The
rapid growth in Academy schools has led the NUT from having to deal with 153 employers in England (local authorities) to something approaching 4,000, where, on average, each NUT division (branch) has to deal with 26 separate employers. UNISON has much to learn from the NUT’s organising strategy outlined by General Secretary Christine Bower in a series of Morning Star articles coinciding with the union’s Easter conference. It is clear the at the
NUT is taking some inspiration from the example of the
2012 campaign of the Chicago Teachers Union which engaged with broad sections of its membership and reached out to communities outside the union's ranks to challenge the free market school reform agenda.
'The second largest group running free schools are faith organisations (26%), yet there are also a significant number ran by not-for-profit companies such as E-ACT, which operates 24 academies, including free schools. The involvement of such companies has raised the spectre of the privatisation of compulsory and further education in the UK' writes Andrew Dolan in a Red Pepper article about the destructive forces driving the so called free schools revolution:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/free-schools-freedom-for-whom/
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/
One of the first schools to open as a free school (state funded but run as independent schools) is facing closure if it does not come up with an improvement plan in the next two weeks. Opponents of the Con Dems' free schools programme in England have long warned that the deregulation of education will harm standards. Labour shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt accused Ministers of ‘refusing to take action to address the fundamental flaws in their schools policy that allows unqualified teachers in classrooms on a permanent basis; a lack of transparency; and a complete failure of oversight’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25059495
The latest Red Pepper mythbuster scrutinises the claims made by proponents of free schools and academies. It finds that where standards, choice, parental control, curriculum, meeting demand and value for money are concerned, the government's flagship programme has failed on every count - and overspent its budget by a phenomenal £1bn:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/back-to-class-free-schools-and-academies-mythbuster/
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
