Independent schools

ePolitix.com stakeholders comment on the government's plans to encourage links between independent schools and city academies.

Speaking to the Guardian, schools minister Lord Adonis said: "Successful independent schools will be exempt from the £2m sponsorship requirement when they set up or support an academy. It is their educational DNA we are seeking, not their fee income or their existing charitable endowments."


Stakeholder response: ATL

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Nansi Ellis, acting head of education and policy at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: "We continue to believe academies should be returned to the control of local authorities, which are best placed to know what type and number of school places are needed for their local community.

"The proposals for independent schools to sponsor or support academies do not answer our concerns about their accountability, admissions, or the working conditions for teachers and support staff.

"However, where academies exist, we would much rather see people with a real knowledge of education and running schools sponsoring them than those who regard education as a business the same as any other."

Stakeholder response: The National Union of Teachers

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Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "The move to encourage private school sponsorship of academies is extraordinary.

"Lord Adonis's effort to extract the 'educational DNA' from private schools with no cost to them stands as an explicit criticism of the lack of educational DNA of the current academy sponsors.

"If the current sponsors are not contributing anything educationally to academies, why not remove them?

"I reject the implication that somehow private schools and the quality of teaching within them is better than that in state schools.

"Day in day out, teachers in schools in socially deprived areas make an enormous and positive contribution to the lives of their pupils.

"I have to wonder how private school academies are going to get any where near that kind of commitment and experience.

"My other concern is that cash strapped private schools will be tempted into academy status, thus transferring their financial burdens to the state sector.

"There is every argument for positive links to be established between state and private schools.

"Encouraging private schools to run state schools will not help those partnerships."