From the Teacher Support Network, www.teachersupport.info.

153 SCHOOLS APPLY TO BECOME ACADEMIES

The government announced that 153 schools in England had applied to become academies, with as many as 50 schools expected to apply in September. 2,000 schools are said to have originally expressed an interest in becoming an academy.

Labour has described the number of applications as "a humiliating climb down" by the coalition government, while the government maintains the academy scheme will drive up standards, according to the BBC website.

Speaking at an Education Committee hearing last week Education Secretary Michael Gove said similar arguments had been made against Kenneth Baker's reforms in the 1980s and suggested that exactly the same complaints were being made to today. Those criticisms had been defeated by the evidence and he was confident that the Government's policies would prove similarly successful.

The main teaching unions have also criticised the scheme.

"This does not mean 153 schools will end up as an Academy. The application has to be agreed, a consultation exercise followed and a Governing Body may well change its mind in between an Academy Order being granted and the Funding Agreement signed" said Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National union of Teachers. "The NUT will continue its campaign to persuade governing bodies to remain in their local authority family of schools."

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said "our education system is too important a subject to acting in haste, but repenting at leisure. It would have been far better to have given adequate time for the Bill to be properly debated, to ensure the legislation was right so that schools knew what they were applying for."

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT said "this Secretary of State clearly has a problem with lists. The ones he issues are either inaccurate or irrelevant. This list falls into the latter category. What the public, parents, pupils and staff want to know, and indeed, are entitle to know, is which ones he has approved to become academies on 1 September."

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