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Academies: A critique

Government policy
Teacher, author and academy governor Francis Gilbert argues that the wasteful academies programme has exacerbated existing educational inequalities by allowing good and outstanding convertor schools to ‘grab most of the cash’.

I supported my son’s local secondary school, Bethnal Green Technology College (BGTC), as it was then called, to become an academy. Nevertheless, I have severe reservations about the academies and free schools programme as a whole. 

Let me explain. BGTC was exactly the kind of school that needed to become an academy if it was going to raise its game. Situated in London’s east end, with more than 50 per cent of students on free school meals (FSM), it had suffered at the hands of the local authority, Tower Hamlets, and had been for some years a “dumping ground” for excluded children. 

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