Gove defends school plans
MICHAEL Gove, education secretary, yesterday pressed ahead with plans to allow state schools to become academies next autumn, despite claims he was railroading the legislation through parliament.
Gove said the plans, which will allow schools to be free from local authority control, would “inject dynamism” into a schools system that has been in “decline” under Labour.
Schools that win academy status have more control over their budgets and curriculum, and have the power to expel or exclude unruly pupils.
“It grants greater autonomy to individual schools, it gives more freedom for teachers and it injects a new level of dynamism into a programme that has been proven to raise standards for all children and the disadvantaged most of all,” Gove told the Commons on the second reading of his Academies Bill.
In a bid to honour a manifesto commitment to allow the best schools to become academies in September, the education secretary is pushing the legislation through parliament at breakneck speed, leading to accusations the bill isn’t receiving enough scrutiny.
Shadow education secretary Ed Balls, said: “This bill will rip apart the community-based comprehensive education system we have built in the last 16 years and which has delivered record rising standards over the last decade.”
But an aide to Gove dismissed the concerns as “balls”, pointing out that Labour was the architect of the academy programme. When in government, Balls and others insisted that academies raised standards more effectively than normal state schools.