New Statesman - Schools need to be fair, not free

New Statesman - Schools need to be fair, not free: "Whether sponsored by universities or not, city academies remain independent institutions with deeply undemocratic governance arrangements, which give total control to sponsors in return for little or no capital investment, and which pay lip service to parental representation at any level. They are not covered by the body of education law that governs parents' and pupils' rights on admissions, special needs and exclusions in maintained schools, and are under no obligation to co- operate with other local schools.

I have yet to see a reasonable explanation for why they need these freedoms; unless it is, as many suspect, so that they can improve results by changing their intakes. Independent research carried out for the government in 2005 by PricewaterhouseCoopers seems to suggest that this might be so, given that academies are excluding more children and benefiting from more advantaged intakes than their predecessor schools."