Lambeth Teacher with Lambeth NUT

Academy Madness Hits Lambeth

This administration wants to go into the 2006 local government elections claiming that it has solved the schools crisis in Lambeth. As Lambeth only educates half its secondary population, it should be easy to make improvements. However, apart from the proposals to build a new school on the West Norwood site (now housing Elmcourt Special and the Norwood Secondary Centre (the PRU), all proposals are based on City Academies. Academies are promoted as 'the only show in town'. The reality is different - no one should be kidded into thinking that we can get something for nothing from this government.

We are strongly in favour of building new secondary schools as local community schools. We understand the frustration felt by parents because of this Lambeth administration's failures, but Academies are not the answer.

• Academies must be funded by private concerns or community organisations. Community organisations do not have £millions needed to build a school.
• The governance of the school is decided largely by the sponsor and the community is likely to be a small minority in those circumstances.
• No Academy can be built except on Local Authority land. What is being asked is for the community to give up their land for a large outside private body
• It is a myth to believe there can be more local control. Lambeth Academy is run by United Learning Trust, based in Northampton. They decide policies, including ethos, curriculum and employment conditions centrally. The community cannot easily choose - what if we end up with the 'creationist science' of Vardy Foundation?
• It has become a huge myth that 'academies are the only show in town'. They have had deliberately higher funding at the expense of LEA funding. Nevertheless, from 1998 till 2002, capital expenditure on schools was £5.5 billion of which over £5 billion was traditional government funding. To say there is no money is nonsense. Lambeth has bid for money (eg West Norwood) but they are willing to cave in and be bullied by Milliband and co. into accepting academies as the only way to build schools.
• Academies, which are expensive, are taken into account when allocating resources in Education. An expensive academy would mean that Lambeth will have less money allocated for other secondary schools.
• It is an insult to those schools that have worked hard for years with poor funding. There would be a danger of an academy being a magnate for selected pupils (whatever they say in their prospectus) at the expense of other local schools, who could then become 'sink schools'

Did you know that academies are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act as they are not local authority organisations, but 'independent'?

ARK - who's behind them?

The government’s education policy, followed avidly by our Lib Dem / Tory council, is based on private money coming into education. You are given the impression that there are philanthropic entrepreneurs out there who are just waiting to help the deprived inner city children. Nothing is further from the truth, it seems. Experience has shown that these sponsors nominally have to provide £2 million (often they don’t even do that) then they are in control of a multi-million pound site, managing a colossal budget.

The sponsor who is above board is usually the exception. Nothing has proved more outrageous than the Vardy Foundation who not only placed creationalist science on the curriculum, excluded 60 youngsters but also were found giving large sums of money to the Billy Graham Foundation. Perhaps Lambeth might have learnt. Perhaps not.

The favoured sponsor for the Shakespeare Road planned academy is ARK. (This is an acronym for Absolute Right of Kids). It is a US based charity – they all seem to be – who want to get into education in this country. They have no experience of education in Britain. ARK we find have among their millionaire trustees one Jennifer Moses. Jennifer Moses was till recently a senior director of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which was recently fined $110 million by the US Securites and Exchange Commission for being involved in “the worst financial scandal for a generation”.

It was also the bank which allowed Robert Maxwell to fleece the Mirror pension fund and whose senior vice-president was recently imprisoned for three years for fraud. Moses herself and her husband, Ron Beller, were reported earlier this year to have been robbed of over a million pounds by their secretary Joyti DeLaurey without even noticing. Hardly surprising when you consider her husband’s recent annual wine bill came to £18,000! Are these really the kind of people we want running our children’s schools

Pictures from NUT London Divisions Lobby of ARK 16.6.05

Since the mid-eighties, the following schools have closed and their sites taken out of LEA use for schools:

Kennington Boys (part), Priory Park, Beaufoy, Henry Thornton, Orchard Centre, Santley, Caldecot, Haselrigge, Vauxhall Girls, Lawn Lane, Tulse Hill, Dick Shepperd, Ashby Mill, Effra Primary and Norwood Park has been sold to developers. (This list does not cover all school closures)

There are also sites that will be sold as there are no long term plans, but Glenbrook is the most unjust of them all some would argue.

NUT response to academies and their danger.

Glenbrook lunacy proposed by Lib Dem/ Tory Council

The plans going to the Lambeth Executive on 28.9.04 include the follwoing potential sites for an academy. The parents secondary schools campaign favours the Brixton Hill site, owned by Thames Water. The difficulty with this is it is not owned by Lambeth and there would be planning difficulties. A second site is Somerleyton Road, but it is too narrow and perhaps not suited. Perhaps the most suitable is Shakespeare Road which at present houses ths dustcarts for the borough ( not a rubbish tip, so we're not facing protests about relocation of a land-fill as such).

Whereas we are opposed to an Academy rather than a proper LEA funded school, the most bizarre proposal is that to close Glenbrook Primary and use the site for a 5 - 19 school site. Apart from special schools and posh schools with far fewer children, we cannot think of 5 -19 schools being built anywhere. It is particularly ridiculous as the LEA has only just spent over £1 million refurbishment at the school. Yet in the plan there is:

• no proposal to include a nursery class, when the trend is clearly to have the entire Foundation Stage on one site
• the suggestion that there will be a five storey building with a roof garden due to the shortage of space.
• recognition that there isn't enough playing space, but this doesn't matter for inner city children.

84% of parents oppose the plan

Jeremy Baker (Lib Dem) stated at the Education Scrutiny that if parents were opposed to a plan, they wouldn't go ahead with it. Well, a governors conducted ballot when the plan was announced showed most parents were clearly against this. The parents have formed Friends of Glenbrook and will be campaigning eagerly against this plan. We can keep you posted, but show your support by writing to ' Friends of Glenbrook', Glenbrook Primary School, Clarence Avenue SW4 8LD to show your support

Glenbrook Campaign

Use funding to build LEA schools!

Select Committee states that Academies are a waste of money!

The LEA has been granted over £100 million BSF money (Building Schools for the Future) as funding to for Lambeth secondaries - new and old. It is scandalous that this money is not being used entirely for LEA schools - whether Lambeth's fault or the governmens fault.

The estimated £5bn funding for the government's academy schools in England should be withheld until they are shown to be cost-effective, MPs have said.

Ministers were accused of lacking a coherent strategy and of rolling out schemes without proper evaluation. The Commons education committee also criticised the admissions system, saying schools increasingly chose pupils, not the other way round.

Higher cost—not a level playing field

Academies have cost the Department for Education and Skills between £13m and £38m each, whereas their independent sponsors put in 10% up to a maximum of £2m in return for control of the governing body. The committee said this averaged £21,000 per pupil - often far more to begin with - compared to £14,000 for a new comprehensive.

"The private investor, or the company, or the individual, puts £2 million in and gets to decide things in that school, in that academy, for the rest of time," Labour MP and select committee chairman, Barry Sheerman, told BBC One's Breakfast show."I have had big commercial banks tell me tell me there's no better business. You put £2 million in, the government puts £28 million in and you call the shots.

Steve Sinnott, NUT General secretary stated “I call on the Government to follow the Select Committee’s advice and impose a moratorium on the Academy initiative and take the steps which the Select Committee advises. “There is every argument for providing extra support for children in the most deprived areas. There is no argument for creating a range of schools which are independent and separate from the schools in their communities and from the support of local authorities.