by Janine Booth
Hackney desperately needs more secondary school places.
Around 40% of youngsters go out of the borough to secondary school. This is a totally unacceptable situation which causes stress to our kids and our families.
The shortage of places left 83 Hackney 11-year-olds with no secondary school place at the start of this term.
Mossbourne
Here in central Hackney, we have a new school - Mossbourne (pictured). But lots of local kids are finding that they can’t get places there.
The school has refused places to applicants who live just a stone’s throw away, and even to those whose older siblings already go there.
Mossbourne gives only 60% of its 180 places each year to local children. This is not fair.
Academies
Mossbourne is allowed to set its own admissions policy because it is an Academy. These are new schools, where a private sponsor puts in around £2m, and the government adds up to £25m (much more than it gives to other state schools). The private sponsor gets a lot of power over the school’s ‘ethos’ and management.
This is an appalling set-up. Schools should be run in the interests of the pupils and the community. They should not be the plaything of a private sponsor.
A committee of MPs found that some Academies achieve good results by excluding pupils who are ‘harder to teach’ and reducing the number of kids from deprived backgrounds. Mossbourne refuses to provide statistics which would show whether, in practice, its admissions process discriminates against local working-class kids.
More Academies
Next year, the Petchey Academy will open on the site of the old Kingsland School.
The Academies programme is unpopular. But Hackney’s Learning Trust is pressing ahead with it, and the Council supports both the opening of Academies and the closure of exisitng schools. The ‘New Labour’ Council is serving the government and the rich, not the local communities it is supposed to serve.
The Tories and LibDems are no better. The Tories have always supported private education and privilege, and the LibDem Council in Islington is attacking popular local schools in order to set up Academies.
Defend Education
We need to defend our kids’ right to a decent education. Academies are another example of Tony Blair’s fixation on allowing the private sector to feed off public services.
The labour movement fought hard to win state education, to liberate working-class kids from relying on private ‘philanthropy’ for an education. The Academies programme is turning the clock back.
We need to say “Yes” to new schools, but “No” to private sponsors. Hackney Solidarity is part of this fightback. Get involved.
How Kingsland closed
by Jackey Dawnay, former NUT health & safety rep, Kingsland School
Kingsland School suffered 15+ years of serious underfunding before its closure in 2003. In the later years, there was also poor management, and the buildings were neglected.
The Council allowed Kingsland to become a “sink school”, and then had the cheek to close it, after a farcical ‘consultation’ which ignored the views of pupils, staff and the community.
Hackney needs more schools funding than other areas, not less, as we have poverty and other special needs.
We need schools like Kingsland to be improved not closed. We need well-funded comprehensive education, rather than under-funding for some schools and private sponsors for others.
