Inevitable that secondaries will become academies, teacher warns

It is inevitable that secondary schools in England will now convert to academy status, according to Stuart Herdson, a Bradford teacher and former president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).

Ministers are urging schools to opt out of local council control and become independently-run academies with funding direct from government and greater freedoms over how they are run.

Originally academies were set up under Labour as replacement schools for secondaries which were struggling in deprived areas.

Now the Government is urging all existing schools to apply for academy status with the freedom to set their own admissions policies, timetable and employment arrangements. Mr Herdson told delegates at the ATL’s annual conference that some schools were becoming academies to avoid funding cuts.

He was speaking during a debate on the ATL rejecting the coalition’s academy expansion plans and confirming support for members opposed to their school becoming an academy who decide to take action, including balloting for industrial action.

Seconding the motion, which was passed, Mr Herdson said: “We are now at the stage where we will have to face that it is inevitable that the majority of secondary schools will have to become academies.

“The first reason for this is money – schools are seeing funding cut, and wrongly believe they will get around three quarters of a million pounds extra when they start off. If they don’t become an academy, they will have to make staff redundancies. The second reason is they don’t want to be the last man standing in their area that’s a local authority school and become a dumping ground for the problems of all the other schools.”

The number of academies in the region is set to rise above 50 this year.