Below is my statement at an Enfield Community Meeting on a possible Enfield multi-academy trust

I support the teachers and staff striking at Galliard Primary school, making their feelings known about possible academisation.  The leadership of mainstream schools across the country are under a great deal of pressure from Government underfunding, a regressive schools inspections regime and monstrous academy chains seeking to expand.  But academisation is not the answer.  When schools become academies, communities, parents and teachers lose the ability to keep the leadership, and the school as a whole, to account.  This is deeply concerning and a fundamental flaw in the academy system.  The academy system is over-centralised, inefficient and undemocratic.  It keeps parents, teachers and the community out of decisions about their school.

I have been appalled by what appears to be salary abuses one normally finds in the corporate world being imported by academies into our school system.  It should not sit comfortably with us that conversion to an academy means giving the leadership near-complete autonomy over staff pay and conditions.  Those working hard to educate and care for our children should be better protected than that.  Academies also have almost complete financial autonomy, meaning it has become increasingly common for heads of some multi-academy trusts to earn enormous and disproportionate salaries from the public purse.

Ultimately, academies do not improve standards in our schools or outcomes for pupils.  Despite years of reform and reorganisation education standards are simply not improving.  Conversion to academies is no good in particular for disadvantaged pupils, evidenced by studies that demonstrate that such pupils largely do less well in academy chains than those in mainstream schools.

Our schools have had their budgets cut year after year, and we are facing a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention.  Conversion to an academy does not mean funding issues will go away.  But it could very well lose schools other extremely precious resources: the goodwill of their staff and the involvement of parents and the local community in the life of the school.  I hope that schools in Enfield will resist the urge to academise, and I applaud the organisation and action of hardworking teachers and staff to ensure their thoughts and position are taken into account.