‘Ideological experiment is doomed to fail’ - Stroud campaigners call for radical rethink on academy plans

Dozens of parents, teachers, councillors, campaigners and union activists have condemned the plans unveiled in last week’s budget.

The new legislation will see 32 primary and two secondary schools in the area taken out of council control.

These state-funded schools - including Archway and Maidenhill - must convert or be in the process of converting to academy status by 2020.

This means they will receive funding directly from the Government instead of Gloucestershire County Council, and be overseen by charitable bodies called academy trusts.

But the changes have been met with a wall of opposition in Stroud with 125 people - including writer and broadcaster Sue Limb and Stroud District Council leader Geoff Wheeler - signing an open letter of protest.

They warn the changes pose a threat to the survival of Stroud’s smallest schools and will result in a fragmented, unaccountable and more bureaucratic system.

“This measure threatens our democratic right to choose to send our children to local-government administered schools if we so wish,” the letter states.

“It threatens the education of children in non-academy schools, as governors and teachers will now have to spend years on bureaucracy and red tape, instead of single-mindedly focussing on supporting all pupils to succeed.

“It threatens the very existence of our smallest schools as they won’t be able to meet the financial criteria of academy status and will be forced to close.

“It threatens the integrity of the entire state education system as we will end up with fragmentation, with no local oversight, and our taxation going to academy chains’ shareholder profit instead of into solving the teacher recruitment crisis.”

The signatories join a national petition of almost 120,000 names calling for a radical rethink of the plans.

According to the Government, the changes will give schools more control and independence, which is says leads to greater innovation and higher standards.

But evidence for this is hotly contested by critics, who argue the legislation will remove democratic accountability.

Eight schools in Stroud have voluntarily made the switch over the past few years, including Thomas Keble and high-performing Stroud High and Marling.

Dr Richard House, a retired university lecturer from Stroud, co-ordinated the letter.

He said: “The Conservative’s plans to abolish any local-government accountability for our schools is a democratic and constitutional outrage.

“The nation’s careful work of the last century in building a truly national education system is now under grave threat.

“We’re not necessarily against all academies per se, but we are against the authoritarian imposition of an ideologically driven monocultural policy that will remove choice, and make any coherent, strategic planning of our schooling system impossible.

“We also have deeply worrying circumstantial evidence that this is actually about the Tories’ nefarious desire to privatise the whole education system – and is nothing whatsoever to do with standards.”

Meanwhile, three senior Labour county councillors have written to the SNJ, arguing the changes are based on ideology not evidence.

“The decision to force every school in England to become an academy is not in the interests of children or their parents,” wrote Lesley Williams (Stonehouse), retired teacher Brian Oosthuysen (Rodborough) and Steve Lydon (Dursley).

“It will mean parents will have no say in the running of their child’s school or the quality of the education it provides.

“The majority of primary schools in Gloucestershire have chosen to remain working with the local authority and not to become academies.

“Where is the democracy in forcing the majority of primary schools to become academies against their will?

“This is an ideological experiment with our children's education.”

Sarah Murphy, a secondary school teacher from Stroud who is also joint divisional secretary for the county NUT branch, also denounced the changes.

She said: “This policy of forcing academisation will lead to increased teacher shortage, an increased work load for teachers, worsening pay and conditions and increased profit being made out of education funding.

“This decision seems to have been made on ideological grounds not sound evidence.

“Academies do not have to follow the national curriculum, they do not have to employ qualified teachers but most fundamentally they do not have to abide by the nationally agreed pay and conditions framework.”

Neil Carmichael, Conservative MP for Stroud and chair of the government’s Education Select Committee, welcomed the announcement, but warned primary schools in particular would face big challenges.

He said: “Some academies are delivering great results for their pupils but in progressing to a fully academised system we must ensure all schools are properly held to account for their performance.

“Multi-Academy Trusts already play a substantial role in our education system and they will be increasingly important as all state schools move to becoming academies.”

However he added that the government will face challenges in implementing the legislation.

“The drive to change school structures will pose particular issues for primary schools, where only around 15 per cent are currently academies,” he said.

Conservative county councillor Paul Mclain, cabinet member for children and young people, said academies had led to improved standards.

"The academy process has been supported by all political parties, with Labour beginning the process, which was then extended significantly under the coalition government,” he said.

“It's led to significant improvement in standards in many areas – and I hope that these new proposals, particularly joined with fair funding for Gloucestershire schools, will lead to more improvements in county schools.”

Under the plans, any schools that fail to make the transition will be forced to under radical new powers to be adopted by the government.

Academy status, introduced by a Labour government, was originally reserved for schools in urgent need of improvement, but since 2010 schools have been encouraged to convert and have been given extra funding for doing so.

Gloucestershire County Council still runs six of the 39 secondary schools and 206 of the 247 primary schools.