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Let me be clear. I am not opposed to academies. I continue to be a proud supporter of the academy programme initiated under the last Labour government that turned around hundreds of failing schools. Nor am I an apologist for failure. Failing schools need intervention but it is a completely wrong to suggest that the only option is to find a private sponsor. Academies are not a one-size fits all policy.
I am, however, a proud old boy of Downhills. I will not have the school, the students and the teachers being told that they are a failure when they are not. The school is above the benchmarks set by Gove's department. It is improving. If this is a "failing" school, then what of the other 2,600 Primaries in England that scored lower than it? What about the 26 Primaries in Michael Gove's Surrey that score worse than Downhills? Are they to have academy status imposed on them? No. I am tired of this government constantly visiting this idea of failure on this borough and its residents. The community around the school are united in the belief that Downhills is improving and under the right management, now is the time not to undermine them but support them.
Above all else, I am a democrat. The Secretary of State wants to force Downhills to find a sponsor with only a few weeks notice. He has made no attempt to seek a consensus with the governors, parents and teachers about the schools future. The best schools are forged as a collaboration and in cooperation with the community that they reside in. Micahel Gove has done the opposite. He has sought confrontation. He has insulted those parents who want to be engaged in the discussion about the future of their local school by branding them "ideologues and leftists".
The reality is different. He is the ideologue and this demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of his ideology. How can this government say that it is on the side of parents and localism when the parents at Downhills have been given their marching orders by the man in Whitehall? How can they propose to empower one group of parents through their Free Schools policy whilst ignoring another set of parents by foisting academy status at their children's school against their wishes?
