Saturday, June 19, 2010

I don't like academies but...

The teaching unions were wrong about GM schools being total disasters for all pupils. They made practically no difference. We ended up reinventing the LEA by another name.

The problem with academies is that they are designed to water down the T&C of teachers. This was bad enough when it was done in schools that weren't good enough, but it could be disastrous if it becomes the norm.

Many teachers will simply leave the profession: it has attracted many people to it due to improvements in most schools under the last Labour government. This is going to be watered down due to the general public sector squeeze, but at least it will remain stable. If the job is made more miserable by daft ideas spreading amongst academies from the current ones (such as ridiculously long days, lack of PPA and so on) then it'd put people off and drive them away.

If the workload agreement is not normal then schools will really struggle to recruit and retain.

Thats the main problem.

Still the NUT thought last year would be a good time to strike about pay. Maybe they learned from that experience.

Of course the cynic in me thinks that the agenda is from Tory local councillors. They don't want to have to manage local schools and aren't good at it. By reducing the power of LEAs they lose the blame for when it goes wrong, and the bother of their electorate asking for help.

There is a political issue here: Councils do have democratic mandates and they should be respected. (They should be reformed to use STV, but they have do have mandates). Trusts/Foundations/Academies etc have no such need to be accountable to anyone.

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