NUT: It is extraordinary how the D of E can browbeat schools into accepting academy status
Commenting on the drive to convert Lancashire primary schools into academies, Christine Blower, General Secretary for the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union said:
“It is extraordinary that the Department of Education has to continually cajole, brow beat or bribe local authorities and schools into accepting academy status. The facts speak for themselves. Academy status does not per se raise standards.
“All the evidence, including that published by the DfE, shows that GCSE attainment by pupils in academies is no different from that in maintained schools. It is one thing for schools to work together sharing best practice through proper support systems but quite another to pursue the wholesale privatisation of our education system.
“If the Education Secretary really cared about supporting schools and pupils he would not be diverting scarce school funding into a few free schools which are neither needed nor wanted. Instead he would be investing in improving our dilapidated school buildings, raising the morale of teachers by ending the continuous attacks upon them and attracting more young people into the profession with decent pay and pensions.
“This policy to seek to make all schools academies is Michael Gove’s agenda. He should come clean and simply state that his true ambition is to privatise schools in England”.
END PR120-2012
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