Schools for Sale ! Forcing the Academy Agenda

Until fairly recently I was a teacher in the state education system. It's a career I'd invested twenty years of my working life in, plus four years at university getting a degree in my subject and a teaching qualification.

I've put a lot of myself into teaching and leaving twenty years before I had envisioned doing so was hard. As a result of the many pressures on the system, education has changed and so have I, neither for the better, so it was time to go.

Looking back over the past twenty years, with the benefit of hindsight and the bonus of some time on my hands for once, I think I see a process that has been going on since the start of my teaching career and that is nearing its endgame.

What is that endgame?

The total privatisation of the state education system via the forced academy process, as announced by George Osborne in the 2016 budget.

I think I became a teacher for all of the right reasons - I didn't fall into it or have it as a backup plan. It was my first choice from my late teens onwards. I saw it as a vocation and the financial comparisons with friends who went into industry / business have never bothered me (OK - maybe once when a friend in banking cash-bought a flashy car using his yearly bonus, but that's it).

I was inspired to teach by a teacher I had in my early to mid teens. She saw my potential. She kicked my arse. She made ME see my potential.

I wanted to do that too.

As kids in the 80's my friends and I never felt any sort of pressure at school and we went to a school which had an excellent reputation to preserve. We didn't have target grades (if there were any we didn't know them) and we certainly didn't feel the gut wrenching fear and anxiety that accompanies GCSEs nowadays.

Why is that? No league tables - so no overwhelming pressure on school, headteachers, teachers and students that, if YOU don't get your 5 A*-C the teacher, headteacher and school would be in trouble.

No matter what commentators may say, kids in schools are VERY aware that their individual grades make a HUGE difference to them and to the school. Extra, and often compulsory, classes after school and in the holidays, run (unpaid) by teachers, all serve to reinforce this culture of high stakes testing as the be all and end all of students' lives.

Having to console and support students, even BEFORE they take their exams, who are crying, suffering with anxiety and depression, or even self-harming, has become a day to day occurrence in many, if not all schools. Colleagues in other schools regularly share harrowing experiences supporting their own students.

So why has it changed?

I firmly believe that there may have been a long term plan, across successive governments, to devalue the state education system in order to make it ripe for plucking and privatising.

I'm no conspiracy nut. I don't believe 9/11 was an inside job etc. but I do worry that the pernicious and Machiavellian interventions of politicians in the UK education system has been designed with the endgame of a big sell-off to profit making organisations.

League tables, with their regularly changing criteria, have made teachers an easy target for criticism. Couple this with a media onslaught on teaching, blaming the profession for many social ills and making them responsible for solving so many others, has made the job all but impossible to succeed in.

How often, when watching some terrible news item about kids' lives, have you heard the phrase "Schools need to..." or "Schools should..." used?

Nowadays teachers are not just educators. They are: surrogate parents, social workers, counsellors, financial advisors, spotters of extremism (!), administrators, social workers, arbitrators, mediators, language specialists, a walking encyclopaedia, form fillers, fundraisers, examiners, scapegoats, relations officers, accountants, musicians, artistic directors, petty cash clerks, report writers...

Occasionally teachers manage to squeeze in some some lessons.

Even with all these added responsibilities, teachers do what they have always done: work hard, adapt, achieve...and that has been the problem. It has meant that further changes have been needed to make failure more likely...if not inevitable.

This is where I feel the plan to make schools and teachers fail becomes clear.

League tables initially measured 5 A*-C grades and many schools improved.

New stricter measurements of 5A*-C including English and Maths were introduced and so schools focused on these (to the detriment of other subjects) and many improved.

OfSted inspection criteria were changed and changed again, leaving teachers doubting what they needed to do in order to pass muster. The 'Satisfactory' rating was changed to 'Requires Improvement' and therefore previously 'satisfactory' schools and teachers became failing schools and teachers.

It's the only job where something marked as satisfactory really isn't.

All the while, despite the battle cries of: "Education, education, education," schools have been coping with real world cuts to budgets, salaries and greater and varied demands on their time and resources. 

There has been an influx of English as a second language students, but have schools been given funds to cope with this? No, but they are expected to improve grades anyway. I don't have an issue with migration, but I do have an issue with the needs of migrant children not being funded adequately and schools carrying the can for it.

School buildings have been ignored and left to rot due to budget cuts, but schools are expected to improve anyway. PFI has diverted millions away from school budgets into long term rents, just so they can have a building which is not dangerous, unless of course it is in Edinburgh...

Despite government denials, there is a MASSIVE crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, with thousands of potential teachers not joining the profession when they see, via the media, the vitriol that would be poured upon them. 

Many thousands of younger teachers, already in the profession, are quitting after a short time due to the relentless, excessive and unrealistic demands of workload and expectations, or moving abroad to teach in foreign climes where their skills and dedication is appreciated. 

Many older teachers are quitting as they are burnt out, disillusioned, or have become very ill as a result of the relentless and excessive demands of unrealistic workload and expectations.

Is this is part of the plan?

When the state schools system has been brought to its knees, which I fear is not too far away, the academies will step in and be seen as the 'saviours of education'. The current government is continuing to spin this propaganda to the public.

Initially, like academies now, it will be not-for-profit, but there will be boards of executives taking large salaries and using their own companies (as is already happening) to supply resources and consultants, taking much needed funding away from each child's education.

It is a system ready-made for abuse.

Once the public gets used to academies running schools, legislation will slowly change to allow these companies to make profits, and that is when children's education will really suffer.

Instead of taxes being paid to educate children, some will be siphoned off for dividends and bonuses.

It has already begun with the new White Paper, but there is time to halt this tide.

How?

Keep schools under the control of local authorities so that there is accountability, transparency and so that every penny goes towards what school should be about - education.