Fighting for a local state school for
children & their community
The school has been targeted by the Local Authority for closure and reopening as an Academy, sponsored by the local FE College. The Local Authority was itself we believe bullied into the proposals by the normal Government threat of the withholding of monies for the refurbishment of secondary schools generally (Building schools For the Future) if their “bid” failed to include “academisation”.
Teachers in both NUT and NASUWT have campaigned hard against the proposals, and both have taken strike action over the proposed transfer of their employment to an Academy. Support staff are equally opposed to “academisation”.
Very often, anti-academy campaigns around the country are within the context of children studying and teachers working in a crumbling school, the promise of a new school if the Academy is established, and the threat that they will be left to rot in their old buildings if it is not. In the case of Sinfin, this blackmail cannot be applied. As a result of a major fire two years ago, the school has been completely rebuilt. No new buildings are needed – so the “Academy” debate is not held under that cloud.
It is a straight question. Do we want local community state schools as part of a system of local schools accountable to local people, or do we want to break that system up and create a patchwork of competing independently run education institutions, taking us down the privatisation route?
The campaign has been very successful. The Senior Management Team of the school now oppose the Academy, particularly due to their realisation that the popular and respected Headteacher would have to reapply for his job should the proposals go through.
Through active campaigning in the local community, the views of parents have radically changed as they have realised that the “spin” from Appleyard, the PR/management consultancy that has been employed at an undisclosed figure to sell the Academy plan to them, is very far from reality.
The “justification” for the Academy plan is that the school is “unlikely” to continue to hit the “benchmark” of 30% of pupils getting at least 5 A-C grade GCSEs, though that “target” has been achieved this year.
The Local Authority, the College sponsor and the spin doctors refer darkly to “statistics” and “projections” which suggest that the results will “dip” unless “radical action” (ie the Academy) is taken. They mean that many of the local children suffer the effects of economic and social disadvantage which result in underachievement. The “radical action”? An Academy that “bands” its pupil intake in order to ensure that the proportion of underachievers is reduced. The result – the improvement in results… by the exclusion of many local children. This is how Academies generally seek to improve their results to justify their existence - as is revealed even by the government’s own bought-and-paid-for very recent “evaluation” by Price Waterhouse Cooper of the system nationally.
Not unnaturally both students and local parents are up in arms about this. Nearly every pupil in the school has signed a petition against the Academy – and the recent 200+ strong public consultation meeting gave the proponents of the Academy a really tough time. When the extent of local opposition became obvious, the Chair of Governors made it clear that the governing body would have to “think again”. Towards the end of the meeting a pupil’s mother - who had organised some parental opposition to the teacher strikes - declared herself convinced by the “passion and power of the arguments of the people here”, and said that, though she had been 80% for the Academy at the beginning of the meeting, she was now opposed to it. The organisers of the meeting were roundly condemned for having refused to allow anyone opposed to the Academy to speak from the platform, and the representative of UNISON was widely applauded for asking, “If this is such a great idea, why do you have to employ a PR advertising agency to sell it to people?” He demanded that the matter be put to the vote in the meeting, to which the platform finally agreed. The vote was unanimous against the Academy.
The very next day, the Governors withdrew their support for the plan.
In the light of the opposition from teachers and SMT, from support staff, from pupils, parents and now the governors, the Local Authority and the College sponsor have decided to… carry on regardless!
Next steps in the campaign are under discussion. The question of the Academy has raised with people the central question of the nature of schools and the education system – and the way in which the proponents of the academy have shown and continue to show a lack of concern for the views of everyone involves is an indicator of just how undemocratic and unaccountable Academy schools and the whole Academies programme really is.