Teachers call for end to academy plans

Teachers today stepped up the campaign against the Government's troubled city academy programme.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) claimed academies are "Trojan horses" for Tony Blair's plans to privatise state education.

The ATL joined MPs in calling for a halt to the ?5 billion programme until the Government can prove academies are the answer to the inner city sinkschool problem.

Last week, the Labour-dominated Commons Education Select Committee savaged government plans to press ahead with building 200 city academies, including 60 in London.

The committee said in a report that there was no evidence that academies lead to improvements in education in England's inner cities.

The report was published after the latest exam league tables showed nine out of 11 academies that reported results of 14-year-olds in English, maths and science tests were ranked in the 200 worst schools.

At the ATL annual conference in Torquay today teachers' leaders warned that because academies stand apart from the state system, they will be easy to privatise in future.

Academies cost about ?25 million each to build on the site of an existing failing school. Most of the start-up money comes from the taxpayer. In return for an investment of a maximum ?2 million, private sponsors - who include businessmen, charities and the Church of England - appoint the head and most of the governors.

Although academies are not allowed to charge, they do not have to follow the national curriculum because they operate outside the umbrella of local education authorities (LEA).

ATL official Phil Baker described academies as "the weapon of mass destruction" of local education authorities. "This is going to be used as the Trojan Horse to destroy LEAs generally," he said.

Mr Baker said they had to be evaluated alongside the Government's intention to let popular state secondaries opt out from LEA control by becoming "foundation" schools setting their own admissions policies.

"What we are likely to get is some form of class apartheid system developing, where one or two schools are left picking up the pieces that the middle class schools don't want to have in their class.," he said.