The Magic of Childhood

You'll be glad to know that Peterborough's new academy will be built without a playground, as it might lead to: '“uncontrollable” numbers of children running around in breaks at the 2,200-pupil school', according to this article in The Sunday Times.

Apparently, pupils are to be treated more like 'company employees', and will get their exercise in PE lessons in a nearby field.

' “We are not intending to have any play time,” said Alan McMurdo, the head teacher. “Pupils won’t need to let off steam because they will not be bored.”'

Some staff also add that it will avoid children falling victim to bullies in the playground. Ah yes, that must always have been the way to deal with bullying in the playground - remove the playground. This is the kind of joined-up thinking that will, fortunately, predominate at academies.

Let's face it, what right-thinking academy sponsor wants to see idle children shrieking and running around when they could be learning valuable time-keeping skills, or preparing themselves for the sorts of leisure-free lives their parents lead.

Anyone who does not find the following paragraph worrying has lived too long in Blair's Britain:

'There will be a 30-minute lunch period when pupils will be taken to the dining room by their teacher, ensuring they do not sneak away to run around.'

And the following epitomises the backward management-think that characterises most New Labour projects:

' However, Delap, who has run the academy project on behalf of its sponsor, Perkins Engines, and the Deacon school trust, said that playgrounds did not fit into the concept.'

When playgrounds do not fit the concept of a school, when children have to be escorted to a dining hall to ensure that they do not run around during their lunch hour, and when a school thinks that it has so many pupils they might become 'uncontrollable' at lunch break, there is something wrong with the school.

I'm sure Delap are proud of themselves for ticking all of those Blairite boxes of 'thinking outside the box', 'blue-sky thinking' and 'slaying old-world shibboleths that are holding us back.' It's a shame they do not realise what humungous shitehawks they are.

To those that think 'structured hydration' is a suitable replacement for break time, I have nothing further to say. At present, the world is yours, but there will come a time when ordinary people, more interested in quality than enforced 'choice' will replace your quotas with humanity, and will learn again to live full lives without your 'help'.

Brown Academies?

The media have jumped on Gordon Brown's suggestions that he would "continue to support and finance" academy school as evidence that education policy will continue in the same way under a Brown government. I am not sure that follows, however.

The statement is distinctly lukewarm when compared to Tony Blair's messianic zeal for the unproven, expensive wastes of public money. After all, what is Mr Brown's alternative? To refuse to finance the schools? To withdraw all funding from them.

I'm not hugely hopeful about the direction of education under Mr Brown, but don't see his comments to The World At One as being particularly troublesome. I can even bring myself to hope that they indicate a slight change in emphasis...

No Academy For Haringey

The Schools' Adjudicator has ruled that the new school in Haringey will be a council-run comprehensive. It beat two proposals for academy schools, and one for a trust school. More information can be found here.

The Heartsease Debate

Apparently, there is to be a meeting to debate the academy to replace Heartsease High in Norwich (see last post). It should be interesting to see the results...

When You're Allowed To Bend The Rules...

This article explains how Heartsease school does not fit the criteria for transformation into an academy. It is not a failing school, and there are two other schools, which better fit the criteria in the area.

However, the Christian sponsors of the school are said to have preferred the school that was doing better, which they are going to knock down. This quite clearly shows that the academy scheme is not being run for the benefit of communities or pupils, but rather to best benefit the sponsors, and to show the scheme itself to best advantage. If (according to the National Audit Office) you cannot use the scheme to get value for money in failing schools, why not try in ones that run perfectly well...

"Heartsease High does not fit the criteria set out by the government for transformation into an academy. Recent improvements in performance mean it is far from a “failing” school. In fact, the government initially earmarked the Park High at King's Lynn and Oriel High at Gorleston as perfect sites for Norfolk's first academy. But Mr Dacre and the Bishop of Norwich preferred Heartsease. Norfolk County Council was always likely to support the plan, on the basis that £2m of private money and £25m from the government was too good to turn down. There are also strong suggestions that the government has told local authorities that their ability to access millions of pounds in cash from the building schools for the future initiative, to transform high schools, is linked to how many academies they successfully promote."

US sponsors pull out

US sponsors of the 'charter school' scheme in America have pulled out of negotiations on sponsoring academy schools in Great Britain, as reported in the Daily Telegraph here. The company has not been named, but it marks a blow to Mr Blair's aim to have another 400 of these schools that no one wants to sponsor.

Which is why we should. Education is too important to be left in the hands of fanatics as we stand to one side and tut. We should aim to sponsor secular, liberal, humanist schools ourselves, to engage with the government's activities (at £2 million per school, it's an absolute bargain!) rather than sighing and blogging about the perils of the academies scheme.

"Jews are monkeys, and Christians are worthless"

This kind of sentiment is being taught at King Fahd School in Acton, according to former teacher there, Colin Clarke. This article outlines his allegations in more detail.

The schoolis funded by the Saudi government to teach Wahhabism (?). This shows the kinds of corrosive intolerance which pervades some religious teaching, and is a prime example of why we should not tolerate greater religious influence in state-funded academies. (King Fahd is privately-funded, although the Saudi government could, presumably, afford the £2 million to become an academy sponsor)

The new Labour government has a radical faith-based agenda, and seems to have no discriminatory faculty when it comes to faith groups or businesses. They are, by dint of being faith groups or businesses, obviously a good thing. Let's raise the money to set up our own, faithless schools, and set new standards in education.