Lyev
23rd July 2010, 21:03
I'm surprising no-one else has already started a discussion on this. It is possible that it might just be that this is exclusive, or relatively contained, to my area of England. But we are seeing a rather big attack on state-funded education - Michael Gove, the Tory education secretary, has already made clear that some 600 secondary and 2,000 primary schools graded as "outstanding" by Ofsted are entitled to be fast-tracked out of their local authorities in a matter of months. Unfortunately, governors or headteachers at some schools have enquired into becoming academies anyway. I can understand how they would want this, despite the statistics for a lower standard of education:
Much is made of the rising success of Academies.
In 2009 Ed Balls boasted that the Academies GCSE results that June showed a 5% improvement on 2008. When challenged to produce the results that proved that we were told we had to wait for the official release of the results in January 2010.
When the 2009 GCSE results were officially released in January 2010 our analysis of the results showed that while Ed Ball's headline figure may be true, it hid some other disturbing information.
122 Academies entered their pupils for GCSEs in 2009. Of these 36% are in the national challenge.
74 of these 122 Academies have now entered pupils for 2 or more years.
of these 74, 32% (24 Academies) saw their results fall (appendix A).
and 59% (44 Academies) are in the National Challenge (Appendix B).This website is found here (http://www.antiacademies.org.uk). It's unequivocal fact that state-funded, normal education does a better job of teaching than academies do and have done.
Something that does happen, when a school is taken by an external organisation or company (f.e. a car company or by the church), they emphasize their particular area of expertise. So Honda would make it mandatory for every student to study in engineering, or the church would focus on religious education. Now whilst this sometimes does give some students a practical qualification, it is used to bend and obfuscate meaningful statistics because it will bring up the average GCSE pass-rates thereby making look as if privatisation of education will do a better job. Yet for 2008 and 2009, average pass-rates for English and Maths in state education have been around 60% whereas we've seen academies average pass-rates gravitating at around 30-40%, as far as I can remember. I can't find the original source of info for this, but I assure you, it's correct. I will try and find it later.
Anyway, the rationale given by some trade-union reps, head-teachers, governors of schools etc. is that in the coming years the Tory-dominated government is going hit councils at a local level incredibly hard therefore depriving some state education of funding. If people transfer to academy status before the shit really hits fan it removes this problem. However, this is an incredibly selfish and individual-based way of thinking, because it still leaves thousands of other schools in the mire. Thoughts? I was wondering if there's anyone around who was politically active when New Labour were handing schools over to private sponsors and what the fightback was like, and how the general situation -- including the nature of the attacks on education -- differ from the current events. Also, on a international level, maybe there are attacks on education similar to this in other countries that comrades would like to discuss and share? Thanks a lot.
EDIT: I just had a thought, if a similar topic has already been started, please could an admin or mod just delete or perhaps merge it? cheers.
Much is made of the rising success of Academies.
In 2009 Ed Balls boasted that the Academies GCSE results that June showed a 5% improvement on 2008. When challenged to produce the results that proved that we were told we had to wait for the official release of the results in January 2010.
When the 2009 GCSE results were officially released in January 2010 our analysis of the results showed that while Ed Ball's headline figure may be true, it hid some other disturbing information.
122 Academies entered their pupils for GCSEs in 2009. Of these 36% are in the national challenge.
74 of these 122 Academies have now entered pupils for 2 or more years.
of these 74, 32% (24 Academies) saw their results fall (appendix A).
and 59% (44 Academies) are in the National Challenge (Appendix B).This website is found here (http://www.antiacademies.org.uk). It's unequivocal fact that state-funded, normal education does a better job of teaching than academies do and have done.
Something that does happen, when a school is taken by an external organisation or company (f.e. a car company or by the church), they emphasize their particular area of expertise. So Honda would make it mandatory for every student to study in engineering, or the church would focus on religious education. Now whilst this sometimes does give some students a practical qualification, it is used to bend and obfuscate meaningful statistics because it will bring up the average GCSE pass-rates thereby making look as if privatisation of education will do a better job. Yet for 2008 and 2009, average pass-rates for English and Maths in state education have been around 60% whereas we've seen academies average pass-rates gravitating at around 30-40%, as far as I can remember. I can't find the original source of info for this, but I assure you, it's correct. I will try and find it later.
Anyway, the rationale given by some trade-union reps, head-teachers, governors of schools etc. is that in the coming years the Tory-dominated government is going hit councils at a local level incredibly hard therefore depriving some state education of funding. If people transfer to academy status before the shit really hits fan it removes this problem. However, this is an incredibly selfish and individual-based way of thinking, because it still leaves thousands of other schools in the mire. Thoughts? I was wondering if there's anyone around who was politically active when New Labour were handing schools over to private sponsors and what the fightback was like, and how the general situation -- including the nature of the attacks on education -- differ from the current events. Also, on a international level, maybe there are attacks on education similar to this in other countries that comrades would like to discuss and share? Thanks a lot.
EDIT: I just had a thought, if a similar topic has already been started, please could an admin or mod just delete or perhaps merge it? cheers.