Post by Patrick on Apr 25, 2009 13:46:26 GMT
The announcement of the Tories jumping on the "Academy" band wagon stirred this thought in me. I presume there are to be some big savings to be made in education in the next few years. As these academy schools sweept the nation more schools are being amalgamated and Two Into One means the potential sale of some lucrative town or city centre building land?
My old secondary school (1950's full of asbestos job) is being merged with another (Boys School to Girls School). At the moment I imagine temporary buildings are being put up over at the girls school whilst they build the fab new academy on the land occupied by the boys. Which they all move back into in 2010 or so. Ergo a Huge amount of wonderful acreage to be sold off as the local education authority likes. This must be the biggest boost to Government coffers (despite the recession) going?
The fact that schools are still getting bigger though fills me with horror. In fact it may well be an idea to merge a few Primary schools so children are cast into the scalding hot bath that are huge schools straight off. For me - going from a Primary school of just 24 children to a secondary with 1500 odd was horrendous. This may have a detrimental affect on education as well - for many children just simply do not thrive in such large set ups! What's more - teachers cannot get to know children's strengths and weaknesses in such an arena. We shall be doomed until the next teaching craze comes along.
My old secondary school (1950's full of asbestos job) is being merged with another (Boys School to Girls School). At the moment I imagine temporary buildings are being put up over at the girls school whilst they build the fab new academy on the land occupied by the boys. Which they all move back into in 2010 or so. Ergo a Huge amount of wonderful acreage to be sold off as the local education authority likes. This must be the biggest boost to Government coffers (despite the recession) going?
The fact that schools are still getting bigger though fills me with horror. In fact it may well be an idea to merge a few Primary schools so children are cast into the scalding hot bath that are huge schools straight off. For me - going from a Primary school of just 24 children to a secondary with 1500 odd was horrendous. This may have a detrimental affect on education as well - for many children just simply do not thrive in such large set ups! What's more - teachers cannot get to know children's strengths and weaknesses in such an arena. We shall be doomed until the next teaching craze comes along.
