Education - Declining Standards

I'm not sure whether the place we inhabit appears to be in educational turmoil and decline because of the imminent coming together of schools to form academies or whether we are seeing something that is even more worrying.

Actually, as far as I am concerned, and regardless of the reasons, I don't think it can be any more worrying as we have children at varying stages of education, primary and secondary, and they appear to be suffering.

When you get letters from teachers that are spelt wrongly, hear of lessons where the teacher has to be searched for by the kids, bored of waiting, because they haven't turned up and teachers who appear to lack even a rudimentary knowledge of the subject they are supposed to be teaching, one gets just a little concerned!

We live in a place which had five secondary schools serving the educational needs of those living here. Then came the spectre of BSF (Building Schools for the Future) which decided that one failing secondary would become an academy and the sixth forms from the other four schools would be closed to form another (sixth form) academy. Buildings were knocked down and things started to happen with the sixth form provision and then things changed and it transpired that the money was gone. No replacements for the demolished buildings and educational bedlam!

Then things moved a pace and suddenly the secondary school where the sixth form is to be is also to be an academy and the remaining three schools are to become a multi-campus academy too! Five become three and five sixth forms become one in the name of giving us more choice! Seems the mathematics is as poor as what the speling is!

Teacher I've spoken to are looking at their options regarding jobs, after all one of the big benefits of the academies (for those who run them) is the fact that teachers don't have to be registered teachers, anyone can be a teacher at an academy! The upshot of this is that you can bring in the best from industry and commerce, but as you have to pay for what you get and there are no national pay scales from non-registered teachers, I am assuming that financial expediency rather than academic prowess will dictate here. Pay peanuts and get monkeys appears to the potential here.

Each member of staff negotiates their own salary and they apparently sign a non-disclosure agreement, which means collective bargaining and parity goes out of the window - ingredients for a happy and content ship or one containing mistrust and dissatisfaction?

Not only that but the government have now changed the academy programme such that whilst, initially, those companies and groups looking to run an academy had to bring in money, this has progressed via a mere promise of money to the situation now where we just hand over our schools and pay them!

The schools are outside the freedom of information act and are effectively a law unto themselves. The governors, as they once were, vanish and there is potential for one parent on the board, but this is not a requirement and so it will be a 'done to', rather than 'done with' situation.

All in all, what we appear to have before us is a most unsatisfactory removal of our schools from the LEA (Local Education Authority) state school system into an independent and potentially unsatisfactory general school system. Students are cherry-picked to get the grades that win prizes and for the lower level students the path they will follow will set them on the way to blue-collar, drone-like, futures that the comprehensive education system removed.

All in all, the recipe for a decline in education and a destruction of the state school system which has served us well and once made us the envy of many nations. Not any more I fear!

Still, they're looking at the NHS next, plaster anyone?

Pax