The government's academies programme is a "Trojan horse for selection", the shadow schools secretary says today, as he tables an amendment to legislation that, if passed, would block academies from being allowed to cherrypick their pupils.
Ed Balls claims a mechanism he brought in to allow good schools to expand will now be used by the Tories to give grammar schools the right to do the same, in a "perversion" of the system.
His intervention comes the day after the government revealed the names of 1,700 schools that expressed interest in applying for academy status, after pressure from union leaders and campaigners. A total of the 97 grammar schools - 59% of all those in England - have asked the government for information.
Of the 870 "outstanding" schools on the list, who will be given the chance to convert and opt out of local authority control as soon as September, some 76 (9%) are grammar schools. Among the 830 other institutions that have asked the government for information, there are 21 grammars
More................
http://bit.ly/9lgfzW
No comments:
Post a Comment