How Brown’s backtracking on school reform 

Ever since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister and Ed Balls Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, there has been a steady attempt to undermine the academies programme. Brown and Balls have set about rolling back the freedoms that the academies had been given and quietly bringing them back under the dead hand of the local education authorities.

This letter (reprinted in full below) to Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, from the Independent Academies Association details just what the Brown government is trying to do and how pernicious it is. Regardless of whether Brown and Balls are doing this out of a wrong-headed ideological commitment or to appease interest groups in the Labour party, it is wrong and hurts the very children–generally the poorest—who the academies were set up to help.

Academies were one of the few areas where Blair managed to achieve meaningful, albeit diluted, public service reform.