Councillors are set to oppose plans for two primary schools to join a London-based academy trust.
Hangleton Primary School and Benfield Primary School, which form The Orchard Schools Partnership, announced their intention to join the Eko Trust two weeks ago.
The local authority-run schools are running a consultation with parents until Friday, 20 October about the plans to academise in April next year.
Today, Labour members of Brighton and Hove City Council said they have written to the executive headteacher of the schools, Emma Lake, to formally object to the plans.
Deputy council leader, Councillor Jacob Taylor, said: “We do not think this plan is in the best interests of staff, parents or children – and we have requested that the governing board pauses the proposal to enable more time to engage with the local council and the community.”
“Academising these two schools is a permanent and irreversible step.
“Hangleton and Benfield schools could never return to being local authority-maintained institutions.
“We are not convinced that parents and staff have had this explained to them, and we will be attempting to do this via our own public communications.”
Brighton and Hove has an excess of primary school places per number of children due to falling pupil numbers, causing school budgets – which are calculated per pupil – to decrease.
Labour says it is working on a plan to address this, but has not yet made details public. An announcement is expected in the coming months.
Chair of the Children, Families and Schools Committee, Councillor Lucy Helliwell said: “This Labour administration has a clear plan to address the issue of falling pupil numbers.
“Schools leaving to become academies will not solve this issue – only coordinated action by a strong local authority can do that.
“Indeed, a fragmented system, with more schools outside of the local authority, makes it harder to properly coordinate a citywide approach for school place planning.”
A spokesperson for the Orchard Schools Partnership said: “We are considering joining the Eko Trust for a number of very positive reasons, which all centre around ensuring we are always providing a continually high-quality education for our pupils so that they get the best possible start in their lives.
“Throughout the consultation period, we are offering every opportunity for stakeholders to meet with the senior leadership team at Orchard Schools Partnership, governors, and representatives from the Trust, to discuss the proposals in detail and ask any questions.
“The constructive conversations taking place are pivotal to the consultation process and critical to informing next steps. The best interests of our pupils, staff members and wider community will be at the heart of any decisions made.”
Surprise, surprise! Labour and the teaching unions are ideologically opposed to academies.
I wonder what parents, children and teachers think?
You’re not that basic, Peter. Don’t act like it.
Comparing the most recent Ofsted grade of each type of school, converter academies are the most likely to be good and outstanding while sponsored academies are more likely than maintained schools to be graded requires improvement or inadequate. But this is to be expected as converters were high performing, and sponsored low performing, to begin with.
Evidence on the performance of academies compared to local authority schools is mixed, but on the whole suggests there is no substantial difference in performance.
Privatising every other public service has been a demonstrable catastrophe – look at the state of our water infrastructure, Royal Mail, energy firms, prisons and trains…
why knowing what we know would we want to extend this to schools?