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Political matters
own the walls.
also more than many independent schools
with fees upward of £30,000.
LAE is just one example of the
transformational impact our academy
and free school programme is having
across the country. Results show that
sponsored academies are improving more
quickly than other state-funded schools,
at both primary and secondary level.
Converter academies are outperforming
other schools and achieving better Ofsted
reports than maintained schools.
The independence we have given free
schools and academies has given them
the same freedoms which have been long
enjoyed by independent schools. It’s an
opportunity which thousands of people
have already seized.
In May 2010 just 6% of secondary
schools were academies and there were
no primary academies. Almost four years
on, 53% of secondary schools and more
than 1,700 primaries are academies. From
a standing start in 2010, there are now
174 free schools open and a further 100
opening in 2014 or beyond.
This programme is driven by our
belief in higher standards for all children,
no matter where they live or what their
parents can afford. We shouldn’t accept
the defeatist attitude which says state
schools can’t be as good as independent
schools. We believe that every child can
succeed and should have the opportunity
of a good education.
But, sadly, the Labour Party don’t
agree – at least, that’s what their latest
statements suggest. In 2010 the man
who is now Labour’s Shadow Education
Secretary memorably called free schools
‘a vanity project for yummy mummies’.
But when he became Shadow Education
Secretary last year Tristram Hunt said he
would put ‘rocket boosters’ under parents
wanting to set up schools. Days later, he
u-turned yet again, describing free schools
as ‘a dangerous ideological experiment’.
And he admitted Labour still don’t back
parents setting up schools in areas where
there are spare places in unpopular and
failing local schools.
Now Tristram Hunt has called for
‘an immediate halt to the free schools
programme’. This is despite Ed Miliband
implying just days later that Labour
would let approved free schools continue,
albeit with new intervention mechanisms.
Would open free schools be halted
under a Labour government? Or would
they be allowed to continue, albeit with
new intervention mechanisms? Would
free school projects which have been
approved, but not yet opened, be allowed
to proceed? Or would they be stopped in
their tracks? Labour don’t seem to know.
Labour don’t just disagree on whether
free schools should continue. Last year
Tristram Hunt said Labour wouldn’t ‘go
back to the old days of the local authority
running all the schools – they will not be
in charge.’ But just a month earlier Ed
Miliband had said Labour would have a
‘local authority framework for all schools’
– including academies and free schools.
Labour’s Blunkett review is currently
deciding which path the party will chose.
Will it back Tristram Hunt and keeping
the independence which has allowed free
schools and academies to thrive? Or will
it back Ed Miliband by bringing back
local authority control and bureaucracy?
I know leaders in academies and free
schools will, like myself, be extremely
interested in the outcome.
My vision is clear. I want to tear
down the Berlin Wall between the state
and private school sectors. I want state
schools to learn from the very best
the independent sector has to offer –
whether on providing a longer school
day, more academic rigour, or tougher
discipline. The academies and free
schools programme enables state schools
to do this. Any halt to the programme
would lead to a terrible reversal of the
improvement in our children’s education
we are starting to see.
I only hope that, as they have done
on grade inflation, the EBacc, our
new accountability system and the
national curriculum, Labour come to
their senses. Pupils across the country
deserve to receive the same standard
of education enjoyed by those at the
London Academy of Excellence, and
at thousands more academies and free
schools across the country.
Summer 2014 | 33