Trade unions in the UK have joined together with education experts, including teachers, governors, and school staff, to highlight the shortcomings of their government's Education and Adoption Bill to speed up the process of converting ‘failing’ schools into academies.
According to the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the Bill’s provisions will automatically require so-called ‘failing’ schools – deemed by standards department Ofsted to require significant improvement or special measures – to become sponsored academies with no time allowed for an improvement plan to be set in place.
“We are very disappointed in the outcome of the Lords report stage,” said the organisations in a statement issued on 17 December 2015.
The government is wrong to say there is only one pathway to school improvement, as becoming an academy does not guarantee the higher standards of education for children that the government claims, the group stressed.
The group consists of two Education International affiliates - the NUT and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, as well as the National Association of Head Teachers, public service union UNISON, the Local Schools Network, and the Catholic Education Service.
No confidence
The group also says that the government is also wrong to portray the many voices of parents and experts as 'vested interests'. They insisted that the process of academy conversion is too opaque for communities to be confident that it will be fair. The evidence clearly shows that there is no link between academy status and automatic school improvement, so it is right that concerns are raised and debated. Children should not have their futures put at risk by such a weak set of proposals, they explained.
The organisations “fully support the ambition for high standards of education for all children in all schools, but this must be done in a way which makes the most difference for pupils in those schools”.