Ed has today responded to reports that Theresa Villiers has written a letter of protest to Michael Gove about a rejected Academy in her constituency whose “students come from diverse backgrounds, with a significant proportion having special educational needs and others coming from the refugee community” and reports that around 50 of the Academies listed yesterday have already been rejected.
Shadow children and education secretary Ed Balls said:
“Michael Gove’s Ministerial colleague is right to share our fears that the Tory Academies programme will simply be about rewarding schools that are already doing well.
“This is a complete perversion of Labour’s successful Academies programme which was about turning round under-performing schools, often with pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in some of the poorest areas.
“Despite the over one thousand schools the education secretary claimed wanted to become Academies and the emergency legislation railroaded through Parliament, only a very small number of schools have applied to be Tory-style Academies. And now we learn even this small number are in question with around 50 of them being told they aren’t ready which leaves a tiny number, if any, now going ahead this autumn.
“Michael Gove must now publish the criteria he is using to decide which schools become Academies and which are rejected under his new scheme. At the moment it seems to be totally arbitrary, with all decisions about the future of schools being made by Ministers in Whitehall not by local communities.
“Mr Gove does not seem to have learned any lessons from his rushed, unfair and chaotic announcement on the cancellation of over 700 new school buildings.”
