| SPOTLIGHT |
The National Union of Teachers has threatened legal action against the Department for Education over its proposals to expand selective education.
Speaking at the union’s annual conference, General Secretary Kevin Courtney said: “Teachers, parents and head teachers are rightly incensed that the Government has such wrong priorities on education. At a time when head teachers across England and Wales are crying out for sufficient funds to run their schools, provide pupils with a broad and balanced curriculum and retain teachers and support staff, the Government is proposing to lavish scarce education funding on a policy which all the evidence confirms will undermine the high standards of education that comprehensive schools have been able to achieve in the decades since selective education was ended in most parts of the country.
“There is no appetite for this programme. For every grammar school that is opened there will in effect be an increase in the number of secondary modern schools, leading to a two-tier secondary education system. This will bring about social division, where those pupils who do not get selected at 11 suffer the consequences for the rest of their lives.
“The NUT will be investigating possible legal routes to challenge the expansion of selective education and will continue to campaign for a good local comprehensive school for every child.”
Last November Courtney wrote to Education Secretary Justine Greening to warn that a suggestion contained in the green paper, Schools that Work for Everyone, that academies are currently permitted to “select within their trust” was not lawful.
In the letter Courtney took issue with part of the green paper stating (pages 27-28) that the Government proposed to:
‘Encourage multi-academy trusts to select within their trust. We will make clear that multi-academy trusts and/or other good or outstanding academies can already establish a single centre in which to educate their ‘most able’ pupils. This centre could be ‘virtual’ or have a physical location. This would enable the schools to provide a more challenging and targeted curriculum, and to create an ethos within the centre of excellence which supports all children to achieve their potential. As pupils are identified as ‘most able’ pupils after they have been admitted to their individual school through a non-selective admissions process, this is currently permissible.’
Courtney wrote: “I have sought legal advice on this matter and I am advised that selection within academy trusts in the manner described in the green paper, whether it is read as referring to admission to a specific school within the trust or to a ‘centre or excellence’ which is not itself a school, is not lawful.”
According to The Guardian, the union is yet to receive a reply to the letter.
