| City academy programme under attack |
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| Friday, 20 January 2006 11:53 | |||
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Exam league tables released today show that up to half of the governments 27 flagship academies are among the worst performing schools. Seven of these privately funded schools were ranked among the lowest 200 performing schools with four of them in the bottom 100.
The introduction of the academies has attracted widespread criticism as they depend on both government funding and private sponsorship and are able to operate outside of local authority control. The listings are based on the number of pupils gaining five or more passes at grade A to C. Over 70% of the academy puplis failed to gain five C grades or better. The government has said that it will close schools that fail to meet the set targets for GCSE performance, but these proposals do not include the new school academies. These latest results show that academies are failing, according to UNISON head of education Christina McAnea. "They show no evidence to justify the governments costly programme for setting up city academies" she continued. ""Theese schools get £25 million worth of public funding which is on average double the funding available to other state secondaries and yet their results demonstrate no value for money" Criticism of the governments planned school reforms is mounting with former Labour leader Neil Kinnock now adding his name to those demanding a rethink.
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