reasons why he chooses a sponsor won’t be disclosed even under the Freedom of Information Act. Many commentators have suggested that schools be returned to their local authorities. This is impossible under current legislation but at least one council, Chester & Cheshire West, has said it will provide school improvement support to Winsford Academy in the medium term, until another suitable sponsor is found for the school’.
of its list of objectives. FASNA are running a series of seminars throughout the autumn all about how to start academies — each one bearing the damning description: ‘The DfE is sponsoring this event, there is no charge’. With eight of these scheduled across Engand, there is a fair sum of taxpayers’ money being channelled by Gove into a body agitating for political changes of questionable relevance or benefit to the education of children. Recently, Michael Gove used FASNA as a platform to give a speech in which school governors – who give their time for free to help run schools — were attacked as: ‘Local worthies who see being a governor as a badge of status not a job of work.’ With Free Schools contracted out to a charity run by his former adviser, an ideological bent seems to be a prerequisite for involvement with DfE.
First for-profit school admits it is providing sub-standard education The parent company of England’s first for-profit free school has admitted it is providing a sub-standard education to its students. Internationella Engelska Skolan (IES), the Swedish provider which runs the Suffolk free school IES Breckland, has told TES it has been forced to stage its own inspection of the state-funded independent, which found it is ‘not representative of our schools’. The company said it was spurred into making the decision following the departure of its principal, Sherry Zand, who left the school in November last year, amid general concerns over the quality of teaching. During the internal review, Ofsted’s own inspectors paid a visit and while their report is yet to be published, IES is not expecting it to be favourable. It is another blow to education secretary Michael Gove’s free school policy, which has already seen two schools being forced to close due to concerns around standards, and another being investigated by police over allegations of fraud.
Hacked DfE web page: ‘Michael Gove decides to teach all children himself A mischievous hacker has defaced the Department for Education website — with a news article ‘revealing’ that the education secretary plans to teach the nation’s children on his own: ‘EDUCATION MINISTER Michael Gove today unveiled new plans to single-handedly teach every child in the UK. “Gather around kids!” he said, while ushering every single British child into one cavernous classroom. “According to reports, one small girl in the class began to cry. “Aw, do you miss your Mummy?” asked Gove, gently. “Well, Mummy has fundamentally failed to provide for your education so forget about her.”’ The cross-site scripting vulnerability was found by coder Terence Eden on a section of the site which had been outsourced to private provider, Texuna! ‘Texuna don’t have any secure way for people to report flaws to them and, when notified, struggled to find someone who could take responsibility.’ According to the TES, the department and Texuna took A MONTH to fix the security flaw and take down the article — even after they were informed of the hack. In fairness, that’s still quicker than their freedom of information (FOI) response time. http://politicalscrapbook.net
Gove gives DfE cash to ideological ‘small government’ schools body
The Department for Education is spending taxpayers’ money funding conferences given by an organisation campaigning for ‘smaller government’, it has emerged. The Freedom and Autonomy for Schools National Association (FASNA) puts the clearly political aim of shrinking the state at the top
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