I haven't been able to establish yet whether the Crest Boys' and Girls' Academies are included in the 10 E-Act schools that the DfE yesterday ordered to be transferred to other academy chains. Ofsted put the boys' school into special measures last year and judged the girls' school as inadequate as reported here LINK Under current legislation academies cannot be transferred back to local authority status.
If they are on the list it is possible that they could be added to Ark's Brent empire.
The Anti Academies Alliance reacted to the news with the following statement:
As Sweden picks over the bones of its rotten marketised system, who will have the courage to call a halt to this reckless policy
If they are on the list it is possible that they could be added to Ark's Brent empire.
The Anti Academies Alliance reacted to the news with the following statement:
The removal of 10 schools from the EACT academy chain
is the most spectacular failure in British post war education history.
No Local Authority ever failed so dismally. Even when Islington
Council’s education service was deemed beyond repair in the mid 1990’s
it only had 3 ‘failing’ secondary schools!
EACT’s catastrophe is a personal humiliation for
Sir Bruce Liddington, former Permanent Secretary at the DfE and head of
the Academies Division. He was one of the chief architects of the
Academies Programme before sliding seamlessly into the private sector to
pocket £300,000 pa. salary plus benefits as CEO of EACT. It earned him
the dubious title of the ‘fattest, fat cat in education’.
But the catastrophe is much more than this. First
and foremost it is a betrayal of the children and families who go these
schools. They were sold a lie that the private sector would be better.
Blair, Adonis, and Gove have all claimed that there was something in the
‘DNA of private education’ that would improve state schools. Of course
some academies have done well, although increasingly the evidence
suggests that this is more the result of changing intakes rather than a
‘magic dust’ sprinkled by sponsors.
The EACT catastrophe therefore signals the death of
the credibility of the Academies programme. David Cameron’s shoddy
claims to localism are also in tatters as the all-powerful Secretary of
State, Chairman Gove steps in to micro-manage our schools. After just
over a decade of controversy, the Academies Programme experiment has
failed. Any governing body currently considering conversion should halt
it immediately whilst a full and public enquiry is conducted. And if
governors won’t stop conversion, then staff and parents should take
matters in
to their own hands and stop this madness by any means necessary.
to their own hands and stop this madness by any means necessary.
But here’s the rub! Due to the reckless behaviour
of those who have legislated on education policy over the last decade,
the Academies Programme will continue like a zombie. There is no
mechanism to halt it, to restore schools to Local Authorities and to
ensure that they are properly functioning. Only Gove has the power to
decide the future of these schools. The whole system of checks and
balances, of accountability and credibility has been smashed up in
pursuit of a ‘supply side revolution’.
And, worst still, there is not a single cabinet
minister or front bench spokesperson from the Coalition or the
Opposition who will stand up and admit ‘we got it wrong’. The
unregulated education market was a train wreck waiting to happen.
Estelle Morris warned of this ‘direction of travel’ a decade ago. But
the zombie politicians still stagger around Westminster singing its
praises.
