Sadly, Torridge District Councillors last night voted 15 to 11 not to pursue a judicial review against the Secretary of State’s decision (against all advice and the planning inspectorates recommendation) to let Route 39 Academy build their new secondary school in the North Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Route 39 has 123 students, less than a typical primary school and about 1/3 of the number they told the Dept. for Education they would have attending. To buy the site and build the school will now cost us all £ millions and the countryside will never be the same.
Now that the Government has announced that all schools will be Academies by 2020, why do we need this one? All the other local secondary schools have spare places available for students and most are rated good by Ofsted – Route 39 got a ‘requires improvement’ last Summer!
The Government are now teeing up all schools to be integrated in MAT’s or Multi-Academy Trusts, comprising clusters of schools with centralised financial budgets and control, ripe fruit for ‘out-sourcing’ to the likes of Babcock, Pearson, Ark, E-ACT and other large corporate ‘for profit’ education providers. These companies top slice the first 10%+ from each schools budget for their own shareholders before spending a penny on the children’s education and welfare.
I wonder how many Conservative Party supporters, donors and former Ministers sit on the boards of these organisations?
What a warped world we live in!
northdevongovernor 