Freedom from the rest of society is the coalition plan

By Lisa Nandy MP

I spent seven hours in the second reading of the Academies Bill on Monday wondering what on earth the government is playing at. The proposed new schools will be free to go it alone, without any co-ordination from the local authority, in competition with other schools in their area. As in any competitive system there will be winners and losers. Children with special educational needs look likely to fall firmly into the second category. They currently get extra help from a central fund which is contributed to by all state schools, managed by the local council. If there are fewer schools in the scheme, there will be less money in the pot, leaving those children with less support.

In the debate many of the Tories talked enthusiastically about the freedom this would give to schools. It is a hoax. After five years working with some of the most marginalised children at The Children’s Society I am astounded that they can’t see that freedom for one child can represent a loss of freedom for another. That is bad enough. But even worse, the children who will lose out will be the ones who can afford to do so least.

As a new MP, I’m starting to realise that Bill debates make it hard to consider the true impact of the legislation because they largely focus on that legislation in isolation from other, relevant policies. The biggest immediate danger of the Academies Bill is that it will create a situation where children from better off backgrounds go to Academies, and children from less privileged backgrounds do not. The schools that are being fast-tracked to Academy status are ‘Outstanding’ schools, which are, for example, significantly less likely to have children in receipt of free school meals.

This sort of social segregation is something I am fundamentally opposed to. But the problem becomes even more significant when you look at the other changes the coalition is pushing through. Tightening eligibility for Sure Start criteria will undermine part of the purpose of Sure Start, which brought together children from a variety of different social backgrounds and enabled it to be much more successful than services reserved exclusively for the poor. Axing Child Trust Funds and cutting university places or removing the cap on tuition fees will mean that many less well off children will not get to university, and even those who do will have to go to universities that charge lower fees.

The clear danger is that children who are born into disadvantage and children who are born into privilege will simply never meet – not at Sure Start, school or university. I suspect this is the real purpose behind these bizarre and short-sighted reforms. After seven hours of mulling it over on Monday I came to the conclusion that the coalition are seeking to give the privileged few the ‘freedom’ to have no contact with the rest of society. The consequences of this are clear – they will entrench social segregation in this country and create the sort of divided, polarised society we worked hard to leave behind in the 1980s. We cannot let this happen, but if we are going to stop it we need to recognise that it is happening. If we only look at each new reform in isolation we are in danger of missing it.