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David Cameron to Make All Schools Academies

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18 August 2015

By Bronwen

Currently, half of all of the secondary schools in the UK are officially academies and Prime Minister David Cameron aims for the remaining half of schools to follow in this direction.

An academy is a school that is funded by the Department for Education and is separate from the control of local authorities. For many critics, these academies are central to David Cameron’s scheme to remove the blame for the failing education system from himself.

There is no denying that there have been some successes within certain schools due to their conversion to academy status. However, this success is not common and it seems likely that the majority of schools will not benefit from the change.

The benefits of being an academy for a school include being able to be more flexible with the curriculum and being able to run admissions independently. Academies can also benefit from the freedom to choose where the money they are given goes without input from the local council.

However, this freedom can be extremely detrimental to students, as academies can do what they want without much intervention externally and will not be held accountable for any mishaps.

It is important to mention though, that David Cameron and the Conservative Party were not the ones to initially implement the academy scheme. It began with previous Labour Leader, Tony Blair.

The reason that David Cameron is so interested in academies is that he feels that local councils did not do enough to aid failing schools. He has claimed that he and his government will be “utterly intolerant of failure” and has ensured that Ofsted will be quick to get involved if the new academies are not performing.

The question stands though as to why a lot of money, power and control is being given to head teachers without much hesitation. Senior teachers can, in effect, do as they please with the curriculum and capital invested into the school. The academy scheme really just means that the education of today’s youth lies not in the hands of the authorities, but with a small number of investors. Schools could even become part of an academy chain, meaning that the atmospheres and ethos of many schools will be lost as all schools become mere clones of each other.

It seems that schools have now joined the monopoly board for big businesses and investors.

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