Education system could be completely privatised by 2015, union predicts
NUT general secretary Christine Blower says significant campaign is needed to put a halt to government's plans.
England's education system risks being completely privatised within three years, the leader of one of the country's largest teaching unions has predicted.
Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), whose union will strike in the capital over teachers' pensions on Wednesday, said the trade union movement could be haunted by "the spectre of a completely privatised education service by the end of the coalition's first term in government" unless it took significant action.
Blower said she was alarmed by the pace at which ministers wanted schools to cut links with their local authorities and become academies and free schools.
Academies and free schools are accountable to the education secretary, rather than their local authority and have greater freedom to change the timings of the school day, teachers' pay and the subjects they teach.
Some 40% of secondary schools in England are now academies, and Michael Gove, the education secretary, has recently come under renewed attack for forcing Downhills, a primary school in north London, to turn into an academy.
Blower said: "Unless we, as the trade union movement, in conjunction with community campaigning, are able to mount a significant campaign … to put the brake on this and unless the Liberal Democrats start behaving consistently with their own policy, which is to oppose academies and free schools, there is the spectre of a completely fragmented and privatised [education] service that is not in anybody's interest," she said.
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... (The Guardian - 28 March)