Primary lesson for academies

AS the effectiveness of the Government's city academies is, again, called into question, it is, perhaps, worth considering their precise remit. According to none other than Tony Blair, the instigator of these schools, they provide an "opportunity for children from some of the most disadvantaged areas to get high-quality education".

No one will disagree with this sentiment. The question, as always, is the effectiveness of this policy when more than 3,000 pupils have left Yorkshire's academies with inadequate qualifications following their inception, even though this elite group of schools has been the

beneficiary of so much extra funding from the Government and private sponsors.

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It was always going to take time for the academies to become established and Mr Blair was guilty of raising false expectations; the practicalities of policy were never his strongest suit. These super-schools, after all, are predominantly in some of this region's most deprived areas that have been blighted by low standards of attainment for decades.

As such, the figures disclosed today are a salutary reminder to the main party politics that "change" – one of the words uttered most frequently on the election campaign trail – does not always directly correlate with improvements to exam results and such like.

What also needs to be remembered is that the academies are admitting a significant percentage of pupils each September who are unable to read or write properly. It inevitably means that teachers have to spend a disproportionate amount of time playing "catch-up".

This would not be so necessary if greater political emphasis was placed on the importance of reforming primary education, including extra resources being devoted to those children who have an inadequate grasp of basic skills, rather than tinkering so much with secondary school structures.

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For, while new buildings can boost learning, the benefits are, in fact, immaterial if a teenager is unable to keep up with the lesson in a gleaming academy because they do not command the basic skills which are so fundamental to their future, and ability to learn.