Teachers join forces against city academies

Anger at the Government's refusal to listen to warnings about its flagship city academies programme has boiled over among teachers.

Ministers face pushing through the £5 billion plan in the face of increasingly militant opposition.

The National Union of Teachers has vowed to join the Association of Teachers and Lecturers and the NASUWT in opposing expansion of Tony Blair's pet project for turning around inner-city "sink" schools.

At the NUT's annual conference in Gateshead, delegate Kevin Millar expressed particular annoyance at plans to turn Islington Green school into an academy.

The school, he said, was only classed a failure after former Ofsted chief Chris Woodhead overrode his own inspectors.

The Prime Minister has vowed to build 200 academies by 2010, 60 of them in London. But NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said the opposition of more than half a million teachers should halt this.

He claimed many parts of England were being made to back academies by a threat to withhold cash to repair existing state schools.

The NUT has vowed to mount high-profile campaigns and pickets wherever an academy is mooted.