NUT: Queen's Speech

Tuesday, 25 May 2010 12:00 AM

Commenting on the Queen's Speech, Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers' union, said;

"In many ways the Queen's Speech contains few surprises, given the Government had already trailed the major expansion in the Academies programme. What is crystal clear from the Queen's Speech is that it contains some major contradictions.

"The emphasis on greater power for local communities is belied by the Government's proposal to remove the requirement to consult local councils before an Academy is opened. It appears that the Big Society is now big in Whitehall but not elsewhere.

"The idea that maintained schools can simply decide to be Academies because of an Ofsted judgement also has major funding and planning implications. Expanding the programme into primary schools is also unacceptable and unnecessary.

"In short, the very freedoms which the Government intends for schools will be mired by controversy over its wholly unproven argument that somehow, because a school becomes an Academy, that will automatically raise standards.

"Creating Academies on the scale proposed by the Government will have the effect of transferring billions of pounds of publicly funded assets in the form of buildings and land into the hands of private sponsors.

"There doesn't seem to be any evidence of the Coalition Government committing to an inclusive admissions policy for schools, a fact which must cause even greater concern to local communities."

"This is a retrograde step which will cause social division and planning gridlock, and drive a bulldozer through properly accountable local authority provision of education. What is needed is a good local school for every child working within their local family of schools."

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