Fisher writing on the New Statesman blog. 'Academies and free schools are Trojan Horses exploited by the right of the Conservative Party. It is far from likely that they deliver better educational outcomes in the majority of cases. But they will deliver guaranteed profits as they have done in Sweden and the USA.'  http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/03/free-schools-profit-education

Lowdown on the ‘Underperforming’ Academy Sponsors

The Con Dem Education Minister Michael Gove has named 96 Primary schools and 65 secondary schools which are to become sponsored academies.
The Anti Academies Alliance examines the credentials of those empire-building organisations taking over the schools branded in derogatory terms as ‘underperforming’ by Gove and finds that all that glisters is not gold: http://antiacademies.org.uk/2012/03/who-is-gove-giving-our-primary-schools-to/

Academies and the rise of the 'education services market'

'Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence (in education) by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity’, writes Anu Partanen in the Atlantic magazine, comparing its success with the failed marketised model in the USA. Unfortunately, it’s the latter which is the blueprint for the Con Dem’s burgeoning academies programme in England: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

Academies two tier workforce - salary pay outs and wages cuts

The Guardian reports today that Charities that run chains of academy schools are using public funds to pay senior staff six-figure salaries, with some on £240,000 or more. http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/nov/14/academies-pay-200k-salaries?CMP=twt_gu