Reverse the privatisation of our schools

The Tories are pushing through legislation to remove all secondary and primary schools from Local Authority control by 2020 by turning them into academies. This is the free market gone mad and it must not be allowed to infect our education system. Schools are places of teaching and learning. They are not businesses and should not be run for profit. There is no evidence that academies are performing better than state schools. In fact Michael Wilshaw, Head of Ofsted has recently highlighted how many of the academy chains are underperforming. Academies do not have to teach the National Curriculum, can pay teachers what they like, can set their own holidays and impose longer days on their students, longer lessons and shorter holidays. in other words there is no parity of regulation. Academy Heads are not required to have been teachers themselves so have scant knowledge of running a school. This will spell the end of national pay scales for teachers and will be a disaster for our young people. This is total privatisation of the primary and secondary sector and cannot be allowed to happen.