THE NASUWT and NUT teachers’ unions’ annual conferences at the weekend voted to resist the spread of academies and free schools.
Both conferences carried votes of no confidence in Education Secretary Gove and Ofsted chief Wilshaw.
In Bournemouth, the NASUWT conference voted to continue to work with local communities to ‘oppose the opening of academies and free schools by predatory chains of private providers’.
The motion condemned free schools as an expensive white elephant which does nothing to improve parental choice or pupil achievement.
It warned that allowing free schools to operate without local democratic accountability will see fringe groups taking over the curriculum and a widening of the attainment gap between different social and ethnic groups.
NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates said: ‘The academisation programme is not and never has been about raising standards or increasing educational opportunity.
‘It has always been about creating a free-market free-for-all in our public education system.
‘The Secretary of State has had to bribe, bully and force schools into converting.
‘The whole education system has been plunged into turbulence and uncertainty as a result of academisation.
‘The time has come to shift the focus from structural change to the values and ethos which should drive our public education system.’
The motion instructed the union’s National Executive to ‘support Local Associations working with appropriate local groups to oppose the opening of academies and free schools by predatory chains and providers’.
The NASUWT has entered into a landmark agreement with the Schools Co-operative Society, to help ensure that state schools remain not-for-profit and democratically accountable to the public and parents.
The agreement highlights co-operative trusts as a democratic alternative for schools to the academy chains and the privatisation and marketisation agenda.
This is the first agreement of its kind with a teaching union.
In Liverpool, the NUT voted for Motion 15 Resisting the Spread of Academies.
Commenting after the debate, NUT general secretary Christine Blower said: ‘There is no evidence to support the coalition government’s claims that academies raise standards of attainment for pupils, and it is clear that the policy is becoming increasingly unpopular.
‘The NUT’s YouGov survey of parents asked whether schools having academy status improved educational standards and a majority of parents answered that it does not.
‘Academy chains cannot be held to account by parents and the wider community. As a result it will be pupils, often the most vulnerable, who will suffer from the loss of local authority services and the undermining of local accountability of schools.
‘While professional, career civil servants are losing their jobs and regional offices are closing, hired hands – education “advisers” and academy brokers – are being contracted to travel the country, bribing and bullying schools into becoming academies.
‘Michael Gove is running education as if it were the Wild West rather than a key public service.
‘As soon as education is opened up to market forces we will see a decline in the standard of provision. Academy chains will answer to shareholders, not the community.
‘There is a danger that we will see the sort of corrupt practices emerging in the USA where the growth of charter schools, on which academy and free schools are modelled, continues apace.
‘It is not structures that improve standards of education but the support and funding that schools receive. It is time for the government to change tack.’
