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Free schools will ‘damage’ children
Plans for two free schools in Dinnington and Maltby have been branded a “totally lunatic idea” by a teaching union.
John Dalton from the Rotherham branch of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) said there was no need for any more school places in the borough.
The schools are the brain child of Yorkshire Nationwide Schools (YNS) who are currently looking for potential sites for two schools in Dinnington and Maltby for youngsters aged from four through to 18.
Scheduled to open in September 2013, each school would cater for some 1,380 students.
But critics have said the schools will “damage” students by diverting public money away from existing schools.
“We are totally opposed to the establishment of free schools,” said Mr Dalton.
“There is already a surplus of places in Rotherham schools. Free schools actually take money away from existing schools. These people have no experience in setting up schools so there’s also no reason to assume they will be able to do it as they are trying to set up so many at once.”
Mr Dalton also raised concerns about the quality of teaching in free schools saying they were under no obligation to employ fully qualified teachers and didn’t have to follow the National Ciriculum. They would, however, be subject to Ofsted inspections.
“An NUT survey carried out last year found that 80 per cent of parents felt it was essential that children are taught by qualified teachers,” he continued.
“These types of schools exist in Sweden and America and research shows that standards have actually fallen rather than improved.”
“It is a totally lunatic idea. It will be damaging to children who go there and damaging to children in the existing schools as resources and funds will be taken away.”
But John Morahan YNS chief executive said the benefits of free schools include smaller class sizes, stronger discipline, higher standards of achievement and greater parental choice.
He continued: “Theses towns meet all of our current criteria with a mix of levels of deprivation, lower achievement in some schools, and the provision of alternative provision that reflects some of the older values of Grammar Schools.”
“Should there be any movement from these schools to our proposed school it will give those schools a good opportunity to argue for maintaining funding levels and using this to reduce the size of their own classes – this has to be good for all concerned.”
A Council spokesperson said: “We are aware of the initial proposals being put forward for two more free schools applications in Rotherham but have so far received no formal notification from the DfE that the proposal has been submitted to them.”
“In general, we have previously outlined our objections to the two existing free school proposals which have been put forward in our area. This has been on the grounds of the lack of need in terms of student numbers and the potential negative impact that the opening of a new school would have on funding for existing schools.”
“We are now awaiting more information before commenting further on these new proposals.”
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Weather for Dinnington
Wednesday 23 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 13 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 11 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North east
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