Union criticises acadamies crusade

A LOCAL teachers’ union has denounced plans to force every state school in England to become an academy by 2022.

George Osborne unveiled the plan yesterday as part of a £1.5 billion package of additional funding for education.

But the National Union of Teachers accuses the Chancellor of “undoing over 50 years of comprehensive public education at a stroke”. Academies are state-funded schools which are free from local authority control, with some run by sponsors.

Oldham NUT spokesperson Tony Harrison said: “This won’t deal with the real problems facing schools and parents now: the chronic teacher shortage, the lack of school places, the chaos around the changes in the curriculum, especially around primary testing and the funding crisis that is about the engulf schools just as it has already engulfed sixth form colleges.

“Those are the issues that the Government should be dealing with but instead they are pursuing an ideological crusade and they don’t have the evidence to justify it.”