DISMANTLING our state education system and parcelling it off to unelected, unaccountable sponsors is a disgrace,’ Christine Blower, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers said yesterday.
She was condemning the opening of 55 new ‘Free Schools’ this week, in addition to the 24 existing ones.
Free Schools, which are state-funded but not under local authority control, are run by parents, teachers, charities, businesses, universities, trusts and religious or voluntary groups, and a further 114 have been approved to open from next year.
Blower warned: ‘To allow so-called “Free Schools” to open, irrespective of local need and without proper regard to the appropriateness of premises, is not a sensible approach to education provision.
‘Creating this patchwork provision will cause serious problems for providing a coherent and equal education system for all children.’
The NASUWT teachers union is fighting the unfair dismissal of more than 40 of its members in Merseyside because of the opening of a Free School.
The teachers are the victims of the failure of the Trustees of the Hawthorne Free School and Sefton Council to resolve the question of who has responsibility for the staff of two schools which have closed.
The NASUWT yesterday began the process of legal action by lodging employment tribunal claims on behalf of its members against the Hawthorne Free School and against Sefton Council for unfair dismissal, redundancy payments, breach of contract and failure to comply with the statutory duty to consult.
Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT said: ‘The failure of the Free School Trustees and Sefton Council to resolve this issue before the teachers’ contracts were severed on 31 August is quite simply unacceptable.
‘These are teachers who have given dedicated service to thousands of children and young people and they deserve better than to find themselves cast adrift while the council and the free school trustees argue among themselves and try to pass the buck.’
Keates added: ‘Where free schools have been opened is not the issue. The main concern should be that they are being opened at all.
‘As more of them open it is essential not to lose sight of the profound implications for the education system of the Coalition government’s ideologically driven Free Schools programme.
‘At a time when the education budget has been dramatically cut, funding for Free Schools comes from top slicing the limited money available for other schools and their pupils.’
She continued: ‘Public money is being poured into a handful of free schools to the detriment of existing schools and the children and young people who attend them.
‘This is a flawed policy where the only aim is to open up state education to the market.’
