Angry teachers have condemned the declaration by Schools Secretary Ed Balls that he will resist calls to slow the pace of the Academy programme.
This is despite a call from NUT acting general secretary, Christine Blower, to scrap academies in the wake the disgraceful conditions at the Richard Rose Central Academy school in Carlisle.
Staff shortages provoked demonstrations by pupils and parents and Ofsted placed the school under ‘special measures’.
Blower said: ‘The Richard Rose Academy is a victim of the government’s fixation with private providers for education.
‘The fast track to opening this Academy has left pupils, parents and the local community without a well functioning school.
‘Richard Rose Academy should return to the local authority which can provide support and back-up.
‘The government, for its part, needs to reflect rapidly on why it continues to promote Academies as a magic solution to the needs of communities, when they are simply schools which face the same difficulties as other schools but without the benefits of local authority support and advice.’
Richard Rose became the second academy school to be failed by Ofsted.
A Middlesbrough academy was failed in 2005.
The Ofsted inspectors’ report on the Richard Rose academy noted that the school’s opening had been brought forward 12 months as part of the government’s ‘fast track programme’.
Ofsted said the ‘accelerated’ opening of the academy had created challenges that ‘exceeded the capacity of the leaders and managers to cope with’.
Balls said it was only to be expected that there would be ‘variance in performance’ among the academies and claimed that ‘moving quickly works in the majority of cases’.
He added: ‘Where you have got schools under-performing, and an academy offers a new resource and new leadership, then naturally people will want to move quickly, and that pressure comes from local authorities and parents as well as from the government.’
He defended the government’s plans to create 400 academies, insisting it is right to press ahead with the programme.
Balls acknowledged there had occasionally been problems with new academies either because of ‘problems of integration of schools’ or ‘issues of leadership’.
Speaking about the Richard Rose Academy, he said, ‘This was a case where two schools did not come together.’
He admitted that there had been ‘similar problems’ in Southampton, a reference to problems at the Oasis City Academy in the city.
The chief executive of the Richard Rose Federation, Peter Noble, was appointed after a career in health service management.
Asked about this, Balls suggested he had some doubts about promoting non-teachers to such high-profile school leadership roles.
He added: ‘I am sure this case will focus the minds of local authorities, sponsors and the department in the future.’
However, he added that ‘as a principle, having external input can be pretty positive’.
Despite the problems in Carlisle, Balls said he remained a ‘big supporter’ of the academy programme, claiming that ‘evidence’ showed they were delivering ‘faster rising results in deprived communities’.
