The Tory Party never known for their honesty, rather their outright lies, manipulations, half-truths and propaganda through the rightwing press that shames this country… very specifically the Torygraph, the Daily Hate, The Express {way to racism] and that Murdoch rag… the s*n.
It wasn’t long ago when the cola-addict Osbourne, the biggest failure of a Chancellor that this country has ever seen (now left/removed from the position) and considering he followed the Brown years that is a major achievement; had the notion he might become Prime Minister (laughable to the rest of us, but he really did think he was in with a shout). As part of Cameron gearing him up for the part, Osbourne announced during a Budget that all schools would have to become Academies by 2022. Why this was an appropriate time to announce such a policy is beyond me and many others.
Thankfully, the British public rose up against the idea, as it was even unpopular among a few Tory Councillors; so the Government decided that it was going to undertake a u-turn and pretend that it actually cared what the great British public thought.
The problem is, it was all one great big stinking LIE. They have no intention of giving up on the idea, they are just going to be a bit more sneaky about it. In fairness to them, given that they are nasty ideologically-driven sociopaths that want to fracture our society so that they and their corporate mates hold power, reduce democracy by using our country’s domocracy and get the above evil twisted mates in the media to drive home the message, so people actually believe it; then why not, as they can get away with it.
So how are they going to do it? Simple, they change the threshold at which triggers a school being forced to become an Academy at the same rate as the above policy would have forced the schools to adopt Acadamisation.
They do this in four different ways:
- Spend (and waste) huge amounts of money on developing Free Schools, which are very much academies. These are often religious schools which segregate society and are causing society to fracture.
- Tempt schools which have had their budgets cut in real terms with more funding if they convert.
- Force “failing” schools to become Acadamies which has not been proven to be benefit to the school compared to actually just properly resourcing a state school.
- Come up with the nonsense and non-descript ‘coasting’ schools will be forced to convert to academies.
It is this last point that has Governors and School leaders worried. They know the u-turn was a lie; most, I know to agree and I suspect that most other, do not want to see their school changed to an Acadamy, but they are caught in a trap and they are doing their best for the children that they work so hard to help.
The trap is simple; do they convert now and in a way that they feel they have some control over and put their school in a “strong” position (hoping some future Government will correct this whole mess and limit the damage to the children’s future until that happens) or hang on until the bitter end, fighting the change, but be pushed into an unfavourable position which could damage the children’s futures?
By applying the threat of picking on ‘coasting’ schools (remember that means anything they want it to mean), they have used the children as a weapon against the interests of what most parents/teachers/school leaders & Governors want which is a well resourced & funded school where qualified teachers are left to teach.
So will we see Tory Councillors dragging their snouts out of the trough and ripping up their memberships in protest… thought not.
The Emerald 