Academy Aspiration

Education secretary Michael Gove urges all schools to become academies

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article7136801.ece


Every school in England should become an academy, according to the Educational Secretary Michael Gove. He has written to all 20000 state head teachers, offering them the chance to break free from local authority control, said creating more academies would improve standards, cut bureaucracy and raise aspirations. For a school to become an academy means that they have a bigger budget and freedom over what they teach. But there are also people disappointed by the announcement. Chris Keates, general secretary of the teaching union says that what parents and the public want are good local schools run by local councils, also improving the community feelings. As schools need to be judged before becoming an academy, a critics say that schools judged not good enough will be left behind. They also fear that extremists will start schools and use it for their own purposes. Michael Gove defended his plan by assuring the public that it will not be possible for extremists to run an academy and that stronger schools will help weaker schools to improve.


As I am not really familiar with the British education system, despite Roger Marples’ speech, I had to look up what exactly the difference between a ‘normal’ school and an academy is. The Times Q&A page tells us that an academy school a “state-maintained but independently run school which has the help of outside sponsors including big business and entrepreneurs.” All academies have a specialism in one or more subjects, for example sport, science or technology. They are state-funded and thus free.

I don’t think that this is a good plan at all. For the reasons already mentioned above I doubt it will be effective. There apparently is no national curriculum the students follow. Freedom is good, but in some cases there have to be guidelines or rules. If a student moves to another part of the land he might have to adapt to a completely different school. The outside sponsors are a sign of commercialising taken to far. Education, especially primary and secondary schools, is something that should be financed by the state and not some business that has different ideas about a school and just wants to make profit.