Respublica, a Conservative Party think tank supported by British Prime Minister David Cameron, has proposed the setting up of military schools within the British school system. The plan is outlined in a document titled “Military Academies: Tackling disadvantage, improving ethos and changing outcome.”
Authors Phillip Blond and Patricia Kaszynska stress their proposal is for a new model of schooling as a “solution to the social ills that became manifest at the time of the riots”—a reference to last August’s inner-city disturbances in England. They are part of the wholesale privatisation of state-funded education via privately controlled but publicly funded academies and Free Schools.
The report states that the military schools would be a “partnership in the delivery of education between the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Department for Education (DfE)”.
Downhills Primary School in Haringey, north London, has launched a legal challenge to Education Secretary Michael Gove’s attempt to force it to become a privately run academy. The school has accused Gove of illegally trying to force the school to be taken out of its local authority remit and be taken over by a private sponsor.
Gove wants to force Downhills, which inspectors last year put under notice to improve its performance, to accept that it will become an academy by the end of this month or face the dissolution of its governing body.
Academies are state funded but privately controlled schools. They are free from any Local Authority control, including pay and conditions, and are given extra cash for services that councils would have provided. Some of this extra expenditure is channelled through to existing academy chains ready to provide these services.
A demonstration Saturday of over 1,000 parents, children, teachers, assistants and residents in Harringey, London protested government plans to force three local primaries to become academies.
The march began at Downhills primary school and walked through the busy high street to Harringey Town Hall where a rally was held. Marchers chanted, “No to academies, Save our schools” and “[Education Secretary] Michael Gove, we won’t be beaten, Leave our school and close down Eton.”
Downhills in Tottenham, North London, an area of social deprivation that was the starting point of last summer’s riots, was given 12 months to improve its performance last year. It faces being made an academy by 2013.
England’s schools inspectorate, Ofsted, is carrying out trials on the latest of a series of measures designed to pressure schools into either taking on academy status or facing closure.
Under the guise of “raising achievement”, the government is making it impossible for schools, particularly those in areas of poverty and deprivation, to achieve “outstanding”, “good” or even “satisfactory” inspection results. This will speed up the process of transferring all schools out of local authority control and into the hands of privately run “academy groups.”
More than 200 parents, teachers and members of the local community in Otley, West Yorkshire, marched through the town on Saturday, November 26, to oppose the decision to transform their local senior school into a privately run academy.
Prince Henry’s Grammar School, with 1,400 pupils, founded in 1607 by royal charter, is the oldest school in the region. It is a comprehensive school, which serves the whole community in this small town in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.
At present, it is part of the educational provision of Leeds City Council, but as an academy it would be run as a publicly funded school with independent control over its finance, curriculum, terms and conditions of staff, recruitment, redundancy, the length of the school day and so on. In effect, it would be privatised.
The Guardian has published analysis from the most up-to-date annual finance reports of five major chains of Academy schools.
Each chain receives tens of millions of pounds from the government each year. The accounts reveal a significant slice of public funds is being used to pay senior staff six-figure salaries.
Academy schools are privately controlled but state funded. They receive a similar amount from the government as state schools. However, because they are free from any local authority control, academies are given extra cash for the services that councils would have otherwise provided. Academies are also not bound by rules and regulations governing the pay and conditions of senior staff.
The policing of Wednesday’s students protest in London was unprecedented in its repressive character.
Around 10,000 students gathered to oppose the Conservative/Liberal-Democrat government’s attack on the right to higher education. This includes tripling of tuition fees to £9,000, abolishing the Education Maintenance Allowance of £30 per week for young people from low-income families in post-16 education and severe cuts in university and college funding. The protest Wednesday centred on the new Education White Paper, which allows private providers to offer degrees for the first time and reduces the numbers of places on courses.
In what amounts to the criminalisation of political protest, a policy described as “total policing” by the Metropolitan Police was put into operation.
A reporting team from the World Socialist Web Site spoke to some of those participating in Wednesday’s student protest in London.
Morgana attended with her friend Lianne. Both are second year students at the University of the Arts. “We have come here because we have both got siblings and family who work in the public sector and we care,” Morgana said. “‘Unfair’ doesn’t describe how seriously the cuts are going to affect everyone. I was reading in the paper this morning about a couple driven to suicide because their benefits were cut so drastically. He was a war veteran and it’s just horrific this could happen.
“For us personally we don’t have to pay these new fees, but we both have younger siblings. We are standing right outside RADA [the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] and my sister is a really great actress. The fact that she might be denied an opportunity to grow and contribute is what we are most angry about.”
November 8, 2011 by International Students for Social Equality (UK)
Students and young people are protesting today against the ongoing attacks on public education by the Conservative/Liberal-Democrat government. These include last year’s tripling of tuition fees to £9,000, major cuts at universities and colleges, including the slashing of teaching budgets, and the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance of £30 per week for young people from low-income families in post-16 education.
There is justified and widespread anger among working people against the government’s austerity measures, which are hitting young people hard. Unemployment has risen to almost 1 million amongst those aged 24 and under. Denied decent jobs, many young people are now being priced out of higher education. Proposals in the Education White Paper will vastly expand this assault, with plans to privatise universities and reduce the numbers of places on courses.
A report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed that the United Kingdom is the third most expensive place in the world to acquire a degree qualification. The report, “Education at a glance”, is based on 2008 figures and does not even take into account the tripling of tuition fees in England that will take place next year.
The measures introduced by the previous Labour government have already priced many students out of education. When fees rise to £9,000 a year, a university education will become an option for an even narrower layer of the upper and upper middle class children.
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