Video from Peter O’Connor on Charter Schools
Check out this You Tube video from Peter O’Connor, which gives a very credible and well informed critique of Charter Schools in NZ. One to watch if you want to get yourself informed on this issue.
“The dominant special character of such schools tends to be one of business entrepreneurship”
Is this what we want?
In the UK, Charter Schools or Academies as we call them, bring in new ways of organising the learning for children and young people. So far so good. But to get industry interested in being involved in them to fund new build and restore existing schools etc means for a share holder fact they need to see what the profit’ will be for them. Any school will have such expenditure except the ‘profit’ if any is used for the school itself or returned to the pool to be shared with other schools. Our local authorities are forbidden to make ‘profit’ as they are only expected to cover costs for obvious democratic reasons. But life has changed in the UK since the Coalition has ben in power driven by a secretary of state for education who wants Eton and Harrow models to be the norm for children. We have heard in the past days that the salaries of the big Academy chain executives here in the UK have exceeded £200k. As these chains develop there is less and less funding in the system for schools not wanting to become academies. However the writing is on the wall. All schools will become Academies as fast as possible in the belief that industry will foot the bill and the public purse will save a fortune. So far so good? Maybe……but read on………..
Academies are exempt from the National Curriculum so can form a curriculum and assessment process as they wish. So far the evidence is that such schools revert to the ways of the past and innovation is impossible to see in any curriculum structure. Any ideas about new fangled and arty stuff can be ignored. Speaking and Listening for example as a learning outcome does not appear in the New National Curriculum to be in place by 2014. The press have insured that parents in the UK have a view that trendy teaching has failed the kids in the past and this is fuelled by an extremely right wing view of teaching practices. Watch us and pray you don’t fall into the same abyss……..