Today news
2025-02-03 17:57:00
Your editorial (The Guardian view on the children’s bill: academy freedoms are beside the point, 30 January) is a welcome riposte to the academy lobby’s attempt to hijack debate on the children’s wellbeing and schools bill. We must focus on what we need to do to improve our school system and challenge the view that the past 14 years were a great success.
Doubtful claims, without robust supporting evidence, that the bill will “destroy the huge gains made over the last decade and a half” have been widely repeated. Attention is often drawn to the opinions of CEOs of large academy chains. Evidenced comparisons between academies and maintained schools are rare, and reference is seldom heard, for example, of the fact that UK 15-year-olds have the lowest life satisfaction score in Europe.
But other legacies are also not receiving attention: high levels of pupil absence and exclusions, unsustainable levels of teacher recruitment and retention, low teacher morale, the poor state of many school buildings, a crisis in provision for special educational needs and disabilities (Send) pupils, no progress on narrowing the attainment gap, a perverse accountability system that encourages off-rolling and an exam system that almost certainly contributes to the low levels of pupil satisfaction.
The bill recognises some of the issues that our schools and children face, but there is much more to be done. Above all, we need to trust our teachers and treat them as professionals. It is crucial that Bridget Phillipson challenges those who are talking of “vandalism” and academy “style” being cramped. She must set out with evidence why the last 14 years have not been a great success and insist that from now on every child matters.
Alasdair Macdonald
London
The criticisms being directed at the government’s proposals to restrict the freedoms of academy schools might carry more weight if they were accompanied by evidence that these freedoms have helped to raise standards (Who is criticising Labour’s new education bill – and why?, 29 January). Prof Stephen Gorard at the University of Durham concludes that “academy schools are no better at raising attainment than the (local authority) schools they replaced”.
There is evidence that academies have used their freedoms to employ younger and less experienced teaching staff, increasing numbers of whom are unqualified, while diverting money into the pockets of senior management. Furthermore, research by the investigative journalist Warwick Mansell has revealed that the 50 largest academy trusts, which educate the same number of pupils as the 10 largest local authorities, are spending almost three times as much on six-figure salaries for senior managers.
The government is absolutely right to rein in academy freedoms.
Michael Pyke
The Campaign for State Education
