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Do we really want dynamic, business-minded children?
• I wrote to the Tribune almost two years ago, in May 2006, with my concerns as a parent about the government’s academy programme in education and what I believed the effect would be on schools in Islington, particularly the proposal to turn my local high school, Islington Green, into a “business academy” privately sponsored by the City of London and City University.
I wrote then that among a multitude of objections to this folly, my main concern was the obsession with “business” in schools and the crusade to create “dynamic, business-minded children”. However, despite assurances throughout the consultation period by the council that “business” would not be an obsession, the release of the new staffing structure within the school suggests my fears were justified.
Instead of heads of faculty (for example, languages, humanities, science) there will be “learning community leaders”. Instead of subject leaders (head of art, history, geography, music), there will be “innovators”, “key skills co-ordinators” and “transition managers”.
For those of us unfortunate enough to have been exposed to management-speak meetings, this re-branding of titles is nothing new. We have heard it all before with the use of “clients” instead of “patients” in the NHS and “customers” instead of “passengers” on our public transport.
I am afraid that privatisation looms heavy over our education system. Increasingly, our children are being seen as “business units with pound signs written on them”.
I would like someone within the authorities to tell us all, in addition to £30 million of taxpayers’ money being used to finance the City Academy in Islington, how much the lucrative real estate being handed over to the academy is worth.
As a parent of two young children, I want them to be taught a full and rich curriculum which values the importance of all subjects. They will be adults soon enough and then, with a rounded education, can make the choices about what they want to do with their lives.
I take exception to the fact that someone has taken a decision (with my taxpayer’s money) that my six-year-old child, if she wants to attend the secondary school on her doorstep, should at the age of 11 be required to attend a school with a “business specialism”.
It distresses me to witness the anguish that is caused by the lack of investment in our state schools and it is shocking to witness the competition that is being bred among schools, teachers, parents and children in Islington.
There is no doubt in my mind that the introduction of academies in Islington has intensified this process. If parents do not secure places at the schools that are given investment and political backing, it means they have failed their children. Make no mistake about it, the children who then attend local schools which do not get the backing and investment are labelled failures and so the vicious cycle goes on.
Our children are our future and every single one of them deserves the best education we can possibly give them.
For this reason, we need to work towards every school in Islington being held up as a good school.
Children will then automatically attend the school closest to them. This can only be done through co-operation between all the parties involved and not through creeping privatisation, which is causing division and more inequality in education.
Julie Hunt
Danbury Street, N1
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