Academy culture: towards a corporate education system http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3627

The recent announcement by the new Conservative education secretary, Michael Gove, that all schools will have the opportunity to become academies, along with his invitation to the heads of 'outstanding' comprehensives to enter a fast track conversion process, represents a worrying turn towards the privatisation of British schooling. Under the academy model, the school governing body remains not-for-profit, but all the services, from teaching to cleaning, can be run by private companies.

Gove insisted that all the groups his department were considering to run academies were not-for-profit, yet this is clearly not the case. The new legislation dispenses with the rights of teachers and parents to oppose plans to turn schools into academies. Only the education secretary and school governors, who are sometimes not even elected, will be able to stop the process. Teaching unions are opposed to the plans and lawyers are suggesting a legal challenge to these undemocratic proposals.