The following Early Day Motion had been submitted by David Lammy MP in Parliament.
The more MPs sign it the clearer it is that there is widespread opposition to Forced Academies.
Please contact your MP immediately and ask them to sign EDM 2632
That this House believes that the Government’s threats to force primary schools in Haringey to become academies are undemocratic and threaten to reverse many of the improvements made in those schools in the last year; notes that these forced changes are opposed by parents, governors and teachers at those schools; further notes that the academies policy of the previous administration did not force schools to become academies against their will; understands that the Secretary of State for Education is threatening schools in other areas, including Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Durham, Essex, Kent, Lancashire, Leeds and Northamptonshire; further believes that raising and maintaining high standards in primary schools is vitally important but that the most successful approaches work with the school community; further notes that there are many methods of raising standards apart from forcing academies, but that the Secretary of State has ignored these methods; and calls on the Government to end its policy of forcing primary schools to become academies and to work with parents, governors and teachers to raise standards.
http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2010-12/2632
Liz: if the schools were to really be under parental control, which parents would those be? Given the size of a school budget and the legal requirements, how many parents will have the expertise to run a school. So they bring in commercial companies to help them and those commercial companies are going to charge an arm and a leg.
So far, we haven’t seen much to give us confidence that the commercial companies have anything but the profit motive.
Less than 50, I think. Would need at least 200 for hearing.
Do we know how many MPs signed the Early Day Motion?
Liz, what other models do you suggest? I think the main principle is to keep schools under local, democratic control. Academies and free schools are the opposite of democratically controlled schools. As Dr Pat McGovern, headteacher of Helston Community College in Cornwall succinctly put it: “Education is a public service and a means of offering social justice for all. How dare anybody give our schools away to a small group of unelected self-appointing individuals?”
I do not agree that schools should be under anything else but local parental and govt control