Kelly says academies still attracting sponsors
Ruth Kelly says city academy programme will not be held up by recent bad publicity
Wednesday, 26, Apr 2006 12:00
Ruth Kelly has today rejected criticisms of the city academy programme and said the government would continue building the schools across the country.
The education secretary also insisted that despite a spate of bad publicity, there was no shortage of people prepared to pay £2 million to sponsor the schools.
Yesterday, a report by New Philanthropy Capital suggested sponsoring academies was "risky" and not value for money. It questioned the £25 million per school price tag, saying this was £8 million more than the building costs, and also said their academic results were mixed.
Critics of the city academy programme also insist that recent reports about sponsors being persuaded to hand over their money in return for an honour have irreversibly damaged the scheme's reputation.
The government has promised to build 200 academies by 2010, at a cost of £25 million each, of which £2 million is provided by a private sponsor. But only 27 have been built so far, prompting suggestions that the project has run out of steam.
However, Ms Kelly this morning claimed that with 100 academy projects with sponsors already "in the pipeline", the government was "well ahead of schedule" on meeting this target.
"The question is not whether 200 academies is too ambitious, I think it's probably whether 200 is sufficient," she told Today.
She rejected suggestions that the recent row about loans for peerages, and that sponsors of academies in particular had been promised a seat in the House of Lords, meant backers would no longer be eligible for an honour.
"If someone's prepared in a public-spirited fashion to come forward, give their time, money, energy and commitment into helping some of the most disadvantaged children in the country, isn't it only right that at some point in the future we should think about whether they are the sort of person that might deserve an honour?" Ms Kelly said.
However, she said it was "absolute rubbish" to suggest people only got involved to try to get an honour, insisting: "They do it because they know they can make a difference."
The report from New Philanthropy Capital raised questions about what effect the huge amount of money put into city academies was having on raising standards, saying similar improvements could have been achieved by simply changing the school's management.
But Ms Kelly insisted it was not extra funding that mattered – she said academies had "comparable" revenue to other schools – but the "time, energy and commitment of a sponsor who takes strategic decisions to help that school improve".
"When they're working with an effective head teacher and an effective staff, that can make a real difference," she said.