Bribery and Coercion versus Democracy

1 March public meeting – make sure you’re there:

There’s already been a lot of interest in our public meeting on 1 March. The full details of the meeting are here.You can let us know you’re coming via our new Facebook event and you can also follow us on Twitter at @SaveE17Schools. We’ve also been out on the school gates with old fashioned leaflets, with a good response at both Henry Maynard and Thomas Gamuel. So it’s looking good.
Let us know you’re coming on Facebook here:

We’re hearing that Oasis’s application has been granted preapproval by the Department for Education. If this is true, it means that we enter a new phase where they have to launch a consultation of the local schools and community while they build a full business case for the Department. Anyone who attended the previous consultation events will know, this will need watching! Still, it means that our meeting comes at a very good time.

Bribery and Coercion versus Democracy:

In theory, the government’s Free Schools and Academies programme is supposed to be about promoting choice by enabling the growth of efficient and competitive schools. Of course it turns out that when governors and parents make the wrong choice, it’s a very different story. One of the speakers at the meeting will be talking about the challenges to democracy at Thomas Gamuel where a ballot of parents and successive votes of the governing body have been overruled because they rejected the move to academy status.

Perhaps the most notorious example of this was at Downhills in Haringey where the DfE forced through academy conversion in the face of similar democratic opposition. This is the subject of a brilliant new film by independent filmmaker Rhonda Evans. You can watch this on Youtube here.

And then of course, there is the bribery, documented in the Independent, which reported that officials from Michael Gove's department are offering £65,000 "bribes" to convince reluctant headteachers to convert their schools to academies. Read more here.

“You can have any school you like as long as it’s an Academy or Free School”

“It’s time to elect a new People”

Etc etc etc.