This is the letter I wrote to the Yorkshire Evening Post a few weeks back:
I understand that there has been a proposal to build a new academy (a private state school in which the state provides the money and private individuals become overpaid CEOs) on Fearnville Fields. I am very pleased to hear that the proposal has been turned down. Well done to the campaigners.
Green spaces such as these [where I spent many a happy year as a sub-teenager trying to kill myself walking across the pipeline!] are not just recreational but also help in fighting flooding.
But equally important is not to support the building of any more academies/ free schools. I have been actively campaigning against academisation for over a decade now. Academisation is just privatisation of education, and has nothing to do with raising academic standards, or any standards actually.
And the evidence is now in; it is not just that the concept is immoral, but the practice is corrupt and incompetent. It is ruining whole generations of school children's lives, and as such is threatening our society's future.
And given that the evidence is very much in, and the new Labour government will be renationalising our public services, I am very surprised that a Labour Council is even contemplating allowing any more of these institutions to be created. There are other more imaginative ways of solving the school places crisis, such as extending a current school but actually on a quite separate site.
Victoria Jaquiss FRSA
Education campaigner, teacher
They didn't print it as far as I know, so here it is in my blog.
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