The privatisation of education – academisation and the selling off of grounds and assets – is 99% complete in Hastings and the surrounding area. This policy, started by Margaret Thatcher and enthusiastically sped along by Tony Blair, has decimated local schools.
A successful campaign by local members of the National Education Union (NEU), the Hastings trades council, parents and activists, including HPP members, managed to close down the worst offender – the University of Brighton Academies Trust, who were ‘top-slicing’ an absurdly high amount of money to keep their executives in smart cars and bonuses. Those schools (The Hastings Academy, The St Leonards Academy and a number of primaries) now have the uncertainty of transitioning to a range of new Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) as the privateers are known.
A further issue is the absurd approach to education some of the MATs take. Ark Alexandra, part of a huge, supposedly charitable, chain (where six executives are paid more than half a million pounds each), originated in the USA. It has an eccentric and harmful approach to education and discipline, and has a terrible record on supporting children with special needs. Recently the head teacher imposed a quota of detentions teachers were supposed to hand out, with prizes to those who gave out the most – and this is before the children even ‘earned’ those detentions. Ark is the very definition of an ‘exams factory’ where creativity, independence and diversity are not valued. Even for attempting to report on this, local community independent newspaper, Hastings Independent Press, was threatened with legal action.
Locally and nationally, we need a new campaign against the vulture MATs to bring the focus of education back to where it should be – the individual children, with a guaranteed start in life for all.
The NEU supports returning schools to local authority democratic control.