YEP Says: Parents deserve clarity on new academy plans

Many will have been left wondering what the heck it meant when the Government announced that all schools would become academies and taken out of local authority control by 202o, in a much-previewed Budget announcement .

It’s hardly been a lesson in plain english, after all; fogged as it has been by jargon, politics and claim and counter claim.

Leeds City Council is now in ‘urgent talks’ about how it and other local authorities can remain involved in education; its leader, Labour’s Judith Blake condemning the Government’s announcement as an ‘extremely costly and unecessary reorganisation’.

The arguments for and against will rumble on and undoubtedly politics will interfere where it has no place to do so, in the classroom.

But what MUST happen now is that parents are spoken to, kept fully involved; and their views listened to. The impact the proposals will or will not have on their child’s education must be made absolutely clear.

Scaremongering is not helpful - nor is keeping them in the dark.