Conservative plans to expand Academy schools
Unless we act now our children will lose out in the global race for knowledge. We cannot afford another five years of Gordon Brown, with five more years of indiscipline in the classroom, falling standards and hundreds of thousands of parents not getting their first choice school.
We need a new generation of independent state schools run by teachers who know your child’s name, not by politicians. If we win the election, we will act within days to raise standards. We will immediately change the law so we can set hundreds of good schools free from political interference and enable them to help struggling schools. We will enable them to re-open as Academies this September.
The choice is clear. Five more years of falling school standards, indiscipline in the classroom and a lack of choice under Gordon Brown. Or a new generation of independent state schools, with higher standards and the freedom to innovate under David Cameron and the Conservatives.
We need a new generation of independent state schools run by teachers who know your child’s name, not by politicians. If we win the election, we will act within days to raise standards. We will immediately change the law so we can set hundreds of good schools free from political interference and enable them to help struggling schools. We will enable them to re-open as Academies this September.
The choice is clear. Five more years of falling school standards, indiscipline in the classroom and a lack of choice under Gordon Brown. Or a new generation of independent state schools, with higher standards and the freedom to innovate under David Cameron and the Conservatives.
Comments
I don't believe it is in the interests of the children they teach for all schools to be identical. Children have different needs, it should be possible for schools to build on different strengths. Different names can reflect that.
Children are competitive and so the brightest must compete with each other, otherwise you fail to develop the technically educated elite that will find ways for our advanced society to keep feeding and clothing all its members. In a mixed-ability class, the bright will often (a) coast (laziness and not wanting to be picked on as the swot) and (b) ape - or defer to - the behaviour of those who get peer credibility by misbehaving.
I've taught since 1976 - primary, secondary, special, grammar, comp, middle-class and inner-city, so please, readers, don't think I don't know what I'm talking about.
Private schools can 'innovate' as much as they want, just don't expect the general public to pay for it. This is what Tory policy is all about subsidising the elite private schools.
I didn't go to Eton and I do not regard myself as an "oik."
Tory policy is about improving all schools, not just the independent sector.
I have also met former pupils of such schools, including Eton, who were some of the warmest, friendliest, and least arrogant people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.
Sackerson - the grammar schools had some great strengths and the real challenge is to find ways of reintroducing into as many of our schools as possible the features which made grammar schools successful without simultaneously recreating Secondary Moderns.
I very strongly agree with your comments about children being competitive and the need to ensure that the brightest children are not allowed to coast. We need to ensure that children compete to do well, not to win peer admiration by being the most disruptive.