Posts Tagged ‘Academies’
Planning of school places should rest with local, not central, government
Children packed like sardines, foreigners flooding in, temporary classrooms crowding out play space. The language used to illustrate the current chronic shortage of primary school places in England is emotive. And understandably so. The fear of not getting a school place for your child strikes at the heart at every parent. The fact that we […]
Exporting academies won’t benefit English children
You have to hand it to the coalition; it would appear that nothing will deflect ministers from their pet plan to make money from schools. It is less than a month since David Cameron’s plan to allow English academies and free schools to sell places to overseas students was leaked then promptly disowned largely due […]
Gove and Glasman at the LSE. Is the stakeholder model of governance coming back?
Last night I went to an interesting debate at the London School of Economics. The Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove and Labour peer Lord Glasman , author of Blue Labour and involved in the party’s policy review, were discussing who “owns” the concept of One Nation, originated by Benjamin Disraeli and appropriated by Labour leader Ed Miliband […]
Labour should subvert the Tory academy programme to end selection
A shorter version of this article appears in the Guardian today I am sure I wasn’t alone in feeling a profound sense of gloom on hearing that the go-ahead has been given for what will effectively be a new grammar school in the Kent town of Sevenoaks. For the last fifteen years too many people, […]
Why we should support the parents at Downhills Primary School
Earlier this week I went to speak at a public meeting at Downhills Primary School in Tottenham. The school is being faced with ‘forced academisation’ by the government even though according to several external indicators (HMI visit and league tables) it is starting to improve. Between 2009 and 2011 the schools KS2 SATs results increasing […]
Sneaky changes to the Admissions Code herald a return to the bad old days
First published in the Guardian Some months ago the Government began a consultation on the new School Admissions Code. It came after months of nods and winks about the need to streamline the overly bureaucratic regulatory framework of the Labour years. Since its introduction in the late 1990s, the Admissions Code has undergone several incarnations. […]
How Labour could respond to the Coalition’s education reforms
Some months ago I was asked to deliver a lecture to Labour Party members, and others, in David Cameron’s constituency of West Oxfordshire about how Labour should respond to the Coalition’s education reforms. The lecture was part of a series and in memory of local activist, campaigner and educationalist Brian Hodgson. It was chaired by […]
There is no plan B for schools
Last month I wrote in the Guardian about Michael Gove’s speech to the Tory Party conference. He opened his remarks by saying he wanted to tell his audience “what was changing”. I was on a train at the time and as I struggled to make a satisfactory internet connection to hear the rest of the […]
