Blair says academies are ‘unstoppable’
In a speech later today, Tony Blair will preview the autumn White Paper. He will say academies will be the centrepiece of a reformed education system in which LEAs are “commissioners of education and champions of standards”. Blair will claim the Price Waterhouse Coopers evaluation shows that current academies are successful and popular with parents: “It is not government edict that is determining the fate of city academies, but parent power. Parents are choosing city academies, and that is good enough for me.” The speech is designed to provide political momentum for a controversial White Paper, which government insiders say has caused divisions between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.

Estelle Morris, the former Secretary of State for Education, has criticised the academies programme as another example of the government ‘meddling’ in education. In an article for The Guardian she wrote, “Another round of structural change won’t by itself achieve universally high standards. In five years’ time, whose children will be going to these new academies? Will choice and market forces once again squeeze out the children of the disadvantaged?”

Kelly steps up pressure on schools
Ruth Kelly has also been trailing the contents of the new White Paper, which will contain measures to significantly increase the pressure on schools which Ofsted judges to be failing. Ms Kelly said that ‘incremental improvement’ was not good enough for such schools, and that schools which have not improved within a year could face closure (with the possibility of being reopened as an academy) or being forced to federate with a neighbouring, more successful school.

Parents are to be provided with more ‘micro-performance data’, which will allow pupils’ progress to be tracked throughout their school careers. The Observer reports that schools will be forced to publish new subject-by-subject ratings measuring the achievements of individual children as they progress through the system. The information will enable parents and head teachers to identify underperforming teachers or departments so that action can be taken.

Confed calls for tougher admissions code
A new report by the chief executive of Confed (which represents directors of education in local authorities) has called for the admissions code to be compulsory, and to prevent schools from using interviews to select pupils. Chris Waterman’s report, Sins of Admission, says that the new code is in some areas weaker than the one it replaces, e.g. downgrading ‘bad practice’ to ‘poor practice’.

It also criticises government plans to expand faith schools: “If [faith schools] admission arrangements are to be inclusive of all elements of the population in their area, the argument for requiring all schools to follow the good practice in the code becomes even more compelling,” Mr Waterman writes.

In a foreword to the report, Barry Sheerman, the Chairman of the Commons education select committee, writes that the code is a “pale imitation” of what is needed and that the government is missing “a golden opportunity to revise its code of practice to deliver its wider agenda”.

Peter Walsh