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Published: 15 November 2007

Academies could suffer under new school of thought

POLITICS usually seems to proceed at a snail’s pace. But sometimes it flashes by like lightning.
Faced with various options on a project, politicians try and fall back on to a sixth sense
But entrenched ideas and the hope that one can get by come what may muddle many a
politician’s mind.
The creation of
academies were all the Blairite rage a few years ago, for instance, and by the time the Lib-Dems and Tories moved into the executive suite at the Town Hall last year it looked as if this experiment in education was here to stay.
But is it?
Now, all the signs point to some kind of retreat by the new Brown Government.
Those at the rudder now fear children from poor families will be squeezed out of academies, leaving them to drift to schools in the lower depths.
Where does that leave our Lib-Dems and Tories? They have rushed into a decision to allow London University to launch a new school, rejecting every counter-argument. Next Wednesday they hope to rubber-stamp the project. Dogma, it seems, rules once again!
But government funding will ultimately depend on the Prime Minister's next move, and if less is siphoned off for academies, where will that leave Camden?
Apart from all that, no wiser words could have been spoken than those by Labour councillor Julian Fulbrook, a sharp lawyer with a perceptive political mind, who protested this week that London University has been dropped into a dirty “political dogfight” by the Lib-Dems and Tories whose sixth sense appears to have let them down.
Battle lines over
academies have been well staked out. The pros and cons are known to all the parties.
The latest quest by the Brown Government is to raise the school-leaving age to 18, though this will not come into effect for some time.
What lies behind this? A desire to raise
standards? Or a fear of
electoral quicksands if
nothing is done about the
indigestible number of drifting young teenagers – neither in work nor
education?
The fact is that everthing flows from the destruction of manufacturing industry – and with it the hundreds of thousands of apprenticeships for school-leavers – by the neo-liberal economics of Mrs Thatcher, later institutionalised by New Labour.
Until that is put right by a shift in economic policies, tinkering with education is exactly that ... tinkering.

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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