Hackney Gazette - August 5, 2005

There are many good reasons to be opposed to the spread of academies and we are certainly not motivated by "sour grapes and untruths".

Academies are considerably more expensive than standard schools, some costing as much as £35 million - not that our children don't deserve this level of expenditure. It's just that why should only a few get it when others don't, as Ms Goldman readily admits?

I am a teacher and we all know the way the housing market works. Very shortly those who can afford to move next to a state-of-the-art school will do so, forcing out those who can't.

These parents will be mostly the better-off ones whose children bring far fewer problems to the school and the school will benefit as a result.

But the academy will not be sharing its load in terms of the needs of the whole area. There is academic research which shows that in many cases this is already happening.

Academies are controlled directly by the sponsor for an outlay of anything between £2 million to virtually nothing (some sponsors have delayed payment).

The sponsor has control of ethos, direction, employment conditions and, ultimately, which children or parents to take on. Taxpayers foot the massive bills, but have no say via a local education authority or council what happens in that school.

It is true that Mossbourne chose not to formally select, but there is nothing to stop it from doing so in the future or any other academy from doing so.

Maybe Ms Goldman doesn't realise, but there are ways of informally
selecting. The banding levels that Mossbourne used for its first year's intake were arrived at by inviting children to go to a test on a Saturday morning.

Which families will have done so? The most informed and by implication those with better behaved children.

When the Bristol City Academy was opening, it leafleted households in postcodes where it knew there were better off parents.

As the government is encouraging all sorts of people to be sponsors, a pattern of sorts is developing across the country. About a third of academy sponsors are openly Christian organisations, some evangelists who seek to deny some of the key scientific developments of the last 200 years, such as evolution.

While this may not be true of Mossbourne, are we to allow our schools to be hijacked by religious extremists? Those of us who were working in London on July 7 all know where that can lead!

I encourage all your readers to do every thing they can to campaign against academies in Hackney or elsewhere, and to stop your education system being handed over to unaccountable businessmen.

John Grimshaw.