Academies & trust schools: Tories back New Labour scheme |
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Westminster City Council, securely Tory since the mid 1980.s, has embraced New Labour’s City Academy proposals. It is within sight of abolishing all state secondary schools by turning them into Trusts or Academies. The aim is to abolish itself as an education authority, to reduce the role of the Council to the smallest scale possible, perhaps a few meetings per year to set the contracts and review the performance of the outsourced service providers. The effect, of course, would not be to end “political” involvement in local government, but merely to bury it in legal details understood only by lawyers but hidden from democratic scrutiny. No surprise then it was to Westminster that neo-liberal prophet, Tony Blair came to unveil his plans for Trust Schools, essentially schools paid for by the state but owned and run by charitable trusts. His visit to Quinton Kynaston School was greeted by a large anti-war demo mainly made up of pupils. Unfortunately for the warmonger, his stance on the Israeli attack on Lebanon the month before, meant he was forced by a half-hearted party revolt to declare that he was leaving office even as he praised Trusts. Now the Head of Quinton Kynaston is installed as the Interim Head of Pimlico School at the other end of the borough, itself threatened with being turned into an Academy. Should the Council and Lord Adonis succeed in privatising both schools, there will be no state secondary schools left in the borough. 10 years ago Pimlico parents and teachers fought off an attempt by the Council, aided by then Chair of Governors, Jack Straw, to hand the school over to a developer under the discredited PFI scheme, an early attempt by New Labour to lever schools into the private sector. Last September, North Westminster Community School was closed and given over to 2 Academies, one to the United Learning Trust, an offshoot of the Church of England; the other, to a Hong Kong based property developer, Chelsfield, which was involved in the lucrative Paddington Basin development. Chelsfield itself was by then sold on to the owners of Multiplex, of Wembley Stadium repute. It’s long been the case that education policy in Westminster is almost entirely driven by property interests. In many ways that is the essence of neo-liberalism, indeed of liberalism itself: freeing the “rights” of property from the tiresome constraints of democracy. Combined with this respectful attitude to property rights, is Christian evangelising. Here, ULT Chair Sir Euan Harper’s closeness to Blair gives them an inside track when it comes to promoting academies. Six of the eight Westminster secondaries are now denominational schools - all Christian. Laughably, ULT Paddington is described by the Council as non-denominational, despite its “Christian” ethos. Imagine the reaction if a Muslim school similarly claimed to be "nondenominational". The third essential in the Westminster triangle is finance capital. Absolute Return for Kids (ARK) the charitable offshoot of a hedge fund is about to open a two-form entry 4 - 18 Academy on the remaining site of North Westminster Community School. ARK’s declared purpose is to open a chain of cut-price state funded private schools. State schools are denied the largesse available to Academies and Trusts. True to form, the Labour opposition confines itself to point scoring over the Tories. While correctly pointing out that the Tories have already made up their minds to turn Pimlico into an Academy, thereby making a mockery of the current consultation process, Labour is using the threat of an Academy to try to railroad through Blair’s trust proposals. MP Karen Buck has declared her support for Academies, despite having to (briefly) withdraw her son from the school because of the state it was in. Like the campaign to defend Council Housing, opposition to academies is beginning to snowball. A House of Commons enquiry on June 12th heard from campaigns across England. In Brent, campaigners are camping out on the site of a proposed ARK Academy. Despite imaginative and vigorous efforts, campaigners have not always won, especially given the pressure exerted by the DfES who refuse grant funding for schools if local authorities don’t come up with proposals for Academies or Trusts. In order to win, the anti academies campaign needs an explicit political platform to knit together the diverse strands that make it up. The Westminster experience is that New Labour under Brown will not be that vehicle. |
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